The comic shop is closed so I got no comic books.
I still made a video though.
Another blog that was written before lockdown. It seems so long ago now.
I’ve been working on a bunch of things lately. On my commutes into the city on Mondays and Tuesdays I’ve been working on making some of my cartoon art cards for my “Drifting and Dreaming” comic strip. Over the last couple of years I’ve only been able to get about three months ahead with the once a week Sunday strip. It takes a lot of work to make one. It takes more work than my two other strips “Four Talking Boxes” and “Message Tee” because I don’t have to draw all new things for those two strips. I make those ones in a different way.
With “Drifting and Dreaming” any individual strip is made up of four parts: Two cartoon art cards, one regular art card, and the bit of writing that is “The Middle Story.” The art cards are easy enough. I just make a drawing on a baseball card size piece of paper. I’ve been making art cards for a long time now so it’s a habit. Usually I don’t have to draw them special for the strip as I’m doing them anyway and their numbers can build up. Of course that’s not always the case. Sometimes I run out of them.
The cartoon art cards are much harder to make. With them I have to do some writing and drawing to make each individual one. I now make them differently than I used to. When I first started them, and for many cards after, I would draw a face/head spontaneously in ink. I could do them faster that way and it led me down many strange and interesting paths. But after years of doing them that way I found I was repeating myself a bit too much and that got boring for me. I needed new faces.
So a couple of years ago I switched over to making quick pencil drawings to work out some of the features of the face. I would only spend a couple of minutes on each pencil drawing. I still wanted the face spontaneous. I just wanted to minimize repeating myself. After the pencil drawing I’d go in with my ink pen and draw over the pencils with a black ink line.
Once the face was drawn I’d go into the drawing with markers to color the drawing in. These cartoon art cards coincided with my learning to use markers way back in 2010. I first started out with Sharpie markers but then moved on to ShinHan Touch markers, Prismacolor markers, Pitt Pens, and Copic markers. I mostly use Copic markers these days but not always. Sometimes I get bored with them and use another set.
The coloring of the cards can take the longest time of all the stages. I usually make my cartoon art cards in batches of ten. I lay all ten cards out in front of me and first color all their backgrounds. I put two colors in the background of each card. I’ll grab my markers, pick a color, and start filling in backgrounds with that color. Then I pick another color, and another color, and probably up to five colors for the rest of the cards.
After doing the background on ten cards (sometimes twenty) I color each card individually until it’s finished. I start with the one on the left in front of me and color on down the line until I’m done. Well, I probably take some breaks in there too. It takes around two hours to get ten cards colored.
When I first made these cards I wouldn’t write what was in the word balloon until after I finished drawing the face. But somewhere along the way I switched my order. I think was when I started making ASMR drawing videos of my art cards. For video it was much better to have it already written and lettered so that at the end of the video I’d have a finished card. It’s not very interesting to watch somebody write on video.
Finally I scan in the finished art card and digitally set them up to be used. After that I have to do some more writing. I open up my digital file and write “The Middle Story” part of the card. I write ten of them in a row because I usually set up ten cards at a time. That’s two months worth of cards.
For the last month I’ve been doing some of these cartoon art cards on my commute. Since the trains don’t run on my schedule I have some time to wait at the train station. I can pull out my cards and do some pencilling or inking as I sit on a bench. I also work for a little while on the cards before I head out to catch the train.
Last fall I ever wrote a few of the cards as I was riding the train but I found it difficult. There are tons of other people on the train plus the distraction of the scenery going by. I had more trouble than usual writing them and they probably took me twice as long. It’s better to just read on my train ride.
So I started to write them on Sunday nights when I was doing nothing. I found this easy and relaxing. Since the writing in these strips is trying to be witty and odd I also found in easier to have a podcast or something on as I write them. I’m not really listening the podcast but certain words catch my ear and can start a phase for the cards.
I write directly on the cards in pencil. First I draw a border around the edge of the card, then draw guide lines on the top of the card to help me letter straight, and finally I draw the bottom of the word balloon. Then I write the card. After I get the writing correct I letter in the words in ink.
I’ve got a small aluminum card holder made for carrying around art cards. I put my lettered cards in that case and put the case in my commuting bag. Over the last month I got ten cartoon art cards finished the first week and then went a week for three weeks after that. That’s a good amount but it took a lot of effort. I’ve finished with this stage of them and now I have to go and write a whole bunch of “Middle Stories.” This might take a while.
The Comic shop is closed so I got no comic books.
I still made a video though.
Check them all out here:
I haven’t written about what TV shows I’m currently watching in over a year so I thought I would. Since it’s been so long there are even shows I’ve watched and forgotten about since I last wrote. Those will have to be lost to time. Or at least left off my list.
Locke and Key – Just finished this one. I read the graphic novels by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez a few years ago and so was looking forward to this. It was okay. I didn’t love it. I found the comic books to be much more imaginative. The show had more of a teen drama vibe than the comic. Still it’s worth a look.
You – I just started season one of this one and season three is already out. It’s the story of a NYC bookstore manager and his romance with a woman he is spying on. He’s also a murderer. I’ve heard it compared to “Dexter” since the lead character in that show is also a murderer and the narrator but this is really nothing like that plot-wise. I’m enjoying it so far.
Brooklyn Nine Nine – A favorite comedy that’s been around for many years now. It’s changed networks and has fewer episodes per season but is as funny as ever. A top of the line fast paced ensemble police comedy.
Young Sheldon – I missed the first season of this and started watching with the second and now it’s in its third season. It’s a good funny family comedy. The kid who played Young Sheldon does a really nice job.
Superstore – I can’t believe this one is already in it’s fifth season. I liked it at the beginning but it’s also really grown on me. It’s not as fast paced as Brooklyn Nine Nine but it moves pretty quickly and has a lot of funny stuff in it. I rewatched the whole series last summer and it held up well.
FBI – I don’t have as many police procedurals on my list as I once did but this one is there. As you may have guessed by the title it’s about the FBI. It takes place in their NYC office. In a way police procedurals are all the same so I’m not really sure why I like this one and not others but I do. This show even has a sister show this season “FBI – Most Wanted.” I gave that one a few episodes but didn’t like it.
Man With A Plan – This Matt LeBlanc show is back and only one episode has aired so far. I’d call it a family comedy but we hardly ever see his kids. LeBlanc and the actress who plays his wife are very good in it and that’s why I watch. I’m okay with the kids staying away.
Unicorn – This one stars the guy who played Boyd Crowder on “Justified.” It’s about the dating life of a newly widowed father. It’s pretty well done. It’s not spectacular but I’d give it a B. That’s enough for me top keep watching.
Sinner – This was the third season of the series and it was a weird one. They were all kind of weird but this one stuck out. It’s the story of a detective tracking down a murderer but it’s not really a police procedural and not really a detective story. There is all sorts of strange psychological stuff going on. I like it but find it hard to describe.
The Simpsons – What can I say about the Simpsons? I’ve been watching it for 30-something years and don’t plan on stopping watching.
Duncanville – A new family comedy animated show on after “The Simpsons.” It’s been funny so far. The dad from “Modern Family” does the voice of the father on this show and he’s a stand-out.
Modern Family – Speaking of this show it’s in it’s last season and is still good. I’ll miss it when it goes.
Better Call Saul – I think this is the last season for this prequel of “Breaking Bad.” So far I’ve like it better than “Breaking Bad” which I finally watched the last few episodes of. BCS is the story of a lawyer, who was a bit sleazy to begin with, as he gets sucked into working for the wrong side of the law. Good stuff.
Mr. Robot – I still have a few episodes of this to go but so far I’ve been liking its final season. It’s a show about hackers getting even with society. Or trying to. Things go wrong all the time.
Supernatural – A show in its fifteenth and final season and I’ve watched all of them. Once again what can I say that I haven’t said before? I’ll miss our two boys fighting monsters. They’ll carry on though.
The Rookie – Nathan Fillion’s show is in its second season and it’s a police show about Fillion being a 40-something year old rookie in Los Angeles. Police stuff happens so I guess it’s a procedural but it’s more about the rookies and what they go through. I’ve been watching Fillion on TV since “Two Guys and a Girl.” That was a long time ago.
Miss Sherlock – I’m rewatching this subtitled Japanese eight episode show about a gender swapped Holmes and Watson. It’s pretty good. I’ve only watched about one episode a month so this may take a while.
Money Heist – I stared this one on Netflix but have only gotten six or so episodes into it. It’s a show from Spain but its dubbed into English. The fourth season was released just this week but I’m a long way from that. It’s the story of criminals trying to pull off and get away with a bank robbery. I have no idea how they’re going to get four seasons out of this.
Better Things – A show that’s in it’s third season but I’ve only just started season one. It’s a comedy staring a woman I recognize from “Californication” but I have no idea what her name is. She’s a divorced actress living in L.A. and raising three girls. It’s funny and poignant.
The Blacklist – I just checked and we’re on season seven of this one. It’s been around for a while now. It’s either an FBI procedural or a criminal procedural. I’m not sure which but I’m still digging it.
Bless this Mess – A comedy about a NYC couple who move to rural Nebraska to run a farm. It’s a good ensemble comedy. This is its second season after a short first season and I think it’s even been renewed for a third already. Give it a look.
Brockmire – I just noticed this one was back and have seen the first two episodes. This show is a comedy staring Hank Azaria as a washed-up but trying to make a comeback baseball sportscaster. Except this season takes place years in the future after an economic collapse. It’s weird and maybe even a little too real to watch as this virus hits us.
Corner Gas Animated – I discovered the Canadian TV show “Corner Gas” (2004-2009) last year and watched them all. Now I’m onto the show that came after it (2018-2019) as the turned the show into a cartoon. It’s as funny as the live action one.
Death in Paradise – Another show that’s been around for eight seasons that I only discovered last year. It’s yet another BBC mystery show except this one takes place on a small Caribbean island. It’s slow paced, pleasant, and has great scenery. It’s amazing how relaxing a show about murder can be.
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries – This show is from and takes place in Australia. Except it take place in 1920’s Australia. It’s a lot like other BBC type mystery shows. Someone is murdered and eventually Miss Fisher finds out who did it. Solid.
Seal Team – I guess this one would be a military team procedural. Or maybe just an action show. The Seal team goes on missions and have personal lives. It’s all pretty exiting.
Stumptown – Colby Smothers stars in this show based on a comic book that I’ve never read. At the beginning of the season she becomes a private investigator and spends the rest of the season solving her client’s problems and trying to find out what happened to her old boyfriend. Was he murdered or was it an accident? Another solid B. Carry on.
The Comic shop is closed so I got no comic books.
I still made a video though.
Check them all out here:
I’m going to take a trip to the past this week because I recently joined a Facebook group for collectors of comic book original art and shared a piece of John Romita art that I got from him want back in 1992. I posted the story of me getting the piece from him but I wanted to write something a little bit longer about it. I want to try and remember and capture the time and place.
Back in 1992 I was working at Marvel Comics on a freelance basis in the Marvel Bullpen. We Bullpenners were the people got the comics ready to print. We were also known as the Production Department. Paste-ups, lettering corrections, art corrections, and various other behind the scene things got done in the Bullpen. We were on the tenth floor of the building located at 387 Park Avenue South.
At some time around the summer of 1992. Marvel decided that the tenth floor needed a remodel. That meant moving everybody on that floor down to the fourth floor (which I assume was vacant) for a couple of months. The fourth floor was considerably smaller and different that the tenth floor.
On the tenth floor the Bullpen was a large open area with about ten to twelve desks and drawing tables in it. Down on the fourth floor they squeezed about ten drawing tables (not the desks they went somewhere else) into a room half the size of the tenth floor Bullpen. I wasn’t even in that room. As a freelancer I didn’t have a choice of desks. I got stuck wherever there was space leftover. There were a couple of spots.
The first spot was in a hallway with a row of cubicles along the side of it. It wasn’t much of a row. I only remember George Roussos nearby. He was Marvel’s house colorist and had been in the comic book business since about 1940. It was cool to be near him.
The second spot was the worst. One of the great things about the Marvel Bullpen of that era was the camaraderie. It wasn’t a great job. It was a fairly crappy one overall but that was made up for by the fact that we could talk all day as we did our job. A dozen or more creative people in a room talking as they worked could be a lot of fun and it was. Except the second freelance spot wasn’t anywhere near that room. Instead it was in a room with the photocopiers. It was the only desk in that room. So when I sat there I had no one to talk to unless someone came in to make copies. It was just me and the dull work.
It just occurred to me that there was a third spot where I worked on the fourth floor. There was a another room where the people who did the production on the covers worked. I think there were only two drawing tables in there but there were also a couple of desks right outside the room. I worked in there some days when I was filling in for one of the cover people. It wasn’t as lively as the Bullpen but it was way better than the copy room.
The only photos I know of from this period on the fourth floor were taken by Eliot Brown. Eliot’s Website He was an ex-Marvel bullpenner at the time and he liked to take photos so he came by one day and took some. I also like to take photos too but this was long before the age of everyone carrying a camera on their phone with them everywhere they went. It was either that year or soon after that I bought an Olympus Stylus pocket camera and started carrying it with me every day. But either way I took no photos of our time on the fourth floor. I wish I did. I wish I took a whole lot more photos of those days.
So back to the story of my John Romita art. This has to be my geekiest moment in comics. It took place during this time period on the fourth floor during the summer of 1992. The drawing is dated 5/1/90 so John must have been cleaning out his office. After all we had just moved floors so I assume a lot of people took that opportunity to get rid of unwanted stuff. Especially since most people’s space got smaller.
I had some reason to go into John’s office and speak to him about something or another. I don’t even remember what. Some random production problem. I noticed the working drawing on his desk as he stood across from me. Then as we were talking, and in the middle of our conversation, he picked up the drawing and and tossed it in the trash.
I immediately blurted out “You don’t want that? Can I have it?” I’m not usually one for blurting out stuff like that but it was such a beautiful drawing and as an artist myself I love to see the guts of a piece of art. How it’s done. John, who is the nicest guy in the world, looked at me for a moment as if I had grown an extra head and said, “Sure” and handed it to me out of his garbage bin. I was, of course, thrilled.
Now for what this piece is. At the time (in 1990) John was working with the paper company Strathmore to make some new paper for Marvel. Inkers like the paper to be smooth and pencillers like some tooth to the paper. John was working on finding the right balance for the Marvel paper that gets handed out for the artists to draw on. Here he was testing out a paper sample. He used various pens, drew a couple of heads, used some white-out on it, and generally put it through its paces. I love working drawings like this that generally never get seen.
Years later I scanned it in and it was printed in the “John Romita: Marvel Visionaries” hardcover book in the back with a bunch of other sketches and such. In the end anyone can now enjoy it. Good show.
The comic shop is closed so I got no comic books.
I still made a video though.
Check them all out here:
I wrote this Blog before the social distancing hit that we’re all facing. It seems so quaint now. Me rambling on about a commute that I no longer can do. Oh well, here we go.
One of the things I’ve been working on lately is to make an art bag fo being on the go. Or commuting. Mostly commuting since I’ve been in NYC for two days a week recently. Since my commute isn’t during rush hour (at least on the way in) the train time table doesn’t match up with my time table so I have time to wait at the station and do some drawing. So I need some art supplies with me.
All last year I carried my Just-Stow-It art bag that I bought many years ago. It’s a bag specifically designed for artists and I like it but it’s a pretty big bag. It’d designed to carry 14×17 inch pads of paper so it’s bigger than your average bag. I like that about it but for this art bag I wanted something smaller. Plus my art bag is beginning to fall apart (I bought it in 2009). I had to sew the shoulder straps last year as they were beginning to tear off the bag. Not a good sign. The art bag is also black nylon and I prefer a canvas bag. I like the feel of canvas better.
The other problem I had was that I had to pack the bag with art supplies every day. My art supplies: pens, paper, markers, erasers, and such all have their place that I keep them in my studio so I’d pack them in the bag and then have to unpack them so they were back in place for when I needed them at home. That was kind of annoying. So I wanted to put together a set of art supplies to just keep in the new art bag. Fist I had to figure out what supplies.
A couple of years ago I bought a modular type art supply bag. It’s around 6×9 inches and is supposed to hold pens and paper on its own and then you stick that in another bag. I wanted to use it to hold my 5.5×8.5 inch sketchbook but the bag is a little too small for it. I think that’s why it’s been sitting on the shelf for years. But it will hold some of my cartoon art card stuff. I have a small aluminum art card case and that fits right in a sleeve on the from of the bag. Along with that I fit a sign pen, a mechanical pencil, a lettering marker, a kneaded eraser, and some flat portable reading glasses. It is good to go.
I ended up being a messenger style canvas sling bag that’s 10.2×13.6×4.4 inches. That’s about half the size of my Just-Stow-It art bag and was just about what I wanted. It had a bunch of pockets to put things in and I had to decide what I was going to keep in it. I wanted to be able to grab it and go so it had to have permanent supplies in it. At first I threw everything I could in it but then I narrowed down the stuff. I put a small photo tripod, a small flashlight, a small Swiss Army style knife, a D-Ring, small headphones, mints, a train schedule, and a lease cleaning pen in the bag. Along with the modular art supply bag these are my go stuff.
I wanted to put some more stuff in there too so I wanted another modular bag. They made a bigger one so I ordered one. It was only after I ordered it that I though to check the size of it. Fo some reason I assumed it would fit but when I got it the size was a smidge too big. The canvas bag is 10.2 inches tall and the modular bag is 10.5 inches tall. It does fit in with the corners bent but it’s not ideal. It is big enough to fit a couple of file folders I need to have with me. As long as I bend over the tabs.
Since I’ve been working on my art cards while at the train station I wanted to carry some color markers with me. I have a ton of markers at home but since I don’t want to be packing and unpacking the bag I needed more markers for it. Not a lot. I got some Pitt Artist Brush markers. I wanted to use tham because they’re India ink based markers. They’re different from my usual Copic alcohol based markers. I got a couple of the six marker sets. A blue set and a flesh tone set. They fit well in the pockets of the larger modular bag. I’ll probably need some more stuff to go in there but I’m not sure what just yet,
The one thing that goes in my bag and always messes up my packing is my camera. It’s a Canon Powershot SX60 that I bought back in 2015 and I use it to take street photos when I’m in the city. The problem in that it’s about 5x5x4 inches. So it sits on the bottom of the bag and bulges out. That’s less of a problem when I’m heading into the city to specifically take street photos but as an everyday camera it’s less than ideal. I’m looking to buy a new smaller camera to carry in the bag but the one I want costs about $400 dollars so it’ll take a while to save up for it.
One other thing I had to do with the new canvas bag was to waterproof it. Or at least water resistant it. A couple of weeks ago as I was walking to Penn Station I got caught in a downpour. I was carrying my Just-Stow-It art bag which I thought was waterproof but turned out to be closer to water resistant. The stuff in the inner compartment was dry but I had my inkbook in an outer compartment at that got damp. It wasn’t a disaster. Only the edges of a handful of pages got wet but it still annoyed me. This was a twenty minute walk in a downpour so it was really worse case scenario.
My new canvas bag wasn’t waterproof at all. So I ordered some waterproofing spray that was for boat canvas. That ended up driving up the price of my $35 bag to $50 but I knew what I was in for if I didn’t. I gave the bag two coats of the spray and that seemed to do the trick. I’m still going to avoid the rain though. Plus I have enough spray to give it a couple of coats ever year for a few years. Here’s to art on the go.
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got six new comics.
Check them all out here:
It’s time to pull something out from my art files and give it a look. Usually I’ve written these about my paintings but I think today I’m going to dig into my drawings. I have a couple of cabinets I use as flat files and store my old drawings in them. I built boxes of different sizes for them a few years ago. I think I’ll dig into one of my 11×17 inch boxes and see if there is anything that I want to write about in there.
I pulled out an old Epson paper box that I store drawings in. It’s Super A3/Super B size (13×19 inches). This is the biggest paper my printer (and all my printers before this) can handle. It reminds me that before I even had a computer I used to use old stat paper boxes to store drawings in.
A stat machine used to be a common thing in publishing. It was used to make copies of black and white art. It’s sort of like a photocopier except that is was around a long time before photocopiers and didn’t make copies on regular paper. A stat machine was also called a stat camera because that’s what it was. A giant camera that used a chemical based photographic method to take pictures of art and copy that art onto a piece of photographic paper.
When I worked at Marvel in the early 1990s they had two stat cameras and they were making photostats all day long. So they went through a lot of photostat paper. That paper used to come in boxes that were around 11×17 inches and up. Some boxes were 16×20 inches and probably even bigger. When the boxes were empty the stat guys would throw them out or give them to anyone who wanted them. Since comic book paper is 11×17 inches there were lots of people who wanted those boxes to store art in. I was one of them and still have some of those boxes to this day.
Looks like I have about 20 pieces of paper in this box so I’ll pull one of them out and see what it is. It’s a 10×15 inch black and white ink drawing on a 11×17 inch piece of paper. It’s named “Snakes in Soil” and has the date August 19, 2011 on it. It looks familiar but I don’t know if I ever made a finished color print out of it. Sometimes I do that and sometimes I don’t.
It’s a picture of a teacup shaped face that looks like some kind of art robot hooked into a machine like background. I hesitate to use the words “Robot” and “Machine” because the shapes and space the image exists in really isn’t that real world. It’s more artistic than machine like but it’s drawn with a lot of straight lines which makes the piece look mechanical without really being mechanical. It looks like a lot of the lines were drawn with a pen and French curve but then gone over with a brush and ink to thicken them. That’s a common technique I use to keep the my line from getting too mechanical and dead.
I like the shapes in this drawing. I think I did a nice job with them. It looks to me like I was trying to integrate the background and foreground into a shallow space made up of these shapes. I also like the swirls they come off his shoulders. This is something I tend to do every now and then and it looks good in black and white but I usually find it hard to color. The swirl shapes make sense as black and white lines but when color is added the color usually dominates the thin shape and the background color becomes more dominant than the foreground line. That can sometimes be a problem.
An odd thing about this drawing is that I can see about eight small areas that I used white out on. I’m usually a very neat artist and almost never use white out (it’s probably really a white gouache) on my drawing so I wonder why I messed up the drawing in this case?
Since this art has a date on it I decided to look up that date on my calendar. I use the Mac Calendar program to keep track of the stuff I work on. So as I look back to August of 2011 I can see that four days after I finished this drawing I colored it and turned it into a print called “I Was Lost in the Wilds.” This doesn’t even ring a bell but I can now look that up and see how I colored it.
It’s print number 73. The line I put on it is “I was lost in the wilds outside the walls until I heard you call my name.” I’m looking at a printout of it now in my 11×17 inch book of prints. It looks nice. I did a good job with the color. I can see right away that I dealt with the swirl shoulder by adding a line of color to it. This allows the shape of the swirl to remain the focal point rather than getting lost in the background.
I also find it interesting how the black and white drawing is all about integrating the foreground and background but the color version is all about keeping them separate and distinct. The foreground is all blues and the background all reds plus there are even color outlines on parts of the foreground to separated it from the background. It really is a completely different piece when the color is added.
There is also a ton of texture in the final print. The entire background has a light cross hatching texture all over it while the foreground has an even lighter cross hatching texture. That texture serves to unify the piece even as the color makes the two pieces distinct.
I also like that the type is asymmetrical.
So that was interesting for me. I picked a drawing and saw where it led. I’m tempted to look through the whole box of drawings but I thing I’ll save that for another time. Half the fun of writing this blog was that I had no idea what I would pull out of the box. So I’ll save that fun fo another time. I hope you found this interesting too.