Radiant Comics

I was young for a day last week. Not really but it felt that way one Thursday after I had finished making some drawings. It all has to do with the hours I keep and how much energy I have. I generally have a lot of energy for making art and getting things done by not the same amount I had in my younger days. Except on that Thursday.

As a freelancer sometimes I work at some place on site and sometimes I work in my home studio. This on site days have their own rhythm and hours. I’m writing about the days when I’m home and working on my own art. I’m consistent about working on my own stuff. Besides energy it takes developing good habits to get art done. So I’ve developed some over the decades.

I’m a morning person. That means I have the most energy and concentration in the morning. So I get up early. It’s gotten earlier and earlier over the years but it’s at 8:00 AM that I get started with my work day. I’m usually at the drawing board, computer, or easel by then.

Back when I was in my 20s my day would last longer than it does now. Most of the day was the same. I’d start working at 8 AM, take a bike ride break from 9AM- 10AM (five days a week), and then get back to work until 12 PM. That’s when I would have lunch. Usually until 12:30. After that I would work until 5 PM when I’d stop for dinner. I’d get started again around 6 PM and work a little more until around 8 PM or maybe 9 PM.

Back in my 20s (the early 1990s) we all still watched TV shows live. So I stopped at 8 PM on nights that there were shows to watch at that time. I probably only worked until 9 PM on nights when there were no shows to watch. On rare occasions I’d work until 10 PM but never much after that. Being a morning person I was no good at staying up late to get things done. I’ve never pulled all all-nighter in my life. It’s always better for me to get some sleep and finish things in the morning.

My work habits are still nearly the same except I don’t get as much work done after diner. I might get a few easy things done between 6-7 PM but it’s rare that I work until 8 or 9 PM. I don’t need to. In my 20s I had more of a sense of urgency. I wanted to learn things and master my craft. I’ve done that. I still like to learn new things but I already have many mediums that I can make art in when I want to. Color inks were the last thing I added to my menu of mediums. That was a couple of years ago and is a fairly obscure medium. I’ve also worked in all the obvious ones over the years. So now I take it easy at night.

I also used to push myself more time-wise. I would say to myself “Just one more hour and I can get this done.” It was worth the energy back then to push myself and get it done. Now it’s not. With less energy than in my youth I know that if I push myself now I might be extra tired tomorrow. Now it’s easier to just wait for tomorrow to put in that extra hour. My pace is different.

So how did I get to feeling younger for a day? Well. I got six drawings done in a day and it took me from 8 AM until about 8 PM. I was working on some pencil drawings for my “Dreams of Things” series that day. I picked six thumbnail drawings out of one of my Inkbooks, blew them up to 6×9 inches, and printed them out to be drawn.

I often set these blue line thumbnail up in groups. That way I can pick one up when the mood hits and draw one. Usually I’d be drawing a group of six of them over a week. But not that Thursday. That Thursday I started with one and then just kept going. I was on a roll.

Usually I’m a steady worker. I get stuff done whether I’m in the mood or not. It takes making things a habit to be able to make art even when your mood isn’t good. It pays off though because you’ll get more done and some of my best work was made when I wasn’t feeling it. Your chances of making good stuff go up when you make stuff as opposed to when you don’t.

But that Thursday I was on a roll. Everything was going smoothly and working out fine. I think I got four drawings done by dinnertime and then looked at the last two I had set up and asked myself if I wanted to work on them. Here is where I had the energy of my youth again as I didn’t even have to push myself to get them done. I put in another few hours and I had all six drawings done before 9 PM. I felt good the whole day and I felt good when I finished them. Energized even.

I wasn’t even tired as I finished. Often in the past if I pushed myself to finish something I’d be tired after finishing. That Thursday I wasn’t. Often after pushing myself to finish something I knew that I was going to be extra tired the next day but on this Thursday I knew that I’d be okay and the next day I was.

So for one day when it came to making art I was young again. I was in my 20s and getting stuff done all day long. I probably even got more stuff done than in my 20s because I can work more efficiently. Six drawings is a lot to get done in one day and I’m not sure I could have done that in my 20s. I might not have had the skill. But that Thursday I had the skill and energy. I enjoyed that day getting so much art done because they don’t come around that often. Hurrah.

Watercolor has always been my weakest medium. I’m good with gouache, a type of opaque watercolor, but I’m not good with actual transparent watercolor. Still, I like to try my hand with watercolor every now and then. I even bought some new watercolor pans in the last few months. I’ve made some decent small art cards with the new watercolor but that was it. Until yesterday that is.

Lately I’ve been organizing a bunch of old works on paper. Pencil drawings, ink drawings, preliminary drawings, finished drawings, and whatever else I find. One of the things I find is random pieces of paper either blank or with an abandoned drawing on them. The blank ones go in a pile to be used and the abandoned ones (usually they were abandoned because I grabbed a new piece of paper and did a new version of the drawing) get cut up into smaller pieces of paper to be used later on.

I found an 11×17 piece of paper with a drawing I made back in 2003 printed out on it in blue line. It was a drawing of the goddess Athena that I eventually made into a color print back in 2003. This paper had her face partially inked but then I obviously wasn’t happy with it so I abandoned the inking. Since so little of it was done it was easier to start over than to try and fix the face.

I put the drawing in the pile of papers that were going to get cut up. For such things I usually cut them into five by seven inch pieces of paper and draw on the backs of them. But it turn out that this paper had pre-printed blue lines on the back. That made the back of the paper useless to me.

Then it occurred to me to ink and color the drawing. When I made the original Athena drawing back in 2003 I hadn’t yet developed my “Side of the brush” inking technique. That’s where I ink with a rough line rather than a smooth one. I knew I could apply that technique to the face that I didn’t like in 2003 (now I’m not even sure why 2003 Jared didn’t like it) and finish the drawing. So that’s what I did. I finished the drawing in a completely different way that I did 20 years ago.

When it came time to color it I knew I wanted to try out my new set of pan watercolors. I had seen a few ads on Facebook or some such of a guy painting over an ink drawing with water color. All he (or she I can’t remember) was doing was laying down brush strokes of transparent watercolor over the ink drawing. There wasn’t any shading going on but it looked good. It’s easy enough to do and takes little technique.

The first problem I had was that I wasn’t working on watercolor paper. My drawing was on Bristol paper but I thought that it would be thick enough to handle the watercolor. I knew the paper would buckle a bit and I thought I could handle that and it turned out that I could. Sure the paper is wavy now but that didn’t affect my technique much. It was something else that got me.

It’s been a while since I read anything about paper making but let me see if I can describe this. There is something that goes into paper making that controls how the paper holds its shape and how much liquid it can absorb. It’s called “Sizing.” Watercolor paper is made to absorb a lot of water and hold its shape. The Bristol board that I was using isn’t quite watercolor paper.

I like Bristol board/paper. It’s the main paper that I use. I use pencil on it. I use ink on it, and I use marker on it. It works with marker quite well as the paper absorbs the marker ink quickly. But the main reason it does that is the markers that I use are alcohol based and the alcohol evaporates quickly leaving only the color behind. Even when I use water based markers there is so little water in them that the water evaporates quickly too. Not so with actual watercolors and a brush.

The problem I was having with the watercolor was that the water wouldn’t absorb into the paper quickly enough. As I was trying to lay down color the watercolor would pool on the surface of the paper. The sizing in the paper was designed to keep the paper fairly dense so that ink or pencils could sit on its surface. Watercolor needs to sink into the surface.

There could be a way to work with watercolor on Bristol but I don’t know it. That’s where some knowledge of watercolor techniques would come in handy but, as I wrote before, watercolor is my worst medium. I never quite took to it so I don’t know many techniques to use it.

I eventually muscled my way through the painting part. I kept putting color where it needed to go and waited as it dried to add the next color but I don’t think there is any subtlety to it. It looks okay but not particularly interesting. I find that some areas of color look too dense while others look not dense enough. I think I could have gone lighter with the color in the whole thing but I was using the watercolor straight out of the pan. I bet there is a technique for that that I don’t know about.

I’m going to give this drawing a little more time and hit it again with some black ink. In places the watercolor went over the black line and weakened it. I want to strengthen it again. Plus that’s where I know what I’m doing. Ink is one of my favorite mediums. I can get that going.

Years ago, when I wanted to learn more about watercolor, I bought a book called “Transparent Watercolor Technique.” I glanced at it but never really studied it. After all I was proficient at enough different mediums that I didn’t have to learn one more. I’m still not sure that I want to put the time in to learn more about watercolor. I’ve got plenty of other ways to express myself and make art. But I might glance at the book again. I like looking at art books even if I don’t study them.

It’s Sunday night at 5:45 PM and I was just about to get back to work on a Gatsby drawing when it dawned on me that I don’t feel like working on a drawing right now. It’s Sunday night and I can relax and not draw. Or I can relax and do little bit of writing.

I’m feeling pretty good about the Great Gatsby illustrations that I’ve been working on. After being stuck on what to do next with it I finally have some ideas flowing. I worked on the Gatsby illustrations all of 2022 and have a couple of dozen of them finished and a lot of the design work done but I wanted to do a few more drawings plus I still didn’t have the cover done.

That’s how things stood during the first two months of 2023 (it’s March 5 as I write this). I was unsure of how to do those last few illustrations and wrap things up. I had no idea what I wanted to do for the cover. I still worked on sketches and things for it but nothing became of them. I was going nowhere.

When I first started this project in January of 2022 I decided to give myself a year to work on it. That wasn’t a deadline or anything but I knew I would need time to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with what was only an idea of “My own illustrated version of ‘The Great Gatsby’”. A year was plenty of time to get things going but not quite enough time to finish it. As time passed in 2023 I decided to give myself another six months to finish it. I figure I’ll be done by the end of August. Once again that’s not a deadline but just a projection.

As I wrote before I was working on a bunch of sketches but they weren’t going anywhere. I decided to pick out a few of them and make one of those few the cover. That seemed like a good idea but it still didn’t help me to figure it out. Then I heard an artist talking on Instagram.

The artist was Phyllida Barlow and she was on Art21’s Instagram (they seem to be producers of art documentaries). She was waxing poetic about “Art without a destination.” This is art made by the vast majority of artists who don’t get art shows and whose work doesn’t get viewed by the public. Yet those artists still make art. That’s the kind of art I make. Art with no destination. I haven’t been seen but with her waxing poetic I felt a little seen. So I got back to it.

The type of sketches I was working on for the finishing stages of Gatsby were dense automatic drawing sketches. I want to make some busy double page spreads to end the book so in order to do that I made some busy ink drawings with lots of figures and faces in them.

Automatic drawing is a technique invented by the Surrealists where an artist will try and clear their mind of any idea of what they will draw and then start drawing. I’ve practiced this technique for decades and it serves me well to pull images out of the corners of my mind. I often have no idea how I come up with some of the stuff I come up with but it’s how I find images that have not been seen before.

As a technique automatic drawing is better suited for art than for illustration. With illustration you usually have to have the idea of what to draw first. If I want a Gatsby cover I had better draw Gatsby. The problem was that in all of 2022 I wasn’t able to come up with an idea for a Gatsby cover.

I ended up spending a couple of days working on around half a dozen really busy double page automatic drawings. I figured that eventually I’d pick one of them and transform the images of people and faces on them into characters from the book. That didn’t happen though. I liked the drawings but I saw nothing Gatsby in them.

It was then I decided to get literal. I wanted to illustrate the climactic scene in the book where Tom confronts Gatsby. I took a morning and did a bunch of quick sketches. I really thought I could work it out but I couldn’t. All the sketches were boring and led nowhere interesting. It was right after this I heard the Instagram of Phyllida Barlow talking. After that I decided to go back to the Surrealist sketches. After all, this book I was making has no destination and there is no one to please but myself. So I may as well go my own way with it.

It’s funny because back when I started this Gatsby illustrated project I had to tell myself that there was no one to please but myself. I’m more of an artist than an illustrator. By that I mean that an illustrator has to please an editor, art director, or fans while an artist has to please themselves. After all most of us make art with no destination and therefor no audience.

When I take it upon myself to make illustrations I often put an imaginary editor or imaginary fans in my head. I get in my own way trying to please these imaginary people. Plus there is no pleasing them because they’re not real. With an illustration I imagine a destination in a way that I don’t do when I’m making art for art’s sake. It’s a strange quirk of my creativity.

As a consequence of that quirk as I was working today I had to shut up my own inner editor. The drawing was going well, I had a clear idea of what to do for the cover, and I could see the path before me. That’s when my inner editor said “You can’t do the cover in a different style than the drawings on the inside.”

This is actually kind of funny because I did the inside illustrations in a few different styles. I had already wrestled with the question of style last year and concluded that I could work in or change into any style I wanted. It was my project. I was the person I had to please in order to get it done. So I told my inner editor to shut his mouth and I would get back to pleasing me.

I’ve only got about five percent of the drawing done so far. There is a long way to go with it but the path is clear. I can see how it’s going to end up and I like the destination. But I won’t be traveling that path any more tonight. It’s Sunday night. Time to relax. I’m a morning person anyway so I’ll work some more on it tomorrow morning. Meanwhile I’m happy to finally be seeing the way forward.

I haven’t watched an episode of “Friends” nor written a walkthrough in a couple of months. So I thought I would sit down and do one now. I’m up to Season 6 Episode 15. Looks like I watched about five episodes since my last walkthrough which I wrote last August. That’s not many episodes watched over the half a year that has passed since then but it can be long time between episodes for me. It depends on how nostalgic I’m feeling. “Friends” is my go-to nostalgia show after all.

It looks like this is a double length episode too. It’s “The One That Could Have Been.” The episode first aired on February 17, 2000. That’s a week over 23 years ago as I write this. Let me check my calendar to see what I was doing that day besides watching this show. Looks like I was working on some animated gifs for a website I was freelanceing for back then. Plus I finished an oil painting that day. I was working on both of those things all week. Plus I worked on a mini-comic. That may have been one of the last mini-comics I ever made. It was called “All Ugly Theatre.” I bet I still have a copy of it somewhere.

Let’s start the show. They’re at the coffee shop. Chandler hits us with a quick “The internet is here to stay” joke then we find out that Barry (Rachel’s original fiancé from episode one) and Mindy are getting a divorce. This kicks off a fantasy episode of what would have happened if Rachel actually married Barry. The Ross divorce joke fly. And Ross Kar-aht-tay jokes. A solid opening.

Here is the complete set-up. Rachel got married, Ross never got divorced, Chandler quit his job to write comedy, Joey never got fired from “Days of Our Lives,” Phoebe has a high powered finance job, and Monica never got skinny. Let’s see what they do with it. The opening theme is filled with the alternate versions of them. Nice immersion.

The plot starts at a newsstand where Ross runs into Rachel for the first time since high school. The joke is that Ross is buying a dirty magazine (cause he ain’t getting any) in front of Rachel but then they’re off to see Monica. The running Monica joke is that she is fat, a virgin, and has a boring boyfriend. Not the funniest plot line of the show.

The flip flop of the plot is that Joey is a success and has “Days of Our Lives” money but Chandler is a broke wannabe writer. So Joey is always giving Chandler money. The joke continues with Joey hiring Chandler as his assistant. It’s a sit-com. You know how this is going to go.

A big money Phoebe walks into the coffee shop with the gang already there, lights up a cigarette, fires someone over the phone, and establishes her bonafides as a cold-hearted big wig. Rachel walks in with Ross and surprises Monica. Turns out Rachel is a big “Days” fan so she loves Joey’s character. Of course Joey hits on her. Will there be alternate world romance?

Back to Phoebe in the apartment being a big-wig, Chandler is being a writer and Joey’s assistant, and Monica is riffing on Chandler and eating. Phoebe loses 13 million in the market and starts having a heart attack. Off to the hospital for some “Phoebe can’t stop working” jokes. Plus some “Ross isn’t getting any” jokes. Not the funniest material.

Of course Chandler isn’t having a good time being Joey’s assistant but then we get Joey showing Rachel around the “Days” and putting the moves on her. But she’s still married even if it is unhappily. More Joey is a bad boss jokes. He doesn’t like pulp in his orange juice. Always a go-to diva joke.

Next we get Ross and his “In the closet” wife, Carol. He wants to spice things up in the bedroom since he’s not getting any. She isn’t going for any of it until he mentions another woman for a threesome.

Hey! Chandler sold a story to Archie Comics! Ye-haw! I love any mention of comic books!

Joey tries to make up for being a bad boss and the Monica fat jokes still go on.

Back to the coffee shop with Monica and Rachel and Rachel goes on about Joey. A good “On a break joke” and we find out that Monica is a virgin but Rachel encourages her to bang her boyfriend. It’s always good advice to bang your boyfriend.

In the hospital and we get jokes about Phoebe smoking and not being able change her bad habits. Plus she gets fired and doesn’t know it because Ross doesn’t tell her. Hence the “Situation” in “Situation Comedy.”

This episode is moving fast and we see Rachel watching Joey on “Days.” She makes the decision to call Joey for a hookup.

Carol makes a threesome list for her and Ross. She’s got a lot of namers at the ready. Ross is a little stunned and horny. That describes a lot of life.

Back to the hospital and Phoebe is mean to everyone. She still doesn’t know she’s fired. Phoebe is one note in this episode.

I just took a little break to eat some dinner. There was no reason to tell you that but I like to inject the mundane everyday stuff into my writing. Now back to our show. It’s at the 25 minute mark with 19 minutes to go. Twice the length and twice the nostalgia!

Rachel is at Joey’s crazy apartment that he got when he first got the “Days” job but then had to give up when he got fired. In this reality he still has the job and the apartment. It’s filled with goofy decor. Will Rachel be seduced by it all?

Meanwhile Monica is trying to seduce her boring boyfriend. He’s going for it until he is called away on doctor business.

Double meanwhile Ross and Carol are about to have their threesome. It’s Susan (Carol’s wife from the regular continuity) who walks in. Ross is kinda left out.

Triple meanwhile as we get back to Monica and she’s having diner with Chandler. Monica lets Chandler know she was about to lose her virginity. She bonds with Chandler over not getting any. Now they’re attracted to each other. Will they do it or won’t they?

Joey continues his seduction as Rachel has second thoughts. They kiss but Rachel starts to throw up from drinking. That’s always a mood killer.

Chandler and Monica negotiate. It’s awkward but romantic. After all they are together in the regular show show they have to get together in this alternate reality. They do and are happy.

It’s the next morning and Joey and Rachel haven’t hooked up. They talk to each other like human beings and become friends.

We’re back at the hospital. Let’s see if Phoebe has learned a lesson. So far no, but it gives a chance for Ross and Joey to talk about Ross’s threesome. It didn’t go very well. Since Ross’s wife was gay in the real timeline neither woman in the threesome wanted anything to do with him. He made a nice sandwich though. I like a nice sandwich!

Chandler and Monica are giddy but then the subject of her boyfriend come up. Yeah, friction.

Rachel walks in on her husband with another woman.

Phoebe goes back to work and finds out she was fired. She doesn’t take it well. The teacher from “Breakfast Club” plays her boss. Nice! Phoebe has another heart attack at work. Tough episode for Phoebe. They’re really driving it home that she’s better off being her regular weirdo self.

Rachel shows up to the coffee shop angry at her cheating husband and vents at Ross. This is a funny scene. Rachel tells Ross that his wife is probably gay. Epiphany time.

Now for some resolution with Chandler and Monica. He tells Monica that she should be with him. Happily ever after just like the regular timeline.

We do get a final credits’ scene with Phoebe finally becoming a singer.

Since I always watch the old DVD extended cuts let’s see what was cut out for the HiDef version. The very first Chandler internet joke was cut. Hmmm… I liked that goofy intro scene. They cut the beginning of the Ross buying a dirty magazine scene as a woman looks at him with distain. A couple of random one line jokes in various scenes get cut. A moment of Joey and Chandler hugging gets cut. That was a funny bit. Phoebe making fun of Chandler’s hat gets the ax. That’s about it. Overall not too much got cut. No real scenes. It’s mostly one or two line jokes. I prefer them in there but that’s why I watch the low res DVD shows.

Right now I’d give the episode three out of five stars. That means it’s average for me. Let’s see what I rated it back in 2008 when I rated all the shows as I watched them back then. I gave it four stars back then. I bet I was in a more nostalgic mood. Sometimes my ratings change as I watch them now but usually by only one star. Either way it was a solid episode.

This week’s blog starts with a dream. I won’t bore you with some long and involved dream plot synopsis because I’ve always found those to be dull. While our own dreams may fascinate us other people’s dreams are usually less interesting. But indulge me for a moment as I set this up.

I had a dream the other night that I only remember a small piece of. I was working somewhere unknown to me and as I was leaving for the day I picked up the mail. In that mail was a bunch of marketing art that I made for a comic I did way back in the late 1980s right after I graduated from art school.

The part about that comic existing is real. I did attempt to self publish a comic book in 1989 or so. Unfortunately the black and white indie comic book boom was about over by then and I didn’t get enough orders to go to press. That and I didn’t really know what I was doing. It was before I started working in the Marvel Comics’ bullpen so my knowledge of publishing comics was limited. But I tried anyway. I didn’t have anything else to do at the time so why not try?

Most young artists have a hard time looking at and examining their own work. We have too much insecurity about our work, are still learning, and most young artists’ work really isn’t good enough. Some older artists still even have insecurity about their own work. It’s normal. This insecurity usually manifests itself in cringing as you look at your old work. All you can see are the flaws and not the strengths.

This inability to examine your own work is something an artist has to get over if they want to grow. You have to be able to see your own strengths as well as your own weaknesses. It’s best to lean into your strengths and work on getting better in your weak areas and this takes time, practice, and self examination.

It probably took me until my late 20s to be able to look back at my own work without cringing. When I finally could it helped me get better. I could examine the stuff my younger self made and appreciate what I did well without getting emotionally overwhelmed by the stuff I didn’t do well. It was a big step.

I once was talking to writer and editor Louise Simonson and she hit the nail on the head when she described that feeling as “You have to give that young person a break.” That’s exactly what you have to do. Give your younger self a break because he or she was doing their best. They weren’t perfect and they weren’t as skilled as you wanted them to be but there is no reason to only see the bad in their work.

That brings us back to the dream. It hit me pretty hard when I woke up. I didn’t understand why I dreamt it. In the dream as I was handed the package of old work I was hit with a wave of sadness and nostalgia. That wave carried over into my mood as I woke up. Why was I feeling sad because of a dream?

As I wrote before, it wasn’t until my late 20s that I learned to give my younger self a break but I don’t think learning that happened all at once. I think it was a continual process. It’s not like I look at all the work I did in my youth every day. I don’t think I look at it much at all. But when I do my brain has to process it and give that young guy a break.

When I look back at my days working at Marvel Comics I often look back with nostalgia and think about fond memories but I also have to deal with the fact that overall it was also a failure. At least it was in the context of having any kind of career making comic books. I worked for fifteen years at the biggest comic book company in the country and never got to make any of my own comics there. That’s pretty sucky but I’ve dealt with it. It’s not like my taste in making or reading comic books fit in with Marvel’s anyway. That’s just one of the rationalizations I’ve got.

What I think that dream brought up was that I never dealt with the failure of my first attempt at self publishing a comic book. That’s why seeing it in a dream made me emotional. As I write this I’m not even sure exactly when I made the comic. I think in early 1989. I graduated from art school in December of 1988 and first freelanced in the Marvel Bullpen in late November of 1989. I’m pretty sure the comic I tried to publish came between those dates.

Once I started working at Marvel I was busy not only with my days in the Bullpen but also with learning as much as I could about making comics. Also I was drawing as much as I could. I put the failure of that attempt at self publishing right out of my mind. I was in my early 20s and didn’t learn to give my younger self a break yet so I didn’t think about it. I buried it.

I think I drew two full issues of my almost self published comic before I abandoned it. I tucked it away in drawer and it has sat there unlooked at ever since. I know exactly where it is but I don’t think I’ve looked at it since 1989. I may have glanced at it quickly sometime in the early 1990s before quickly burying it again but I’m not even sure I did. I couldn’t give that young guy a break. After all I was still almost that same young guy.

I think I’m going to have to unbury those pages. That’s what the dream was motivating me to do. The pages are still haunting some far in the back part of my mind and they want out. I haven’t quite found the time to pull them out just yet but I think I will soon. I have very little memory of them so now I want to see them. I doubt they’ll hold any secret insight into myself but they still might be fun to look at. What’s another failure anyway?