Radiant Comics

Have you ever done something the wrong way, which you knew was a mistake, but you didn’t have the energy to do it the correct way? I have. At least it was just a drawing and not life.

As I wrote last week I’ve been working on a series of illustrations to go along with the book “The Great Gatsby.” I’ve been doing a lot of different stuff from sketches to cartoons to finished digitally colored illustrations. Even though I’ve got a lot of stuff done I’m still working out what the characters look to me.

“The Great Gatsby” was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the early 1920s and it takes place in the summer of 1922. That was a long time ago. Clearly I wasn’t alive back then and so if I want things to look like they belong in that time period, and I do, then I have to do some research. Research is not nearly as interesting as drawing. At least most of the time.

I’ve always been one for drawing specific clothes. A lot of cartoonists, especially superhero cartoonists, are great at drawing super hero costumes but when they put the heroes in their civilian clothes they drawings aren’t as good. That’s because they often draw generic clothing. Or more accurately the artist’s idea of what regular clothing looks like.

In the 1990s whenever I had to draw a character in regular clothing I would find a specific outfit to draw. I used to have binders full of pages torn out from fashion magazines. I broke them down into categories so if I had to find a fancy dress for a woman I’d go to that section. I even had a section for accessories. It was a system that worked for me.

Now that we have such things as Google Images my binders full of fashions are a thing of the past. But so is my filling system. A search engine is great for finding stuff but it finds everything. My binders were full of stuff that I liked. That’s a big difference. It’s easier to find “Stuff” now but the stuff I may like is buried under a mountain of other stuff. It takes work to find the right reference on the web.

So far the hardest part of the Gatsby illustrations have been the men. Gatsby in particular. My drawing is fanciful in general. With women’s fashion there is a lot of room for fancy. I can take a basic woman’s outfit, add a lot of artistic flair to it, and it will still look good. Even if it doesn’t look as “real” as it could we generally accept more fun in an artistic representation of women’s clothes.

Men’s fashion is much more strict. Especially rich men’s fashion. Rich men wear suits. That’s about it. If you’re a rich man and you want to express yourself through fashion you not only wear a suit; you wear an expensive suit. I knew I had to draw an expensive suit for Gatsby but I didn’t have the energy to research one.

I have a couple of different ways to draw a figure. One is that I make up figure out of my head and the other is a referenced figure. For the referenced ones I usually use a photo or a 3D art modeling app. For the Gatsby figure the 3D app didn’t have a good suit so I decided to go with a photo. Since I needed a specific angle that I was unlikely to find with an Image Search I decided to take the photo myself with me as a model.

This is where the “I knew I was doing it wrong part comes in.” I don’t have any high end 1920’s suits. I have a 21st century crappy sports coat, a crappy collared shirt, and a crappy waistcoat (vest). They don’t even match each other. I knew Gatsby would never wear anything like that but I moved forward anyway because I knew I needed to get something done even if I didn’t get it right.

Mind you the whole time I’m doing the drawing it’s nagging at me that I’m not getting it right but I’m still doing it because maybe I can get it right later. That’s not a recipe for being happy with your own work.

Now we cut in time to one of my weekly YouTube videos. Each week I make a video showing off the comics I bought that week and some of my art. That week I choose to show that Gatsby in a suit drawing that I wasn’t happy with. One of my viewers (Mind the Comics) is a fan of fashion and has a pet peeve when comic book artists don’t draw the suits correctly. I knew this as I showed my wrong suit yet still showed it.

Luckily for me Mind the Comics decided to help me out. He pointed out seven things that were done incorrectly in my drawing and told me what the fashion should look like. This got me started in my research and I was able to fix the drawing to a point where it was almost correct. Except for the collar. I didn’t think I got the shirt collar correct. The next week I showed that one and Mind the Comics hooked me up with some collar reference.

The Gatsby drawing that I was working on is going to be used on the cover so it has to be 100% right. Since it’s the main image I don’t want to look at it and have me bother me as it was doing. I’ve got the suit to a point where I like it but it still isn’t there yet. I have to change the pose slightly. I have Gatsby posed with his hands on his hips and I think that’s what’s wrong. It’s mentioned a couple of times in the book that Gatsby is standing with his hands in his suit pockets so I’m going to switch it to that. I might have to take another photo. We’ll see.

That’s where I am. I’m still not there but I’m much closer than where I was. Even though I knew the drawing I was doing wasn’t right I still had to do it. Often making bad drawings is part of the process of making good ones.

I’ve been working on some of my Great Gatsby drawings this week. That’s a project I started this year to do some illustrations for the book “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The book entered the public domain a couple of years ago and I noticed a few people putting out illustrated versions of it. As I’ve been really into that book and the history around it for the last few years I checked out a few of the illustrated versions. They inspired me to do my own drawings of the book.

One thing I’ve discovered about myself over the years is that I’m not a good illustrator. I’m much better at being an artist. What’s the difference you ask? An illustrator has to be able to work from someone else’s vision. A Gatsby illustration has to do with the ideas in the Gatsby book. That’s the whole point. An artist has to work with his or her own vision. When making art I decide for myself what I want to make art about and I don’t have to conform to anyone else’s idea of what it should be. I’m good at that.

When I do an illustration I have to construct the picture in a way that I usually don’t have to. I have to figure out what parts of the book should be in the picture, figure out what they look like, organize them in a literal way, and put the whole thing together in a realistic space. If Fitzgerald wrote a scene with three people in a big house lounging around in fashionable clothes then that’s what I have to draw. The problem is that I find that whole process a bit boring. As a consequence my illustrations tend to be a bit boring. Or at least I find them dull.

As I started I really was in a weird place about my Gatsby project. What was I going to do? How could I even get it going? I ended up starting by giving myself a year to figure it all out. Once I had a long time frame I bought new sketchbook to work out some ideas in. It’s a small 5×7 inch sketchbook by Zen Art Supplies. It gets the job done. I also decided to draw in it with a Wolff’s Carbon 6B pencil. That’s a soft dark pencil that’s hard to erase. It’s almost like drawing with ink. I like drawing in ink because not being able to erase frees my mind from trying to make sketches perfect. There is no need for them to be perfect.

I just started making small sketches in the sketchbook. The first thing I did was to try and figure out what the characters should look like. There are five main characters that I had to figure out; two women and three men. Two months later and I still don’t have them all down but I have three out of five. I’ve got time.

I also drew some thumbnail drawings of various scenes. They weren’t always literal scenes from the book but sometimes little pieces of scenes. Whatever came into my head I would get down on paper even if it wasn’t as Gatsby-ish as possible.

All of that ended up getting me nowhere at first. It all seemed to be leaning in a literal direction that I was unhappy with. Then I had a bit of an epiphany. I could do this however I wanted to. I could do this in ways that I do my other art. That’s when I decided to do one of my “Drawings on Comic Books” with one of the Gatsby characters.

My “Drawings on Comic Books” are when I tear a page out of an old comic book (a battered one that my local comic shape gave to me because they are in such bad condition that they’re worthless) and draw a face on it with black marker and white pastel. I’ve been doing these for years and I thought the style would look cool. Comic books weren’t around in 1924 when “The Great Gatsby” came out and is a bit anachronistic but I decided not to care about that.

I found it a lot more interesting trying to figure out what the characters look like as I was drawing on a comic book that when I was drawing on regular paper. That’s because I was making art rather than just trying to figure something out.

The next step in the process had to do with my normal way of making art. I look through the many thumbnail drawings in one of my inkbooks (a sketchbook drawn in ink) and find a picture that I like. As I was doing this I ran across a couple of thumbnails that I though would work well for Gatsby. I wasn’t even looking for that purpose but they jumped out at me. One was for a party scene and the other for a portrait of Jordan Baker. Those two pieces weren’t literal at all and got me drawing.

Another thing I worked on was to mix my recent color ink style with some Gatsby drawings. I took a couple of working portrait drawings of the characters and tried drawing them with multiple color inks. I’m not sure how successful they were but I still like the process.

Figuring out how these characters look to me is one of the toughest part of this to me. So I decided to mix that with my 5×7 inch cartoon art card style. That’s where I draw a headshot of a character with a word balloon over his or her head and write something pithy for them to say. In this case I would draw the characters and then put a quote from the book in the word balloon. My Jordan, Daisy, and Tom are okay but I keep missing on Gatsby and Nick. That’s okay though. I’ll get them down sooner or later.

I got two color illustrations finished so far and they are two that I never expected to finish. There are two major symbols in “The Great Gatsby” and they are a green light at the end of a dock and a optometrist’s sign that has a giant pair of eyes on it. Illustrators can’t resist those symbols but they bored me as I thought I had nothing to add. Then, in an inkbook, I found a perfect sketch for the green light. It took a while to work it all out but I did.

With the eyes I realized I have drawn lots of “All Seeing Eyes” over the years and could easily leverage one of them for the sign. That and one of the sketches I had done in the Gatsby sketchbook would work well with the sign. So I put the things together and had a lone figure walking on the ash heap in front of the sign. Once again it took a while but I think it worked out.

So that is an update on my latest project. I’ve got this “The Great Gatsby” illustrated project under way. Maybe by the end of the year I can get it finished. Here is to hoping and doing!

I was having bicycle troubles this week. It’s the end of March 2022 as I write this but I bicycle all year round. That means I go out in the NY winter. I usually ride as long as it’s above 20ºF but I stay in and use the stationary bike if it’s snowing or icy out. I cycle five days a week and I’d guess that I couldn’t go outside half the time in January and February this year. We’ve had a lot of cold and ice. Not a ton of snow though.

Winter riding is tough on a bike. Especially on the tires. Riding on the salted roads that also have some winter debris on them can wear out the rubber faster than in summer. I often replace the tire tread after the winter. A bike tire is made up of two parts. A tube and a tread. The tread is the part the bike rides on and the tube goes inside the tread and is the part that inflates. If the tire goes flat it’s the tube that has lost air. The tread holds no air.

I ride a road bike. It’s what we used to call a “Ten Speed” except mine has twelve speeds. Most road bikes have more than ten speeds these days. That means the tires are skinny and don’t have much tread to them. So what happens when they wear out is that the rubber gets thinner and you get more flat tires. That’s when you know a tread has worn out. I can get a flat a week riding on worn thin treads. That’s bad.

I also patch my punctured tubes. If I get a flat tire I take out the punctured tube and put one that holds air in its place. Then I go and patch the punctured one. I patch a tube three to five times before I give up on it. Otherwise I’d have to buy a lot more tubes. It’s cheaper to buy a patch kit and the patches always hold. Another flat on the same tube is always in a new place.

I have a small bag that hangs under my bike seat that I keep a spare tube in. That way if I get a flat on the road I can switch out the tube and use the small hand pump that attaches to my bike frame to give it some air. I’m never sure if it’s better to walk home and change the tube or do it on the road. It usually depends on how far from home I am. My route is a big elipse so I’m never more than a half an hour walk from home. I usually decide on a flat by flat basis.

This week I got two flats. I was going to replace the tread soon but hadn’t bought one yet. The second flat was not on the road but at home. I discovered it as I was taking the bike out for a ride. Not a fun thing to find out but it usually only takes ten minutes to switch out the tube. Not that day though. Well, it did take ten minutes to switch out the tube but then I couldn’t get it to take air. I’d pump away and it would only fill to 30 PSI. I needed 90 PSI.

I thought the valve on the tube had somehow gone bad (they do that on occasion) so I decided to put in another tube. I was down to only three tubes. The one in the back tire (the front tire almost never goes flat so I don’t even count it), the one in the bag under the seat, and one more on the work bench.

The work bench one was the tube that wouldn’t take more than 30 PSI so I put in the under seat tube. Guess what? That one wouldn’t hold air. It somehow had a hole in it. So then I decided to go back to the original tube and hot patch it. That’s a way to make a quick patch that gets me back on the road. The patch worked but then that tire wouldn’t fill to over 30 PSI too.

Did I have two tube valves go bad? Maybe, but I was also beginning to suspect that my tire pump had broken somehow. I’ve never had that happen before but there is always a first time. I decided to try my smaller pump that attaches to my bike frame and sure enough I was able to put in enough air to go for a ride. All that tube work took me an hour so it was a late ride.

When I got home I tried to figure out what was wrong with the air pump. I figured that where it attaches to the tube there must be a valve that blocks the air from coming out of the tire as I pump. I bet that valve was broken. So as I pumped air in and it got to 30 PSI it would pump the air back out as soon as I tried to fill it any more. If I took my hands off the pump handle it would be forced back up. Looked like I need to buy a new pump.

I also needed a new tread and some new tubes. My three tubes all had at least three patches in them and I had no unpatched tubes. I went to the internet and ordered a set of five tubes and a pair of tire treads. I really only needed one tread but they had a good deal on two and I’ll use the spare sometime in the future. The front tire wears much more slowly than the back one so I wasn’t replacing that one yet.

I still didn’t order a new pump though because I wanted to consult my brother in law who is much more knowledgeable about mechanical stuff than I am. I’m pretty good with such stuff but he’s an expert.

Still, that night I was online looking at bike pumps. They don’t make the model I have anymore (it’s from 2009) so I was looking at other brands. That’s when I discovered that I could buy parts for my pump. I didn’t know it by looking but the connecter part, that I suspected had the valve in it, could be replaced. It was threaded on but it took me taking a wrench to the plastic (always tricky) to take it off.

In 2009 I payed $26 for the pump and new pumps are at least that much but the part was only $9. I decided to go for it. The treads and tubes came first so I put them on and pumped them up with the small hand pump. I only managed about 70 DPI with that but it was good enough for a ride.

The next day the pump part came and I put it on. It worked and I could get more air in the tire but the pressure gage didn’t work right. Plus it turns out that I need silicon grease. There is an O ring in the pump that needs to be greased. The grease in my pump turned to dust years ago and it can obviously work without it but not as well as it could with it. So now I’m going to have to get some of that stuff.

By the way the tubes, treads, and pump part cost me $100 all together. It’s good to be riding with a tire I can trust but you can see why I put off buying all that stuff. Who wants to spend a hundred bucks if they don’t have to? Not me. But then I had to.

Here is a bike pump update. I eventually did consult my brother in law about the pump and he was able to take it apart and locate the ball valve that is supposed to cut the air off after pumping. It had some dirt in it and wasn’t sealing correctly. Air was flowing through it when it shouldn’t have been. I cleaned it out and now the pump and air pressure gauge work again. Hurrah!

Using photo reference for drawing can be a tricky thing. I use it sometimes but not most of the time. When I do use it it’s not to make anything photorealistic. I’ve heard people use the word “Photorealistic” to refer to any painting or drawing that’s based on a photo but that’s a misuse of the word. Photorealism was coined to describe painters from the 1960s.

When you see a painting and ask yourself “Is that a photograph?” that’s what photorealism is. It’s when a painter makes a painting that could be mistaken for a photograph. They are using a camera’s “way of seeing” to make a painting. There are tells and techniques for this, such as painting a camera’s “depth of field,” but generally Photorealistic paintings are paintings that can fool you into thinking they’re photos.

A photo referenced piece of art uses a photograph as a starting point. The artist wants the drawing to look like it exists in the “real” world but no one will ever mistake it for a photograph. Photo referencing is an extension of what artists used to do with live models. It’s just more convenient.

Photo referencing is all about getting the lighting right. How a light source falls across a figure is one of the main ways to make something look “Real.” Having a photo freeze the shadows and highlights on place can be a big help in drawing them. Plus it freezes the folds in fabric so you can examine and emulate them. With something that’s photo referenced you pick you parts you like but not worry about the drawing looking like a photograph.

Another way to reference the human figure is to use a 3D program. This is a newer method and, though I started doing it about 15 years ago (it’s 2022 now), it has gotten easier and easier. I now have an app on my iPad that I use for it. It’s made for artists and you can pose a 3D figure model anyway you like and manipulate the camera angle all around it. It’s a pretty amazing tool.

I’m writing about this because I had two occasions this week to photo reference and 3D figure reference some drawings. I wanted to write down the process. The first one was for one of my Gatsby project drawings. I found a small drawing in one of my Inkbooks that I wanted to turn into a Gatsby drawing. It had a large Daisy head and the figures of Tom and Gatsby above the head.

The two figures in the sketch were fine straight on views but I knew I wanted a specific angle for the finished one. I wanted a worms eye view looking up at the two figures. I’m used to more straight on graphic design like figures in a composition like this so I decided to the only way to get the view I wanted was the 3D app. A photo would be too complicated and my imagination too fanciful.

I broke out my iPad and fired up the app. I recommend only using these 3D apps if you know the pose you want to draw. With the app you can move the figure around and bend every joint in the body. There is such endless variation that if I go into the app without a pose in mind I get lost in it. I move the figure around pointlessly and waste a lot of time.

It took me about fifteen minutes to get the pose I wanted. I don’t use the program enough to be able to fly through poses easily. After I got the pose I hit the buttons to add clothes to the figure. That’s easy enough. Then I took a screen shot of the pose, brought that screen shot into Procreate (another iPad app) and drew right over the 3D model to get my underdrawing.

After I do my digital drawing I like to draw on paper. That’s how I finish drawings best. So I took the two digital figures, printed them out in blue line on drawing paper and drew them again. Then I scanned those drawing in, used Photoshop to put them in a composition with all the other parts of the drawing, and them printed the whole drawing out in blue line to be inked. Then I inked it. That’s the finished drawing and that’s the process from sketch to digital model to finished ink drawing.

I started on the photo referenced drawing only this morning. Once again it’s for my Gatsby project. I can up with an idea for the cover of the book and had been drawing various parts of it. Four different hands holding wine glasses and a balloon with an eye on it. I also had a sketch of a figure for Gatsby but I was unsure of how I wanted to move forward with it or not. To reference or not to reference?

I started by using the 3D figure app and made a drawing of a 3D figure but I didn’t like it. That way looked like a dead end. Then right before bed I got an idea for a better pose and made a quick sketch of it so I wouldn’t forget. When I woke up in the morning I realized I needed the details of the suit the figure was wearing so a 3D model wouldn’t work.

I have only myself for a model so I put on a coat, collared shirt, waist coat, and tie and pulled out my iPad to take photos. I ended up having to stand on a stool to get the angle I wanted. I originally wanted the figure to have his arms raised but I ran into a problem. My bad suit doesn’t look good with the arms raised. It’s not picturesque at all. So I messed around some more until I finally got a pose I liked.

That’s where I’ve left that one for now. I’ve got my photo so I now I have to do a digital drawing. I’m just a little burnt out at the moment. I’ll get to it later.

Let me tell you about my work habits. My work habits when I’m making art on my own that is. When I’m working a job for someone else my work habits are the same as everyone else’s. You pay me to come in and do the job so that’s what I do. When I’m on my own and have to set my own hours and motivate myself to gets things done it’s all different. But I am good at motivating myself to make art so I’ve got that in my corner.

I’m a morning person so I get up early. If I’m in my home studio for the day I’m usually at the drawing board and ready to go at 8AM. I usually like to know what I’m doing for the day (drawing, painting, digital work, or whatever) the day before I do it. As I end one day I often decide what I’m going to do the next day. It doesn’t always work out that way since some mornings I don’t feel like starting anything big. That’s why I usually have small things around that I can work on at any time. If I can’t motivate myself to get anything big done then I go small. It helps to have patience with yourself.

I have exercise built into my routine too. Five days a week I stop work at 9AM to go for a bike ride. That takes about 40 minutes and I’m back at it around 10AM. I like to ride early when I have some energy. I’ve tried riding in the afternoon and it was so much harder. Besides me having less energy in the afternoon I would waste energy during the day thinking about how I’d have to get a ride later. 9AM comes so quickly that I have no time to think about it.

I also do some push-ups and deep knee bends a few times a week. Usually around 4PM but sometimes when I’m on a roll and don’t want to stop I’ll do them later. Between 6-9PM. I’m less scheduled with these exercises than with my bike rides.

I stop for lunch at noon and for diner at five. I can spend anywhere from half an hour to an hour for my meal breaks. It all depends if I want to get back to it or not. At a such break at a paying job no one ever wants to get back to it. But working on my own stuff is different. I’m more motivated to get back to work,

Being a morning person I often get tired in the afternoon. Starting sometime from 2-3PM I can run out of energy for a while. I find it best to take it slow in the afternoon and not push myself too much. I take more breaks in the afternoon but eventually I’ll get a second wind.

I’m generally a fast paced person and since I exercise I have pretty good stamina. But I’m 30 years past 25 and don’t have the stamina I had in my 20s. I was never a “Burn the midnight oil” kind of artist but back in the day I wouldn’t stop work until 9PM. I could go all day working on something. From 8AM until 9PM. Thirteen solid hours.

Now I have to pace myself differently. I’m still a fast paced person but a bit slower. I have to take more breaks that I used to. I almost never work until 9PM anymore. I stop at 8PM and even then from about 6-8PM I take it slow and just get little things done. I’m okay with leaving something until tomorrow.

Back in my 20s (and maybe into my 30s) I used to work myself too much at times. I’d forget to take breaks and time off. I’d be working for money X days a week and working for myself the rest of time. I sometimes wouldn’t have a day of for weeks. I’d work 12 hours a day every weekend and everyday I wasn’t in an office. I wanted to get my own stuff done and wouldn’t notice that I was wearing down.

One day after a few weeks of working a lot I’d get up in the morning and wouldn’t be able to do anything. I’d be so tired that getting up out of my chair was difficult. I’m good at being self-motivated so I’m often psyching myself up and thinking “Let’s get going” to myself. But on these days it was more like “Holy cow, I can’t move!” I’d maybe get one or two small things done throughout the day but mostly I’d sit and rest. I haven’t had one of those days in years but I did last Friday.

I still work a lot of days in a row but I pace myself differently. I don’t push it like I did in my youth. I used to push myself to get something done that same day if I could. Now I wait until tomorrow. I know getting it done today won’t do anything but make me tired.

It was last Thursday (March the 10th, 2022) that I got on a roll. It was a roll like I haven’t had in years. Everything was just going right. I was getting stuff done and the things I was doing were all flowing like water. There was no struggle. It was all as smooth as silk. So I didn’t want to stop and ended up working until 9PM. I usually don’t pay attention to “Being on a roll” as I know that persistence it better than inspiration but that day I was feeling good and didn’t want to stop. At 9PM I put everything down and was very satisfied.

I thought I’d pick it up in the morning but on Friday morning I couldn’t get out of my chair. I was tired. Too tired. I certainly didn’t feel like I was wearing down on Thursday but on Friday I was worn out. I could get nothing done. I ended up realizing that is was a lost day and that took me by surprise. I couldn’t remember that last time I was that exhausted and it really snuck up on me.

I got a couple of small things done that day but mostly I didn’t try. As self-motivated as I am if my body says no then I’m going to listen to it. I’m okay with pacing myself and taking it a little slower. I’m not 25 anymore.