Radiant Comics

It’s important to get things done. That’s my lesson for today. It was really emphasized to me this week when I caught a cold (or maybe a sinus infection) because for a week I got nothing done. It’s much easier to power through a 9 to 5 job when I’m sick. Other people around the office can pick up the slack. But getting any of my own stuff done is nearly impossible. It’s not easy being self motivated on a normal day but on a sick day it’s tough as nails. Those comic strips I had to finish could wait. I wanted to sit and rest.

After getting nothing done for a week I was feeling better and was ready to get something done. It was just in time too because I had posted my last “Drifting and Dreaming” comic strip of 2019 and I had none ready for 2020. But I did have the raw materials ready for about twenty new strips from work I did on my commute into NYC.

From September to December I was commuting into the city two days a week. It’s a long commute that takes two hours from door to door and it’s made even longer by the train schedule not matching up with my work schedule. As a result I’ve learned to work on stuff while waiting for the train.

For my “Drifting and Dreaming” strip I need to make three of my art cards. I make two cartoon art cards and one regular art card. The cartoon art cards are the ones where I draw a face and have that character saying something in a word balloon above his or her head. That means I have to write them and draw them. Usually I draw them first and then write them but I changed the order around this time because of my commute.

I had to catch a 10:50 AM train into the city from a station that was a 20 minute drive away. I don’t want to be late so I always left at 10:20 AM. That gave me ten minutes at the train station so I’d bring my cards and spend that ten minutes writing things for my characters to say. After catching the train I’d spend as long as it took to write the remaining cards so by the time I got to Secaucus Junction to catch my connecting train into Penn Station I was ready to draw.

I could have caught a train into NYC right away but that meant I would be into work early. Rather than do that I chose to sit in Secaucus and draw for half an hour. It’s a pretty nice station. It’s bright and airy. I’d grab a bench and pull out my cartoon art cards. I could pencil ten heads in that half an hour but it took some doing. I had to concentrate and work fast. It was no picnic but I got it done.

The next day when I was back home I would take the cards written and drawn in pencil and ink in the lettering and ink the pencils. After that I would take my markers out and color them and then scan them in. After four weeks of that I had forty cards done. It was a lot of work but it was important to get it done. No one else would do it for me.

That’s not the end of making these comic strips. At that point they’re just cards and have to be made into strips. That’s done on the computer. I have to write the “Middle Story” for each of the strips which is the short two sentence story that runs underneath the cards. It’s not the longest story in the world but it doesn’t write itself. I have a master document with ten blank strips in it. One morning I took it upon myself to get it done and so I wrote ten “Middle Stories” and was ready to go. I copied pasted the now digital art cards into the strip template. Two cartoon art cards and one visual art card. Then I save it as a finished strip.

As I was finishing those strips I was also getting something else done. I was scanning in the negatives of old family photos taken by my mother. I’d put two 120 negatives in to the holder, put the holder into the scanner, and then use the scanning software to scan them it. It takes about ten minutes per scan so in that time I when I’d work on the comic strips.

Scanning isn’t hard at all but it’s tedious. It’s the same movements over and over again. First off I have the handle the negatives with gloves on. So I’d slip on a cotton glove, pull a negative from a sleeve, look at it to see which way was up, down, back, and front, put the first negative in the holder, do it again for the second negative, take the gloves off, put the holder into the scanner, call up the scanner software, preview the negatives, hit a couple of settings, start the scan. Then I’d go back to working on “Drifting and Dreaming.”

I finished ten of the comics over the course of the morning so in the afternoon I switched to scanning and making my altered art Magic the Gathering cards. For those I had to use frisket to mask out the card borders and expose on the art I was going to replace, use acetone (nail polish remover) to strip the ink from the art area of the card, prepare the ground with varnish, medium, and inkjet medium, print a new image on the card, put spray varnish over the new art, remove the frisket, scan the card in to post on eBay. I’ve got lots of multi-step process going on.

I kept this up for two days. I got twenty comic strips finished, made twelve altered art Magic the Gathering cards, and scanned in about sixty medium format negatives. That’s not too bad. I got stuff done. But it was equally important that I got a lot of stuff done before hand so that I could get this stuff done. That ain’t easy.

I am trying something new today. I’m going to watch a episode of “Friends” on my commute and write about it as I watch. Right now I’m sitting in Secaucus Junction train station and I have a while to wait for a train. I’ve spent plenty of time drawing in my ink book at this train station but I’ve never tried writing. We’ll see if that’s doable or not.

I’m going to be watching one of episodes from Netflix. I’ve already downloaded it when I was back home so I don’t need to be connected to anything to watch it. The episode is from season two and it’s episode three. “The One Where Heckles Dies.” I know from looking at my 2012 ratings that I gave it five out of five stars. That’s a rare rating for me especially in these early seasons. It’s the very first episode of the series that I gave five stars to so I’m looking forward to it.

 We start out with a good ensemble scene with the six friends. They set up the first plot of the show (there are usually three plot lines per episode in any given sitcom) as they tell us that Chandler broke up with a woman over what could be viewed as a triviality. It obviously wasn’t trivial to him. Joey is on Chandler’s side which leads us into a solid “Joey is not that smart” joke. I’ve heard complaints over the years that some of the humor in “Friends” hasn’t aged well because we’re not supposed to make fun of groups of people anymore but I’ve never heard anyone say that making fun of dumb people is wrong. I think that’s because no one likes to include themselves in that group.

The theme song sounds good on headphones. 

The next scene continues the Chandler bit until Mr. Heckles shows up to complain that the friends are walking too loud. I remember watching this show first run and being surprised that they killed off Heckles (we didn’t know the names of the episodes back then). He was a solid character and sitcoms just didn’t kill off characters very often. They still don’t. Now they’ve all doing Janice impressions. I always liked Janice. She may have had an annoying voice but she was fun. Joey’s impression brings down the house.

Mr. Heckles sudden death in the middle of an upstairs/downstairs foot stomping fight with the women still cracks me up. Now we head down to Mr Heckle’s apartment as they bring him out on a gurney. A very funny transition. Comedy and death are like chocolate and peanut butter. They go together in tasty way but you can upset your stomach if you eat too much of it.

Back up to the friends’ place and Phoebe is being her weird self and sensing Mr. Heckles. That’s when she’s at her funniest. Then she hits Ross right where she knows to get him. Phoebe says she doesn’t believe in evolution thus setting up the second plot of the show.

They’re at the living room coffee table a lot this episode. Just an observation.

Here comes Mr. Heckles attorney to let them know that he left all his stuff to Monica and Rachel (the noisy girls upstairs). They’re a bit surprised but are up for some inheritance. In the next scene they’re in Mr. Heckles messy apartment. All the stuff he left them is worthless but they go through it anyway. We get a call back to a scene that was cut out of an earlier episode as Joey stands in front of an old time TV magnifier that magnifies his crotch. I still love that gag.

Ross won’t let the Phoebe not believing in evolution thing go. He earnestly wants to convince her. She plays him perfectly. 

Chandler finds Heckles “Big book of grievances” and we’re back to the Chandler ending up old and alone plot. Rachel wants some tacky lamps that Monica will never go for (setting up plot number three). We’ve got a conflict coming up. And now it’s Heckles high school yearbook. This’ll wind Chandler up. Heckles was voted class clown and so was Chandler. The coincidences continue until Chandler is having a meltdown. 

New scene still in Heckles’ apartment and Chandler is inconsolable and he’s spent the whole night there. He’s been finding ways he and Heckles have behaved alike. Including breaking up with women for slight reasons. Heckles kept notes about it. I love the “Pronounces it suposably” joke with Joey later trying to figure out if that’s correct or not. This whole Joey and Chandler scene is top shelf. All good stuff from start to finish. 

Short and dramatic scene with Chandler on the phone. How will this pay off? It’s Janice!

Now we’re in Central Perk for the first time this episode. No one can believe he wants to start things up with her again. Nice suits on the boys. And Janice walks in. Pregnant. She’s also married but has a good sense of humor so she just had to show up when Chandler called. I like this bit a lot. Janice is very funny and likable in it. 

Now we’re back to the girls’ apartment and Rachel has her lamp. Monica really doesn’t like it. And here comes Ross one more time to try and convince Phoebe that evolution is real. She gets the better of him in a very funny way. Monica breaks the lamp! In comes Chandler all upset and with a “Crazy snake man” plan. They are hitting all three plots in this one scene. The girls are doing their best to buoy Chandler up.

Final scene in Heckle’s place. Monica wants Rachel to have another crazy lamp as a peace offering. And now Monica is in front of the TV magnifier. I never get tired of laughing at that gag. That’s why I’m okay with it appearing twice in another episode’s extended edition. Chandler gives a final poignant tip of the hat to Mr. Heckles.

The end credit scene is Chandler trying to and failing to act differently. And we’re out.

I just checked with the Uncut Friends Episodes webpage to see what was missing from theses Netflix cuts and there was a few lines in the beginning that were no big deal but also cut was a lot of the scene at the end where the girls were trying to buoy Chandler up. They were telling him some of the crazy reasons guys broke up when them and there was some funny stuff in there. I’m going to have to go watch that scene in my standard DVD copies.

For a final thought it was tough writing in the train station. It took a lot more concentration than I thought it would. It’s easier to draw in a train station. I don’t know if I’ll try to write there again

Back in 2010 when I got back into working with magic markers for the first time since the mid-1990s I started out by buying some cheap markers. I bought a variety of colors of Sharpie markers. I had fun with them but I was really interested in developing a finished art marker technique and the Sharpies weren’t versatile enough for that. I started looking at the various “Art markers” (lead by Copic markers) that had popped up since I stopped buying markers in the 1990s and I wanted to try some of them.

“Art markers” are fairly expensive. They run from about six to eight dollars a marker with the marker sets easily running into the hundreds of dollars. I was not anxious to drop a lot of money chasing a technique that I might never find. Then I was lucky enough to run across a clearance sale at Dick Blick’s website. They were selling ShinHan Touch markers (a competitor of Copic markers) for two dollars a piece. I decided to get some of those.

Working in color is a tricky thing. You either have to have a lot of colors to work with or know how to mix a lot of colors from the ones you do have. With makers you can’t mix colors very much. So I’d need a lot of colors. But since I still had not developed my marker technique yet I was reluctant to buy a lot of colors. Instead what I did was I bought a lot of one color. Blue. I think I bought them in at least two batches over the space of a couple of months but I ended up with 24 different blue markers.

I then spent some time working on what I consider a “Finished” marker technique. When I worked with markers in the 1990s it was all about sketching. I used markers as part of my process to eventually end up with a finished painting or drawing. But the marker part wasn’t a finished piece on its own. That’s what I was looking for. A marker piece that was finished on its own.

Eventually I found my technique. Having only blue markers helped me too. I didn’t have to worry about color and could concentrate on how I applied the marker to the paper. I figured out how to make a finished marker drawing and then went out and got even more markers. I eventually switched to Copic markers because they sell refills for them that makes them considerably cheaper.

The first thing I did and still do when I get a new marker or a new marker set is to swatch them. I get a piece of the same type of paper that I’ll be drawing on (Bristol board), draw small squares on the paper, draw in the square with a marker, and then write the marker name underneath the square. That way I don’t have to guess what a color will look like. If I grab a grass green marker then there is a swatch of the color right in front of me. I also write the date on the piece of paper with the swatches on it.

As I was contemplating coloring one of my faux comic book covers, “Beyond the Beyond,” I got the idea in my head to use my old ShinHan Touch blues for the large face in the front of the drawing. I hadn’t used them in years but I though they would work here. Plus it would give me something a little bit different to work with. I’m used to the Copic brush tips but the ShinHan markers had a bullet point. I felt like mixing it up.

The first thing I did was to dig out my old color swatches. They’re in a folder so they were easy to find. As I looked at the swatches I couldn’t help but notice that a few of them had faded to nothing. Almost all of the blues were as blue as ever but some of the colors had faded to nothing. Their swatch boxes were nearly empty. And they were all light blue/green colors. I even checked the markers themselves and thy no longer drew in any colors.

When you draw with marker and after a few years that drawing fades away that’s called a “Fugitive” color or pigment. It runs away. All markers used to be like that. Markers were all cheap and disposable writing tools that weren’t meant to had lang term art made out of them. In the 1990s they started to make archival black markers and eventually they started to make “Art markers” that weren’t supposed to fade after a few years. I guess ShinHan blue/green markers didn’t quite get that notice.

I was still in good shape with my ShinHan markers though. I had about 20 different blues to choose from. I don’t think I have that many of any one color in any of my other markers sets so It was fun to work with them all. I think I did a nice job with it. The variety of hues in the large face on the left is more that I usually have in my marker drawings so it stands out. As color theory goes usually blue/cool colors recede and red/hot colors move forward but I worked opposite of that here. I put the blue face ink front and then used hot reds and oranges on the figure behind him. Sometimes it’s good to do the opposite of what’s expected.

In the background I went with some neutral browns for the structures and kept the spiral sky lively with purples and violets. I even dropped some light green into the logo. Each layer has a distinct color pallete. It’s very well separated out which is rare for me. Usually I like to mix up the color of various layers to keep the eye moving. This drawing seems little more serene. Sometimes serene is what I need.

As an artist I’m not big on sitting around and waiting for inspiration. I believe you have to develop work habits that keep you making art even when you have no inspiration. You’ll get into whatever you are making as you work on it but if you never start you’ll never get into it. So just start drawing. But you also have to find ways to inspire yourself. I did that just the other day.

I post my art on Instagram. My handle is “ArtByOsborn. I don’t have many followers and I am not an influencer but still I persist. I usually post my street photos which I make specifically for Instagram or I look through some of my paintings and drawings that I have scanned into my computer and post one of them. With the street photos I look through the vast number of street photos I have taken over the years until I find one I want to work with. Then I use my iPad to crop, color correct, or maybe even add some special effects to it before I post the photo. That’s pretty straight forward.

For my artwork one of the folders I look through is my folder of raw scans. There are working drawings and finished pieces in there. I scroll through the folder until something catches my eye and I post it. But as I was scrolling through the last time I came across a series of drawings that I forgot about. They’re from back in the summer of 2015. They’re ink drawing but they were made in a way different than my usual ink drawings. Usually when I make an ink drawing I take the time to figure out the drawing in pencil first. Or sometimes, for smaller drawings, I do no pencil work and go right to ink to make a spontaneous ink drawing. These drawings were not done either of those usual ways.

First off these ink drawings were done of 6×9 inch paper. My usual ones are on 2.5×3.5, 5×7, 9×12, or 11×17 inch pieces of paper. I often do pencil drawings on the 6×9 inch paper (I cut 9×12 inch paper in half) but hardly ever ink drawings. That’s because I was making these ink drawings as if they were my pencil drawings.

When I make a pencil drawing I often look through my sketchbooks (that I draw ink) to find an image I want to work with. Then I blow up that image and print it out (in blue line) on a 6×9 inch piece of paper. After that I draw over the blue line sketch and make a more refined pencil drawing. In the case of these ink drawings I didn’t pencil anything and inked over the blue line sketch to make a refined ink drawing.

One of the things I like about working in ink is the immediacy. You make a line and it’s finished. There is no erasing or covering it up. It’s dark black on white paper. So I have to think about what I’m going to do but after I start putting lines down it can move quickly. I can make a lot of images with this method and as an artist I’m a huge fan of making images.

Oddly I had a hard time getting started. The first step was easy enough as I pulled out last year’s sketch book and found about eight little drawings that I liked. I printed them out in blue line only 6×9 inch pieces of paper and was ready to go. Then I couldn’t get started. I can generally concentrate well and not get distracted by stuff but that morning I was distracted for over an hour. Every time I tried to get going I couldn’t.

I wanted to see if I could get all eight drawings done in a single day but because of my slow start I couldn’t. Each drawing ended up taking at least an hour and so I ended up doing six of them that day. At about 7PM I wanted to get started and finish the last two but I stopped myself. I had been working on them since 8AM and it was already a long day. If I was to keep going I’d probably just mess them up.

I’m a morning person. I do my best thinking and get my best work done in the morning. I never work past 9PM and these days rarely ever work that late. A couple of Sundays ago I was working on one of my masked photos and I wasn’t yet done with it. It was about 8PM and I was feeling energetic so I decided to draw the mask then and there instead of waiting until the morning. It only took me about half an hour. The next day as I was working on the photo I was having a tough time finishing it. That turned out to be because the mask I drew was terrible. I redrew it and finished the photo. I shouldn’t have bothered trying to draw it the night before because it was really too late for me to start something. You have to know your strengths and weaknesses.

I had forgotten that these ink drawings were a good way to work up a lot of images. That was my inspiration. I thought to myself that I could get a lot of these done and then I could use them to make more stuff. I’ve wanted to do more of my large 22×30 inch ink drawings but haven’t gotten started on any of them in a while. I can use these smaller ones to work out the bigger ones.

So far I’ve done two female figures, one male figure, a couple of androgynous ones, and a monster. I keep flipping through them to see which one I want to make bigger and it might be a masked androgynous one or a monster. Or maybe I’ll keep going and make some more. I’ve got inspiration and habit going for me now.