Radiant Comics

I’m always coming up with ideas of things to do. It’s not easy but I like to. That’s because I like to do things. But if there is one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s that the rest of the world’s idea of “Doing something” is not the same as mine.

To nutshell it: what most of the world thinks of as doing something I think of as having someone else do something to entertain you. Going to a concert is not doing anything in my eyes. Playing a guitar yourself would be doing something. Going out for diner is not doing anything to me. Cooking a meal would be doing something. Going to see a movie would not be doing something. Making your own movie would. And on and on.

This has always been a problem for me. Whenever someone says, “Hey, do you want to do something?” they mean a totally different thing than I do. Usually people don’t like my idea of doing something because it takes effort. But to me the effort is what makes the doing. Let’s pay some money, sit there, and enjoy the fruits of somebody else’s effort has it’s place but not when I actually want to do something. Yeah, yeah, I’m misunderstood.

But anyway that leads me into my latest idea for doing something. I occasionally make art cards. I occasionally buy them too. An art card is a small baseball card sized original piece of art. A sketch, a drawing, a painting, or whatever your medium is you make art on a 2.5 x 3.5 inch piece of paper. It’s kind of neat and kind of fun.

What I want to do now is make a writing card. Instead of a piece of art it has a piece of writing on it. A sentence or two. Each card would be an original piece of writing as that would make each card distinct. An individual piece of writing art. This appeals to me because I’ve been writing short slogan-like pieces in conjunction with my artwork for years. I’ve always put words and pictures together. Writing an art card the slogan/sentence would be fun for me.

Except I’m not sure what form the writing card would take. I think it would be best if it was hand written by the writer but that immediately brings up questions of aesthetics. Should it be hand written neatly? Should one use calligraphy? Or maybe just nice script? All questions of design and soon I’m pretty far away from a writing card and back to an art card. So I’m a little stuck at this stage.

I think I’m going to have to try and design something for the cards. It might have to be something that looks undesigned so as to emphasize the writing. Unfortunately this is the hardest kind of design to do and not really a lot of fun. Fancy and elaborate is much more fun than stripped down and unobtrusive. That’s why there is so much bad fancy and elaborate design out there.

The writing is actually the easy part for me. I like the micro writing form of just a couple of sentences. I wonder though if other people have ever made writing art cards. I can picture writers dashing off a few interesting sentences here and there to make cards but what would those sentences be about? I ask that question because a lot art cards feature famous characters. Batman, Superman, Darth Vader, Spider-Man, The Hulk, and just about every other pop culture character is who collectors want art cards of.

Would writers make a writing art card about Batman? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think most writers can find something interesting to say in a few sentences but who could find something interesting to say about Luke Skywalker in two sentences? I’m not sure. And would fans care about a two sentence card about Superman?

I think fans of, say, Steven King would love a couple of sentence hand written card by him. He’s famous for his writing so that’s what people want from him. But writers of movies, comics, and TV are famous because of the characters they write. Their writing isn’t famous; the pop culture character they write about is. Would anyone care if the current X-Men writer wrote a few lines about the X-Men on an art card? I don’t know.

These thoughts have nothing to do with me making some writing art cards but they pop into my head. Anyway, I’m going to try and do something now.

I bought a new drawing board this week. I think it might be the only drawing board that I’ve ever purchased in my entire life. That’s quite odd when I think about it.

I’ve had two drawing boards that I’ve used for years and years. Decades and decades even. The first one is an actual board. It’s about twenty two by fourteen inches and is a scrap piece of one inch plywood that I first used as a drawing board in junior high. I finally retired it this year as it has gotten too chipped and splintered over the last thirty years to be very useful. A long life for a piece of scrap wood.

The second drawing board I’ve had since High School. My mother got it for me. At a garage sale I think. At twenty four by twenty inches it’s the bigger of the two and is still in use. It also came with a T-square and has slots underneath for storing the T-square. It always just got in the way and wasn’t a very good T-square so it was tossed long ago. I don’t think I own a T-square anymore since I’ve had a parallel rule on my drawing table since college. So much for T-squares.

I don’t use a drawing board much these days for drawing. I generally prefer to stand and draw and do so at my drawing table most of the time. I use the drawing board mainly as a place to put my laptop as I sit and type or surf the internet. Sometimes I’ll sit and draw but not too often. That’s probably why I haven’t gotten a new one in decades.

Over the years I have also had a couple of those ubiquitous art school twenty two by twenty six inch Masonite type drawing boards with the built in clips. I barely count those because I’ve never liked them and they don’t stick around for long. They are way too thin to be used on anything but a table and have too much bounce back if put on an easel or across the arms of a chair. That and the die cut handle and top clips always manages to get in the way. Since they’re cheap and every one semester art student has one there are plenty of them tucked away in closets and every so often someone gives me one.

My new drawing board is one of those white, super heavy, laminated, particle board drawing boards. It’s not very portable. But that’s okay because it will serve a totally different role than my old one. It’s a big twenty four by thirty six inches and is going to be used on my easel. Y’see, I’ve got it in my head to do some big drawings. I have big paper. I’ve always had big paper. I buy it in twenty two by thirty inch sheets but I’ve rarely done drawings that big. Usually I cut the paper down to a smaller size before drawing on it.

I’m not even exactly sure what I want to draw. I just know I want it to be big. I could have cleared off my drawing table and dropped a big piece of paper on that but it’s kind of hard to draw that way. An easel is definitely the way to go if you want to draw big. You can approach the drawing from better angles, literally, and see things a whole lot better.

When making one of my large paintings I’ve always drawn on the canvases which were on my easel so this really won’t be new for me but it will be different. An underdrawing for a painting is preliminary. This will be a finished drawing. At least I think so. I haven’t actually finished anything yet.

I’m may have to replace my easel one of these years because it’s not very convenient when I have to move a painting up or down. It’s an easel that I built myself right after I graduated college because I had no money for a store bought one. It has served me well since 1989 when I built it out of scrap wood. I designed it myself in a fit of inspiration and it is solid but a nice crank handle for moving a painting sitting on it up and down would be good.

This new heavy drawing will probably be more a pain to move up and down. The way I built the easel means that I have to loosen two wing nuts on the bottom beam that the painting sits on, move the beam and the painting up and then tighten the wing nuts. Not the most difficult thing in the world but not as easy as a crank handle that most professional store bought easels have. Turn the crank and the painting raises or lowers.

So there it is. My first new drawing board in a long time. Now I wonder when and what I’m going to draw.

Another year and another Halloween has passed us by. For the fifth year in a row I made my way into Manhattan for a photo journey around the Halloween parade. Me and a million other people.

I don’t actually go to the parade because Sixth Avenue, the parade route, is way too crowded to move around on let alone take pictures. My friend Bunche and I usually walk down Seventh Avenue to Christopher Street taking photos as we go. Then we set up on the cross street and get our own parade as everyone in costume walks by us to get to Sixth Avenue.

This year is was a washout photo-wise. It was pouring rain most of the time we were out which made photography especially difficult. Of course most Halloweens have been bad for me photographicly. On a nice night, which the last four Halloweens were, photography is difficult at best. I wasn’t really too disappointed that that I didn’t get to take many photos. Almost all of my Halloween parade photos have been awful and useless.

I’ve taken many street photos in Manhattan over the years. Most of them just sit on my hard drive but some of them I make into finished photos. More of them get used as reference material for drawings. But in looking back at four years of Halloween parade photos I realized I never once made anything out of any of them. I have not one finished photo that involves any of my Halloween pics.

It’s just a tough situation in which to take photos. Since it’s dark out and I’m on a crowded street I have two choices. Use a flash or hand hold and get blurs from long exposures. Neither is a great choice as my results show. I tend to like the blurry hand held photos better but I don’t need Halloween to take those. Halloween should be about taking interesting pictures of people in interesting costumes. Instead I get boring pictures. That’s life. Everything can’t be a critical success.

Aside from the photographic aspects of the trip I had a good time. I walked down Seventh Avenue with a few friends and we chatted and enjoyed the night. We were lucky that despite the rain it was an exceptionally warm night. It was in the high 50’s and at that time of year it could have easily have been in the low 40’s. That would have made for a miserable time. As it was I was quite warm despite being wet.

I was amazed at how crowded it was that night. It has gotten more crowded year by year but this year it was exceptional. Probably because Halloween fell on a Saturday night but I also think because of tourism. A lot of foreign languages can be heard in New York City on any given day but I hear more on Halloween than any other day. It could just be because everyone is on the streets that day but I think more and more people have been coming to New York from overseas just for Halloween. Lots of people like to play dress-up and Halloween in NYC affords them that opportunity.

The streets were so crowded that we couldn’t even make it to our usual spot. The parade was on Sixth Avenue but Seventh Avenue was so crowded that people filled up the sidewalks and we couldn’t get by onto the cross street. It was crazy crowded scene. Of course it didn’t matter because it was pouring rain and I couldn’t take picture anyway but, wow, that was a lot of people.

So there you go. Fun but no photos. Life is like that sometimes.

As I write this Halloween isn’t quite here yet. I’ve been working on my “Costume” today but it isn’t done. I put costume in quotes because I’m not dressing up like anyone or anything. I’m just dressing up.

It all started two years ago when I decided to buy a zoot suit for Halloween. A real one too and not one of these Halloween zoot suits. I wore it on my annual photo safari down in Manhattan but it really didn’t fit the bill. It looked too much like an actual suit. It wasn’t outrageous enough. It’s fairly well made and the color isn’t crazy. It’s a pleasant dark green. I almost went for the lime green one but thought that it screamed “Gag suit” too much.

So last year I decided to paint some designs on my zoot suit. I’ve painted coats before. It’s nothing new to me but it was a real pain to paint on the fabric this suit was made of. This stuff is thin and stretchy. Especially compared to denim or canvas which are the two coat fabrics I’m used to painting on. It took a while.

Coming up with a design wasn’t easy either. I ended up painting a large eye on the back, two small eyes on the front, a strange lightning bolt/swirl on one arm and an even stranger arm/eye combo on the other. I was happy with the paintings but the coat still didn’t pull together like I wanted it to. It was a disjointed series of images instead of a complete visual package.

The coat only came together when I added some decorative elements. I painted about a one inch purple trim around the hem, sleeves, and up the front buttons and also added some flames coming up from the bottom of the coat and the end of the sleeves. That’s what made it into something. After that it looked like I knew what I was doing.

It took me a better part of a week to paint the coat and I ran out of time and energy to do anything with the pants. I ended up wearing not the zoot suit pants but a pair of black pants that I decorated with rings of white tape running up from the ankles to the knee. It wasn’t quite what I wanted but it had to do.

Today I finally did what I wanted to do last year and painted the zoot suit pants. I painted the purple trim around the cuff and then flames coming up to almost the knee. It’s still drying so I haven’t tried it on but I’m happy with it and it should pull the outfit together a little bit more.

It’s still not quite complete though. I’d like to put a couple of large paintings of some kind on the front of the coat above the pockets but have no time to this year.

Instead I might look for some things to hang from it. I’ll get some safety pins and put them across the front of the suit and hang some things from them. Only I don’t know what. Ribbons, feathers, flowers, string, beads or whatever else I can find I guess.

Like I said the costume isn’t anyone or anything in particular so when people ask me who I am I didn’t have an answer for them. Boy does that make people uncomfortable so I started going with “I’m the all seeing Osiris” as my stock answer. It usually didn’t help much but it beat having no answer at all. It’s really more like how I’d dress everyday if I good. Ahhh, if only everyday were Halloween.

I’m a collector of photography books. Well, I have a few of them anyway. It’s not a very big collection. Especially compared to my comic book collection. They’re not all in one place but I would guess I have about twenty photography books. Occasionally I pull one down and look at it.

One I recently took down off the shelf, a book I haven’t looked at in years, I found especially interesting. It’s”Digital Diaries” by Natacha Merritt. This book was controversial when it first came out in 2000 because it deals with sex. It was accused of being pornography and I can see why but I got nothing against pornography. It’s no more evil than society at large.

“Digital Diaries” consists of Natacha Merritt taking pictures of herself in various stages of undress and also in various sexual acts. That’s why it was accused of being porn or alternately “a young woman exploring her sexuality” blah blah blah. You know the drill. If your offended by such stuff stay away from this book.

What I found most interesting about the book looking back at it all these years later is how it turned out to be such a fleeting work that will never be duplicated. Digital photography back in 2000 was hardly what it is now. I got my first digital camera back in November of 2000 and that was only a three megapixel model. The one Merritt was using wasn’t even that good.

It probably says somewhere in the book what camera she used by I don’t really care. It was a low resolution one far from what any professional would use then or today. The pictures are blocky and full of jpeg artifacts. They are nothing like what we are used to now and this book would never be published today. If you read reviews of the book on Amazon, or some such, lots of people laughed at the quality of the photos. And for good reason.

But it’s the quality of the photos that makes it interesting for me now. And it’s not really the quality of the photos but the quality of the digital camera they were made on. The period of time where this was the state of the digital art was brief and I doubt many books were published using the digital photography of that time. What serious photographer would chose a low res camera that produced images much worse than his film camera to make a book? Not many I guess and no other books that I know of.

All photo books printed these days that are made from digital photographs are indistinguishable from film photography books. That’s how far digital photography has come in such a short time. That’s why we’ll never see a book like this again. It’s a time capsule.

Sure there might be some photographers who choose to work with a low res camera just like there are those who like cheap or toy cameras but that’s a gimmick. Irony as a gimmick annoys me but that’s just an aside. And low res cameras won’t be easy to come by. There weren’t really that many of them. More likely a photographer will res-down his photo on the computer to get that low res effect. That’s what makes this book unique. The low res isn’t an effect. It’s a refection of the time. And most likely no one will publish a high end photo book of low resolution photos. That time has passed.

The photography in the book is actually pretty good. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I like it. A hot chick taking pictures of herself having sex yet trying to make something more out of it than dirty pictures is always an interesting subject. I’ll take it over horses, dogs, or barns but then again I like portrait photography best in general.

The low res quality of the images makes them look like that are from some other time and place. Not quite the world we know but no one is trying to fool us into thinking they’re from another time and place. They just are. They are from a brief moment when digital photography was a completely different beast than regular photography. Now the two are the same thing and we’ve forgotten they were ever so different. And as far as I can tell Natacha Merritt has pretty much been forgotten too. Freaky.