Radiant Comics

It’s been a while since I pulled out my gouache paints and made a painting with them but that’s just what I did this week. Gouache is a specific type of watercolor paint. It’s opaque watercolor instead of the normal transparent watercolor. I started using gouache a few years out of college and really liked it. I was never much of a watercolor fan but the ability to have either opaque or transparent watercolor got me into it.

I think it was my freshman year of college when someone gave me a book on painting techniques. It was a big book filled with all sorts of tips and how-to’s on all sorts of painting styles. If memory serves me there was only one small section on gouache but I always liked the look of the painting they showed as an example. Gouache was never mentioned in college as everyone used, oils, acrylics, or watercolors so it took until after school for me to give them a try.

I have two types of gouache: tube and pan. The tube ones come in a normal paint tube and the pan ones are the type that come in little open cakes that you wet the top of with drops of water. Most people are familiar with them as they are just like the watercolor sets that are made for kids and are everywhere. I have a 24 pan set made by Pelikan that I’ve always liked. It’s the same kind of set that I first bought when trying out gouache and it’s still a favorite. It’s not high end and not expensive but it’s good.

When I pulled out my gouache for the first time in years the pan set was ready to go. After all it’s hard paint that gets softened with water. But some of the tubes of gouache were dried out. Like I said, it’s been a while. I don’t think I’ve used gouache much since I picked up acrylics about five years ago.

Acrylics are also water based and made me change the way I store paint. I started mixing my acrylics in little plastic cubby containers. They hold about a liquid ounce and have an air tight lid. My acrylic paints stay moist in one of those for months and months. Now I mix my acrylics right in a cubby and dip my paintbrush in. Less waste and less mixing. Cubbies are quite handy.

I used to get my cubbies at either the local arts and crafts store or at Dick Blick on the internet. But for some reason both places stopped carrying them. I have no idea why. They are only about three or four dollars for a pack of ten cubbies so it’s not like they’re an expensive item but I couldn’t get them anymore. I looked around the internet a bit but every place that had them charged as much for shipping as the item. Somehow that turns me off.

I did have a few cubbies that I cleaned out to use again so I wasn’t completely out of them. One of the good things about gouache is that even though the tubes of paint were rock hard I could cut the tube open and re-wet the paint. Hence the need for cubbies. So I used up a few of my remaining cubbies on a few tubes of hardened gouache and made them liquid again.

Gouache is also not a medium where you need to lay down a ton of paint so I used to mix what I needed in a watercolor tray or palette. Now that acrylics have taught me the use of the air tight container I decided to mix my gouache that way too. I managed to find some slightly smaller and slightly more expensive containers at the local art store but I still like my old ones better. Either way I was ready to make a couple of small gouache paintings again.

I even harkened back to my high school art class when I started painting. Our art teacher used to have us try unusual ways to lay down paint like letting watercolor run over a piece of paper as water is poured on it. I never could quite make anything that way back in high school but now I find it’s an interesting way to make a toned ground to paint over. I took a big sheet of paper and used both wet-on-wet and dry-on-wet techniques to throw down various watercolor colors. There is random spontaneity to the end piece that I like.

I also took some smaller pieces of paper and made some stained color field paintings to use as a toned ground. Once again I was mixing wet-on-wet and dry-on-wet to make geometric drawings to paint over. Some are only vaguely geometric as color blurs into color but sometimes there are hard edges too. I know I’ve done a good one when I don’t even want to paint an image on top of it.

I still don’t get this “Paper stretching” thing that goes with watercolor. The problem with making a watercolor is that when paper gets wet it warps and you no longer have a flat surface to paint on. “Stretching” paper is when you soak it through, let it expand to its maximum, lay it down flat, secure it to a board with tape, and let it dry. After this process the paper supposedly won’t warp anymore. I’ve done this process and after I start to lay down watercolor the paper warps again. It’s real annoying. I’ve followed the step by step directions so why does the paper always warp again? I don’t know.

I’ve actually tried a couple of times before this to get some gouache painting done. Over the last five years I’ve probably tried three or four times to get something started but they were always false starts. Somehow things didn’t work. I didn’t want to repeat my old techniques and couldn’t fine any new ones. This new technique isn’t quite new but it’s a distillation of a few things. So far I’m happy with how it’s working out. We’ll see if that lasts.

It’s that time of year where it is always colder out than I think. Early March in New York. The high for the day is no longer 25º F but is more like 45º F. That’s a whole lot warmer and I’ll take it but 45º F out can get real cold real fast if you’re not prepared for it. Especially with no sun and a little wind. I went out for a walk the other day not in my full winter gear but in my early spring gear. A hat, medium coat, scarf, and light gloves. I was fine but then the sun dipped behind some clouds and the wind kicked up a little. I wasn’t suffering from hypothermia or anything but I wasn’t as warm as when I went walking in 20º F weather with full winter gear on. It’s tricky time of year for dressing. It’s easy to overdress or underdress.

The time I haven’t been cold at all has been on my bike ride. I’m still in full cold gear when I ride. It’s easy to misjudge the temperature for a bike ride and end up cold and uncomfortable. If I’m on a downhill and going ten miles per hour then the “Feels like” temperature drops ten degrees. Add some wind in and things can get cold rather quickly on a bike. That’s why I’m still bundled up. I’d rather sweat a little than freeze on my ride. On the couple of times that I was out riding and it got a little warm all I had to do was crack the zipper on my windbreaker about six inches. That let some cold air in and I was amazed at how fast it cooled me off.

I bought a new video game for my X-Box 360. It got good reviews, seemed pretty interesting, and was only eighteen bucks. It took me a couple of weeks to fire it up and give it a try. For the last year or so if I happen to get a new X-Box game, which isn’t often, the fear of being disappointed has stopped me from playing it right away.

The first part of that disappointment is that I can’t even play the video game on my old standard TV. I bought a game last summer which depended on reading type on screen but it was formated for hi-def TVs. The words were illegible on my TV. I could play 90% of the game just fine but that’s still annoying. I stopped playing the game because I couldn’t figure out what I had to do next. The type that told me couldn’t be read.

“Borderlands” was the game I bought this time. It was also disappointing. I knew I was in trouble when after a five minute intro I finally got to the screen where I had to pick which character I wanted and it took me another five minutes to choose one of the four because none of them interested me. Picking between four boringly typical video game characters is not my idea of a good time.

What really killed the game for me was the health packs. I’ve complained before about the video game cliche of health packs and I’ll complain again. Give me a health/armor system like “Halo” where you have regenerating armor or some such. If you take too many hits you die. If you are still alive and can crawl to safety your armor regenerates back to full strength. No searching for anything.

I hate the method where your character has a health meter that goes down as you take damage and doesn’t regenerate. Instead you have to search for health packs to regain your health. I don’t play video games to spend my tine searching for health packs. It’s annoying. I played “Borderlands” for about forty minutes before I turned it off. I spent about twenty of those minutes looking for health packs, money, and ammo.

You press the X button near objects and if any of those things are present you pick them up. So you end up walking around to every stupid piece of debris around pressing the X button over and over to see if it’s anything useful. Then some guy jumps out at you from nowhere and you have to kill him and search for more health packs. Oh, what a thrill. Eighteen bucks down the drain.

That’s another reason I want an iPad 2. For the video games. I’ve played a lot of good games on my iPod touch but the screen is too small for extended gaming. I’d rather play them on an iPad screen. Plus most games for the iPod/iPad are a dollar to five dollars. Paying a dollar to play a game that I give up on in a hour doesn’t have the level of disappointment that comes with paying eighteen dollars for a game that I don’t like. That’s why I completely stopped buying forty to sixty dollar games.

I bought some new blue ink this week. Though I have worked extensively with black India ink I haven’t used colored ink very much. I didn’t buy the blue ink for anything specific. I was just looking around the local arts and craft store for something new and it caught my eye. I haven’t even had a chance to try it out yet but it sure is a pretty blue.

I have tried out the new black ink that I bought about a month ago. I’m not even sure what the exact brand is because the bottle is all in Japanese. I bought it at jetpens.com where it is said to be “Manga Ink” which means that Japanese cartoonists use it. It’s nice stuff. It’s a very dense black that flows well. The only complaint I have about it it that sometimes the pigment goes on so thick that little pinpoints of pigment can gather on the surface of the paper and smear slightly. If it wasn’t for that slight problem this might be my all time favorite ink. I bought some white ink along with the black but I’ve never been able to find a good use for white ink. It’s sitting there barely touched.

And that’s the report from around these parts. Now I think I’ll go have a little read.

I’m asking myself that question again: “What is new that I can do with it?”. That’s the question I always ask myself before buying an expensive piece of new equipment. That is the question I’m asking myself right now about a new laptop.

I’m on my third desktop computer. I’ve replaced them every six years. So that’s 1996, 2002, and 2008. I can hardly believe that my desktop is two and a half years old already (I bought it in September 2008). I do most of my artwork and paying work on the desktop. It’s a workhorse. They all have been. It’s a Mac and a good machine. I’ve never had any real problems with any of my desktop computers. A solid record.

I bought the laptop back in February 2005 so it hit its sixth birthday a few weeks ago. I originally bought the laptop, once again a Mac, because I wanted to use it for writing. At that time I had written on and off over my lifetime but never with the consistency that I wanted. I believed that a laptop would make it easier for me to write. And it did.

Y’see my desktop is at standing height. I work standing almost all of the time except when I write I prefer to sit. The laptop sure has done it’s job because I have been writing consistently since I bought it. I sure wouldn’t want to be without one but besides a little web surfing writing it’s primary use.

It has had a secondary use over the years. The laptop has been to be an occasional backup to my desktop in case I can’t be near my desktop yet need to get some graphics work done. This has only happened a handful of times but it sure came in handy. As a freelancer I need to get things done or I don’t get paid and it’s my responsibility to get things done. It’s a bit slow for graphics work these days. It was a bit slow six years ago.

My laptop even broke last year. The VRAM on the logic board went bad. I didn’t have the money to buy a new one, nor did I want to, so I got a replacement logic board off of Ebay and fixed it myself. It cost me about $250. That beat the $1500 it would have cost to buy a new one and it gave me the thrill of fixing something myself. Always fun. But it was money spent just to keep going. It could do nothing new.

Being that it’s year six of my laptop I began saving some money for a new one. The problem is I’m not even sure if I want a new one. I should say I’m not sure if I want to drop the $1500 on a new one. That’s because when I ask myself, “What is new that I can do with it?” the answer is really, “Nothing”. The only reason I would want one is that it would make a much more capable emergency backup machine in case I can’t use my desktop. But like I said that has been a rare occasion when that happens so I’m not overly worried about it.

All that has lead me to think about pushing off my purchase of a new laptop and instead get an iPad 2. I think that is a more intriguing machine right now. I like the idea that a person can shot and edit video on the same machine and with your fingers. I don’t know why this interests me but it does. Plus I think it could be a very nice device for displaying my artwork. A digital portfolio. I’m not sure what use I have for a digital portfolio but it sounds like a good idea. I want to explore what level of interaction there could be with artwork. I think I can do things with it. I don’t know exactly what but I want to find out.

The iPad 2 is an expensive piece of equipment but it’s half the price of a new laptop. I’m the type of person who saves his money before buying something rather that paying it off little by little so it will take some time to save for a new laptop if I don’t buy it first and that thought gives me pause. But I will be no more productive with a new laptop than I am with the old one.

The iPad 2 would also take over the function of my iPod touch as a photo album. I bought a first generation iPod touch as soon as it came out because for years I had been wanting a portable digital photo album and it was just the thing. It served that function well for years but it really is a little small for viewing photos. I have no complaints about it but bigger would be better. I find it served the function I wanted it to in that I could pull it out during parties or gatherings and show an old photo but only one person at a time could really see it. That and I never really found myself looking through my photos on it.

I want to see how good it would be for looking at my “Fine Art” photo stuff. Not the finished product but the many raw photos that I take and turn a mere fraction of into finished photos. When my photos weren’t all digital I always enjoyed flipping through them physically and looking at them for the bits and pieces that I would use. I’ve found that my mind has never really worked the same way looking at photos on my desktop or laptop. I don’t know why but I have never liked any programs for browsing photos. There is nothing intuitive about them and I’m always thinking more about navigating the program than the photos. It’s distracting. I think that flipping through photos with my hands on an iPad 2 screen will be a better experience. How can it not be?

One more consideration is that my drafting chair just bit the dust this week. That is also influencing my decision. As I said, I usually work standing but sometimes I need a little rest as I work so I have a tall drafting chair that I sit in. The first one I had lasted me over fifteen years and this second one has bit the dust in about two years. It was made by the same company, Martin Universal Design, but the new one has been pretty crappy since day one. It’ll cost about $250-$300 to get a new one so maybe an iPad 2 and a new chair is a better buy than a new laptop. At least that’s been my thinking so far. We’ll see what happens when it comes to actually spending money.

Alas football season is over. My favorite team, the New York Giants, didn’t do as well as I hoped and they missed the playoffs entirely. It was a crushing defeat by the Philadelphia Eagles when the Giants had the game in hand that will be defining memory of this season. That is despite the Giants having a 10-6 season which is pretty good most years. The Giants missing the playoffs never makes for a good post season tournament for me but that’s true for every football fan who’s team doesn’t make the playoffs. With the Giants out I was hoping that The Packers would win being that they’re a team I like.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Packers because when I was a kid watching football, in the 1970s, the Giants were real bad. A terrible team. So were the Packers too. So when they played the Giants that meant the Giants might actually win a game. The Giants were competitive with so few teams that I looked forward to them playing the Packers. I’m not even sure how many times they played each other. I don’t think it was too often but I remember a couple of exciting games from the early 80s.

Another team that I have a soft spot for is the Minnesota Vikings. The Giants didn’t even make a playoff appearance until sometime in the early 80s. That’s when I was in High School. So all during grade school whenever the playoffs started I’d have to find a team to root for since the Giants never ever made it. For some reason I picked the Vikings. Probably because they were in the playoffs a lot in the 70’s and weren’t one of the teams I hated. Of course the Vikings never won a Super Bowl but I cheered for them in a bunch of them.

And speaking of teams I don’t like I was also glad that the Steelers didn’t win another Super Bowl. Once again because I was a Giants fan as a kid I dislike all the teams that were successful in the 1970s. I didn’t even dislike the teams because they were winning I disliked them because of all their little grade school fans that I had to put up with at school.

The 1970s were a time when if you had a good team they got on TV a lot. So the winning teams from the 70s: the Steelers, the Cowboys, the Raiders, and the Dolphins dominated the airwaves and as a consequence have a lot of fans who don’t live anywhere near those four cities but know the teams from TV. I don’t know what was different about the NFL TV rules in the 70’s but teams don’t dominate the airwaves like those four did anymore. Maybe it’s just because there are more teams and games on now but I’m not sure. Even the 49ers who won a lot of Super Bowls in the 80’s don’t have the number of fans that those other four teams do.

Anyway, from about the third to the fifth grade I remember going into school wearing a Giants shirt or some such and hearing from other kids that the Giants suck and they love the “Fill in name of one of those four teams here”. Even in the forth grade I knew those kids were fair weather fans. The kids who were really into football didn’t talk that way. It probably didn’t even happen that often but I still remember it. I never even argued with those kids because I knew it was pointless. But to this day I assume everyone who is a fan of one of those four teams and isn’t from any of those cities or whose father isn’t from one of those cites (sports allegiances get passed down) is a fair weather frontrunner fan. Thus I’m glad the Steelers disappointed all those fair weather fans. Sorry for the people from Pittsburgh though.

The first Sunday of the offseason was a little strange as it usually is. Even though I knew there wouldn’t be a football game on I was still, sort, of waiting around for one to start. Not in any sort of active way but occasionally a stray though would pass through my mind wondering how long until a game kicked off. That’s, in part, because of the playoffs. Those playoff games are not always at the usual Sunday times so you have to keep track of them if you want to watch them. I watched some of them. But not all of them. A couple were plain unwatchable. But still I knew when they would be on.

I fear that I’m not going to get to watch any football for a long time. The owners are threatening to lock out the players unless their demands are met. I think there is going to be a lockout and next season might get cancelled. The owners appear to me to be really greedy. Football is the most popular sport in the country with huge money deals everywhere and the billionaire owners are carrying on like they will be heading to the poor house soon. It’s crazy and a blatant grab for more money and power. I say that if you’re not making any money than sell your team. I’m sure some other billionaire will snap it up. I’m totally on the players’ side.

The only Super Bowl I didn’t see was the one after the 1987 year. That was when the players went on strike and after they did I went on strike from watching football. It wasn’t too hard since I was in college that fall and there were plenty of other things to do but it took until the following year for me to start watching games again. So I might miss two years of football if there’s a lock out. I hope those billionaire get their act together but I doubt they care one bit about my hopes.

I wish the video game “John Madden’s Football” was better than it is. I used to be able to pass some of the off season by playing some video game football but those days are long gone. Electronic Arts is the publisher of “Madden” and half a decade ago they bought the exclusive NFL license for making video games. No other game can use real NFL teams or players. Therefor no other publisher even bothers much with football games.

I haven’t enjoyed a “Madden” football game in a lot of years. Maybe it’s me but I don’t find them much fun. I would think that after twenty years of making football games they were have it perfected by now but that doesn’t seem to be the case to me. It’s still a best seller and a lot of people love the game but what little I’ve played of it has left me cold. Oh well.

For no reason at all I’m going to catch you up on my TV watching. Well, maybe the reason is escapist. I might be tired of writing about my own life and ideas so I’ll write about other people’s stuff. Or maybe my mind is just a bit jumbled up tonight and this is all I can think straight about. Maybe I can’t even think straight about TV? We’ll see. Onward and upward.

So what have I been watching these days? I’ve been watching some old shows and some new ones. Among the old ones is a favorite of mine called “Lovejoy Mysteries”. I first saw this show in the early 1990’s when they ran on the A&E channel and liked them from the very beginning. Back before the age of DVD releases and digital files I taped these off of the TV and used to run them a lot while I was working. Not that I was watching closely but I must have seen each of these episodes three or four times by the late 1990’s. This is the first time since then that I’ve sat down and watched them. They hold up well. I still like them. They’re smart, breezy, and interesting as they are filled with good writing, good acting and interesting characters. All except season one. That’s pretty dull. Start with season two if you want to like it.

I caught up on the first twelve episodes of “Supernatural” in December. I’m amazed at how they’re able to keep that show fresh year after year by introducing new threats to the boys. And it’s not always the “Escalate the threat to the world every season” solution that shows of this nature use and end up backing themselves into a corner with. Sometimes they threaten the world, sometimes just the characters, and sometimes both. This season the threat has been more personal and it’s working for me. Good show.

“Big Bang Theory” is still going strong too. This is another show that had a fairly weak first season but found itself season two. Now we are in season four and it’s a consistently good show. As they add more characters to the cast, almost all of whom are weirdos, the show has gotten even better. I’m a big fan of weirdos who are entertaining. I must say that this show has passed ahead of it’s former time slot partner on my list of favorites.

And that former time slot partner is “How I met Your Mother”. I still insist the lead character of this show is the least interesting of the characters but he’s okay. The show is in it’s sixth season and it seems a little stale to me these days. I still gets some laughs from it and maybe it’s just me but some of the shine is off the apple. Sometimes a person can just get tired of a show even though the quality of the show is still high. I think that may be happening to me with this one. But I still like it. I just don’t watch it right away like I used to. I usually catch up with it in a few days though.

“Community” is the new show full of zaniness that I have to watch right away these days. I always meant to check it out during its first season but never managed too. I checked out all of season one when it was released on DVD and I was hooked. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed season two this year too. It takes place on the campus of a community college and involves the hijinks of a group of people who form a study group. It’s a great way to bring together a cast of all different types of people not just a group of young college kids. One odd thing is that during Season One I found the blond “Hot Girl” to be a bit of a dud, hotness-wise, but in Season Two I’ve found her much more attractive. I don’t know what they did but she’s hotter. Keep it up.

“The Office” is another show I might be growing tired of. It still has its moments but it seems to be a bit lack luster. There’s been some good stuff in it and some pedestrian stuff. I think it once had more good stuff. Once again, it could just be me. I’ll continue to give it a look.

Another old show I’ve been watching is “The Rockford Files”. That show is a classic for a reason. Good characters, Angel is a favorite, good writing, and good acting. Jim Rockford is just a likable guy going about his business being a P.I. He’d rather run then fight you and he won’t fight fair if it gets him out of there alive. Unlike modern dramas every show has a beginning, middle, and end and I actually find that refreshing these days. It’s also one of the few shows set in L.A. with plots that have nothing to do with the movies business. The movie/TV industry loves itself and usually if a show is set in L.A. it’s about the movie/TV industry. This one is not and that’s refreshing.

The other old show I’ve been checking out is “Ellery Queen”. There was only one season of it back in 1975-76 and I last saw it as a child. Now it’s out on DVD. It’s a mystery show set in 1947 and Ellery Queen is a writer who’s father is a police big wig. Ellery helps his father solve murders. A realistic police procedural it’s not. Instead it’s an old fashioned mystery show where they gather all the suspects into a room at the end of the show and reveal the murderer. The viewer is supposed to guess who done it but I never do. It’s a little dry and old fashioned but that’s part of its charm. It’s also interesting to see the 1970’s version of the 1940’s. Not a show for everyone but I like it.

Two finals shows I’ve been checking out are kind of the same to me. “Bones” and “Castle”. They are both police procedurals with a little twist. In “Bones” it’s that she’s a forensic anthropologist teamed with an FBI agent and in “Castle” it’s that he’s a mystery writer teamed with a NYC detective. I have a fondness for police procedurals and these two scratch that itch. Neither show is what I’d call a classic but they’re both solid. They both have decent characters and witty writing. We get jokes, repartee, and drama. What more could you want from a TV show? What have you been watching?