Radiant Comics

I bought one of the new iPod Touches. The 16 gig model. I’ve been waiting for a device that I could use as a portable photo album and this is the first one that I thought could fit the bill. I’ve spent the last few years scanning, editing, and organizing all of my snap shots that were on film as well as my digital photos. I want to be able to find any picture in my archive at anytime. Even when I’m out. Sometimes an old picture can illustrate a point better than words but I’ve never been able to cary all my pictures with me. Now I can. Well, I still need some kind of carrying case for the iPod but that’s pretty minor. The thing is just too new for the dedicated cases to have come out yet.

Last month I finished the final edit of my photos so everything was ready to go. There were some bumps in the road though. iTunes is the software that’s made for working with the iPod and I’ve always thought it was pretty good. I’ve never had any real problems with it but all I ever used it for was to manage my music files. After all, that’s what it was programed to do. Now I have to manage photo and home movie files with it too. That makes things a little more complicated.

I already have all my photo files organized by date and event with the names of the people who appear in them as the file names. That was a lot of work but it allows me to easily search for someone or some place and is independent of any photo organization program. That was important to me because I don’t want my photo collection to be tied to any one program. No worries about updating a photo program or it becoming obsolete.

The Apple OS X operating system handles my organization method just fine and I’m sure Windows or Linux would too. It’s just named folders and files. Operating systems are made to organize that stuff. And with OS X the search function is really good and even displays thumbnails of the photos right in the search window. My system is fast and flexible and none of the photo viewing devises I’ve seen so far had the software to keep up with it. Every portable MP3 or video player is a photo viewer as an after thought. The iPod Touch isn’t so I went with it.

My first fear with the new iPod Touch was that I’d have to use iPhoto. I generally think Apple does a really good job with it’s software but I can’t stand iPhoto. It takes all my well organized folders and disorganizes them. It won’t even line them up by name (i.e date) as the OS does. I don’t want to have to reorganize everything. I shouldn’t have too either. But I didn’t have to use iPhoto because I found that iTunes will sync with my already organized folders. Hurrah, but with reservations.

iTunes and syncing. There’s another thing I can’t stand. That’s because every time you open the program it has to sync the things you indicate. That’s fine unless you want it to sync with thousands of things. That’s why I’ve always manually managed my music. It won’t let you manually manage photos. Ouch! So I start to sync my iPod with my photo collection, 4000 or so of them, and after a few minutes iTunes crashes. Then my G4 tower won’t recognize my new iPod. It won’t even reset it back to the factory settings. So I try my laptop. It recognizes the iPod and when I go to sync the photos it crashes iTunes. I rebot and the laptop still sees the iPod. Whew! I sync slowly a few folders at a time and all goes well. Except my desktop G4 tower still won’t recognize my new iPod Touch. Long story short it’s a bad USB2 port on the PCI card. Not Apple or the iPod’s fault and I need a new card. But that’s for another day because I had another free USB2 slot.

Once the pictures were on the iPod they were a joy to behold. I can hardly begin to describe how nice the iPod Touch is as a photo viewer. The screen is clear and crisp and the touch screen is a wonderful thing and really changes the way you look at pictures. You can pan, zoom, and change from vertical to horizontal effortlessly. When looking at a photo I’m constantly recomposing it and seeing new things in it. One picture becomes many pictures. It’s like having a built in “Ken Burn’s effect” for every picture in your collection. Worth the price of admission.

I wish the iPod had some sort of search function in conjunction with the photo viewer. I can’t actually search for anyone by name as I can on the computer and that would be helpful. But at least the photos all lined up perfectly in the folders named with the dates. That’s more than they do in iPhoto.

The video functionality on the iPod Touch is good too. But there were some pain in the ass organizational problems with the video. I’ll tell you about that next week. I’m a little too bleary eyed for it now.

I bought some pastels this week. I have never worked in pastels for more than a few minutes way back in art school. I not sure why I never worked in pastels. Maybe because they were never considered a very manly medium, maybe because they were never really taught at art school (where they were seen as a second rate medium), or maybe because the only ones I ever used were the cheap ones. Cheap pastels are like pieces of hard chalk. Half of the stick turns to dust and falls off of your paper as you grind away. They are really tough to work with. You can do something with cheap paint, cheap pencils, cheap brushes, or even cheap crayons. But cheap pastels are a frustrating nightmare. Sometimes I wonder why they exist.

I bought the pastels because I was inspired by a book that I saw in a catalogue. I didn’t actually get the book but the title was something about using pastels as intense color. There was a simplicity to the cover drawing that I liked. That little one inch high drawing made me think about pastels in a different way. Not that I had ever thought about them much at all.

The famous Impressionist Edgar Degas is the one who put pastels on the map. He’s the only famous artist I know who worked extensively in pastels. Everyone I knew who was into pastels (back in art school) was inspired by Degas. Pastels pretty much begin and end with ol’ Edgar. That little book cover made me see them differently. So I went out and got a cheap set of pastels. Ha! You’d think I’d know better.

By cheap I mean about twelve bucks for ten sticks or so. Some of the colors were okay but the red was like rubbing marble on the paper. I managed to get a couple of things done but it was a struggle. So I ordered an expensive set from the internet. By expensive I mean thirty bucks for fifteen sticks. The full retail is fifty bucks but I got them at a discount art supply web site. Fifty is a little too rich for my blood but thirty was alright. These pastels are softer and a lot more of the pigment sticks to the paper. I like them so far. I haven’t gotten to really delve into what I want to do with them yet but they’ve got me thinking.

Pastels are a lot messier than I thought they would be. Being an oil painter I’m used to messy stuff but pastels are different. A lot of pastel dust drops off as you are drawing and gets on stuff. It can get everywhere. An you can’t just brush it off because it’s supposed to stick to paper so it sticks to skin, clothing, and furniture pretty well. I find myself rinsing my hands quite a bit.

An interesting thing about pastel paper. Back at art school every pastel artist I knew (there were maybe four of them) was always looking for a good pastel paper that gripped the pigment and mad things easier. All kinds of paper were used including a special pastel paper that was akin to sandpaper. It was expensive stuff. I mention this because a few years later I was reading an article on Degas and it mentioned that he drew with his pastels on tracing paper. That cracked me up. All the time, effort , and money that went into finding great paper and everybody’s pastel hero used cheap old tracing paper. Still makes me giggle.

One final thing. The colors you get with pastels aren’t particularly “pastel”. Usually when you hear the word “pastel” it describes colors used by decorators or some such. It’s generally a light version of blue, pink, green, or whatever. The reference comes from the fact that in pastels the pigment is mixed with white clay, chalk, or something along those lines. So pastel colors all have a little white in them. But not nearly as much as in “pastel colors”. Just another small observation for ya.

Ideas can be ephemeral things. You hold one in your mind for a moment and then it’s vapor. Or it can hang out there. Inside your brain somewhere. Hiding just out of reach. The idea is not fully formed and you can’t quite see what it is but it taunts you with its presence. That’s what ideas have been doing to me lately. Teasing me with their almost-ness. Sneaky little buggers.

I’m usually not lacking in ideas. I’ve always said that good ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s good execution that’s priceless. Anyone can say, “Paint that chapel ceiling with some Bible scenes”. To actually do it take a little more work and a little more inspiration. Generally I’ve been prolific when it comes to making artwork. Good, bad, or indifferent I’ve made a lot of drawings, prints, and paintings. But sometimes the fields need to lie fallow and I forget that. I always want crops growing. I don’t remember the natural ebb and flow of things when I want water. I just notice that I’m thirsty. That there will be water in a month doesn’t help me now. Living in the moment isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. I mean, what if the moment sucks?

I’ve had some interesting notions come to me lately but they’re not quite fully formed yet. They’re there but they’re not there. Unshaped and elusive. It could have something to do with wanting to try new ways of making art. I’m a methodical artist and my methods are well established. So well established that they’ve been boring me a little lately. So I’ve been in search of new methods and materials. They’re pretty easy to find. Open up any catalogue of art supplies and there are tons of methods and materials that are different than the ones I’m use to. But the ideas to go with them are harder to come by.

Sure I could do exactly what any new method or material’s instructions say to do but that just gets me used to using something new. It’s not an idea that I can call my own. It’s someone else explaining how to carry out their idea. Their idea may have value to me or it may not. But either way it’s not my idea. I need to figure out ways to use the new material in a way that makes them my own. That’s a big task.

I’ve been thinking about some ideas for projects. Those are bigger than any individual work of art and take much more time and patience. I’ve been short on time and patience lately. Hence my frustration. I’ve got ideas for paper, for canvas, and for the screen. But they don’t all fit together as I wish they would. Maybe I wish they’d fit together because I can’t get any of them to work separately. Then again I might just be searching for a unified field theory of life and art. Either way every idea of mine is just a little unfocused. Just a hair’s breadth out of reach.

That and my lack of time due to a bunch of paying work lately. Of course that’s not a horrible thing but it leaves little time for thinking of ideas. And even less time for working them out. But that’s the nature of freelance work. I’ve just come off a period where I had not so much paying work and lots of time to work out ideas. I liked that. Except for the being broke part. That gets tiring after a while let me tell you.

Bigger and better. That’s my motto for coming up with ideas now. Nothing small. Nothing incremental. As big as the sky. Yep, I’m feeling optimistic so I can think big. That’s the way to make these elusive ideas show themselves. Make ’em so big that they can’t hide. I’ll give it a try. Rally Ho!

Here I am watching a documentary on parallel universes. Who doesn’t like like parallel universes? They are endless fun. Parallel universes have been the mainstays of science fiction, science fantasy, super hero, and every other type of fiction for fifty years now. There is the Star Trek evil universe where everyone has beards, the TV show Sliders, and the comic book “The Authority” with it’s “bleed ships” just to name a few.

What I find interesting is that when people think about and describe parallel universes they always go for drama. That seems to define parallel universes to us. This very documentary I have on mentioned Napoleon winning at Waterloo, Al Gore winning the 2000 election, Elvis being alive, and you (the viewer) never being born. I understand this need for drama because when telling a story, as all these books and movies are doing, drama is an important ingredient. Even in this documentary they are telling a story so they want some drama to illustrate their point. Drama keeps things interesting. That or comedy. There is usually plenty of comedy to be found in parallel universes.

It does strike me as mistaken that parallel universes are always described as dramatic. I have just the opposite idea. I think if there are such things as parallel universes and we could travel to them we’d be hard pressed to find one different than our own. I bet if we could travel to parallel universes we might not even be able to spot a difference.

In fiction and documentaries it always some dramatic event such as a war that makes a parallel universe. “Why?” I ask. Drama is no mechanism for creating parallel universes. That’s the thing about science, it’s all about finding mechanisms for how things work. The universe doesn’t care about human drama so why would it use it as a mechanism to create parallel universes? It doesn’t make sense to me.

Being that I’m not a scientist I don’t know what the mechanism for creating parallel universes is but my best guess would be something we call “free will”. I’ll illustrate that with an example. I used to work in Manhattan on Twenty Eighth Street and Park Avenue South. I’d come into the city through Port Authority Bus terminal on Fortieth Street and Eighth Avenue. I had no regular path between the two points. It took me about twenty to twenty five minutes to make the walk and I’d just follow the lights and cross streets and avenues when the opportunity arose.

According to my idea about parallel universes at each corner where I had a decision to make about whether to cross the street or not there needs to be parallel universes where in one I chose to cross and in the other I did not. This decision over which way to walk would probably have zero effect on the rest of my life. So now we have two parallel universes which are exactly the same except for the way I walked to work on a single day. Multiply that by every day and every person and you have a near infinite number of parallel universes. A near infinite number of them exactly the same.

So I say that anytime an act of free will happens where anyone has a choice to make has to be accounted for by a parallel universe. We make a lot of tiny insignificant choices that have to be accounted for. Each parallel universe created by these mundane choices must be maddeningly similar to the ones next to it. If you could travel to a parallel universe you’d have a hard time finding a difference with this one. The odds of blindly traveling to a dramatically different parallel universe are probably pretty small. There would be a sameness to the infinity of it all.

So there you go. Maybe our consciousness wakes up in a different parallel universe every morning and we can’t even tell. Except that our keys aren’t where we left them last night. That is unless you have a key rack. Maybe I’ll put my keys on a random key rack peg every night and see if it’s still on the same one in the morning. There’s a project for ya!

I finally brought my anti-fatigue mats in form the great outdoors. It all starts with the fact that I work standing up. A habit I developed back in college in my painting classes. I find it less tiring and more productive than working while sitting down. Whenever I work sitting down I’m a lot more tired at the end of the day. I sit down when I want a rest from work. My drawing table is at standing height, my computer is at standing height, and of course my easel is at standing height. That’s how I roll.

Shoes are an important part of the standing equation. A good pair is essential. Sneakers are not up to the task. They may be fine for walking or playing sports but don’t offer they kind of support it takes to stand all day. My feet will hurt if I stand in in sneakers for a long time. I never wear sneakers except when exercising. Boots are good. A nice pair with a steel shank and you’re good to go. I have a fifteen year old pair of combat boots that are still up to the task. There are made from old fashioned hard leather which takes forever to break in but offers a lot of support. They are just about to fall apart so I’ll have to find a new pair. Usually I can be found in a pair of black Rockport “Northfields”. They are a bit pricey at a hundred bucks a pair and I have to put cushioned insoles in them but they are the only shoe I have found that are good for standing and fit me well. The extra wide size does it. I just bought a new pair.

Still age takes it’s toll. I stand on a hard tile floor and the last couple of years my legs have started to fatigue more than they used to. So last December I decided to look into getting some anti-fatigue mats. I looked around and purchased some fairly inexpensive ones from on line. They arrived in short order. They are the kind that fit together like puzzle pieces so I put them together and gave ’em a stand. Soft and squishy but firm. Nice. Then I started to notice a chemical smell. It was so strong that it filled the room. Soon a headache followed. That was enough of that.

I’m not a person who is “chemically sensitive” and can smell chemicals on every manufactured item so you can imagine just how much these mats were “off gassing”. I couldn’t take it. I put the mats out in the back yard and began using some piled up cardboard as a mat. That worked okay but wasn’t a long term solution. I figured that after a week or so outside with the cold winter wind blowing the stink off them the mats would be okay. Yet in late January they were still as stinky as ever. Oh, and California says the mats can give you cancer. There’s a nice label to read. But I still don’t know if they give the manufacturers or the users cancer. I do know that I don’t want to breath in any chemical fumes. Bad idea.

My brother in law came through with another mat for me that had no smell. I put it in front of my computer and it worked great. I’d drag it over to my easel when I painted. A bit of a pain but, what the heck, my knees thanked me. My drawing table has a piece of carpet in front of it that has served me well for many years as a mat so I was pretty well set up anti fatigue wise.

It was just recently I thought about bringing those stinky mats inside to give ’em another go. They’ve been mostly a toy for my three year old nephew whenever he was over. It’s fun to put the interlocking edges together and then pull them apart again. It makes lying down on blacktop easier too.

Eight months in the outside air did the trick. No more off gassing and no more headaches. The mats are in front of my easel and make for a nice standing platform. They even make doing push ups more comfortable. They collect dirt though. I think I’m going to get one of those small cordless hand vacuums to keep the mats clean. They’re good to pace on too. So many uses. But if you buy them just keep in mind it’ll be eight months before you can use them.