Radiant Comics

I bought a new sketchbook this week. I like sketchbooks. They’re cool. I think I may even like sketchbooks better than I like drawing in sketchbooks. They’re nice just as objects. As a general rule I like to draw on single sheets of paper rather than in books because it’s easier to do but for some things a sketchbook is better. Or at least it’s worth the little bit more effort it takes to draw in a book rather than on a single sheet of paper.

The sketchbook I bought this week was a Moleskine. It’s a small 3.5 x 5.5 inch red hardcover sketchbook. Hardcover sketchbooks are not a favorite of mine to draw in but I like them as objects. Usually I have to hold them open as I use my left hand to keep them flat. That’s a bit of a pain. I decided to put up with that for this one because I haven’t drawn in a hardcover sketchbook in a long time and wanted to make an interesting little hand drawn book out of this one. I want a small, red, hardcover book full of drawings more than I actually want to draw in it but since I’m the one doing the drawing I guess it’s up to me.

I heard a character on a TV show refer to Moleskine notebooks as “Notebooks for people with more money than sense”. That makes me giggle every time I think of it. It’s a comment on the fact that Moleskine notebooks are a little overkill. They’re well built and expensive. The little sketchbook I just bought cost me twelve dollars but I like it. I don’t disagree with the TV character’s sentiment but I like a well made notebook or sketchbook.

My main sketchbook is one I’ve mentioned before. A basic Strathmore 5.5 x 8.5 inch spiral bound sketchbook. It’s the kind you can find in any art supply store or even drug stores and supermarkets. The spiral binding means that you can spin the pages under until you get a new sheet of paper and never have to hold the book open. That makes things more convenient and comfortable. I have a couple of sketchbooks of this variety. My main one is my ink-book in which I draw small spontaneous ink drawings. This is where I come up with most of my ideas. I also have one of these same sketchbooks that I occasionally do pencil drawings in. Most of my pencil drawings are done on sheets of paper so I don’t work in this book too often.

I have a third spiral sketchbook that I bought last year as a sort of concept book. It has some writing and sketches in it plus some photos that I printed out on sticker paper and stuck down. It was supposed to be a new way for me to work out ideas but I never quite figured out how to work in it. I haven’t given up on it yet but it’s disorganized and I have to find a way to use it better. I like the idea of writing, drawing, and photography all working together but so far I have no idea how to make them all play nice together. Definitely the most “Work in progress” of my sketchbooks.

My newest type spiral sketchbook is for my newest comic “Message Tee”. The spiral sketchbooks I’ve been using for years have the spirals along the long side of the book just like a spiral notebook from my school days. This new sketchbook has the spirals along the short side. The top of the book. This usually doesn’t make a difference to me but sometimes it does. I find it a little easier to draw character portraits with the spirals out of the way on the top of the page. It’s not make-or-break but since I was buying this sketchbook for the purpose of drawing “Message Tee” characters I figured I’d give one of these top spiral sketchbooks a try. So far I like it.

Another type of sketchbook that I have but haven’t used yet is a hardcover Moleskine 8 x 5 inch landscape watercolor sketchbook. It’s called a landscape sketchbook because it’s bound on the short side. It opens up flat much better than when bound on the long side so a lot of people draw all the way across both pages. You can draw a broad sixteen inch wide landscape in this book. It’s also made with watercolor paper rather than the usual drawing paper. I have yet to find a use for this sketchbook. I rarely do landscapes and don’t work in watercolor too much so the purpose this book is made for doesn’t overlap with my habits. But it’s such a cool book! I like it as an object. Someday I’ll find a good use for it. Until then I’ll just look at it.

I have a couple of other sketchbooks laying around but they are failures. One is a small 4×5 inch hardcover sketchbook that I got for free when I bought some other art supplies. It’s not bad but it never caught my fancy. It seems a little heavy and blocky to me. It opens up pretty flat for a small hardcover but I think the paper may be a little too smooth for my taste. It’s cover is travel themed with a map and random old photos. I like history and I like maps but somehow this doesn’t work for me. It looks dull and a little tacky. There are about three of four pages where I tried to draw something in it but never quite succeeded. For whatever reason this one has been sitting around for about two years now.

The last sketchbook I have is a sort of imitation Moleskine. It’s from about six years ago when I was looking for a new pocket notebook. That’s when I discovered Moleskine notebooks and I bought this one to go along with a few other notebooks and sketchbooks that I was sampling. Now that I look at it closely this one is probably a notebook and not a sketchbook. The paper is a little thinner and smoother than a sketchbook. It has a nice brown and tan cover but it feels a little too slippery. Not good in the hand. This one never caught on with me, has drawings only on the first two pages, and has been sitting on my shelf for years doing nothing.

In looking at this list I’ve noticed something. My biggest sketchbook is only about 5.5 x 8.5. I guess anything over that size and the convenience of having a bunch of drawings that are easy to find as they are in a single book is eclipsed by the inconvenience of having to draw on top of a one inch stack of paper that is bound at the edge. Interesting. I never noticed that before. I used to have bigger sketchbooks but not in years.

One final thought about sketchbooks pops into mind. I remember, years ago, reading an anecdote by, I think, Paul Chadwick (cartoonist of “Concrete”) about losing one of his sketchbooks. He drew in sketchbooks all the time always carrying one with him. That was until he was out one day and left his sketchbook behind. He went back to get it and it was gone. He lost all the work and ideas he had in there. From then on in he only used loose sheets of paper. He’d carry some of those with him if need be. That story makes me scan my sketchbook pages into my computer regularly. I’d hate to ever lose one but if I do at least I’ll have a copy and won’t lose all the ideas. Alas Paul Chadwick’s story is from a time before we all had scanners so they wouldn’t have helped him but it’s a cautionary tale for all of us.

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics, a sketchbook, plus two hard cover collections:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

”iZombie – Volume 1: Dead to the World” by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred

I’m a fan of Michael Allred’s work. I’ve bought many issues of “Madman” and “The Atomics” over the years plus various other things he’s written or drawn. That’s why I picked up this volume from Vertigo comics. Allred doesn’t write this one so I was a little apprehensive if I’d like it or not especially because I’m not usually fond of the comics that Vertigo publishes.

“iZombie” is the story of a girl who is a zombie. It pretty much tries to do what I expected it to. It tries to make being a zombie cool. She works as a grave digger by day and has to occasionally eat the brain of one of the people she buries in order to stop from getting all stupid and zombified. SO she’s pretty much a zombie who is not a zombie. Plus she’s a cute young woman. There’s a way to make a zombie cool. Make them smart, sweet, and pretty.

At the graveyard also lives another cute girl. This time she’s a ghost who has been dead since the 1950s and hangs out with the zombie chick. Their other friend is a were-terrier. He turns all shaggy during the full moon but otherwise is exactly the same as when he’s human. Plus there are vampires running around too. All this is unknown to the population at large and all the monsters like it that way. Most are really nice hipster monsters. There is also some ancient order of monster hunters trying to kill all the monsters.

I liked the artwork, of course, because Allred is really good but the story wasn’t up my alley. It wasn’t bad but I didn’t have much interest in it. It seemed to be aimed at the same crowd who likes all the other cool, hip, pretty monsters that have been saturating TV and the movies lately.

Another thing I didn’t like about the story was that they ran into some two thousand year old mummy character who explains the mythology of every monster. I’m a bit tired of such characters. I understand them because they provide answers to questions and can move the plot along but I’m a bit bored with that device. Once again it’s a taste issue more than a quality one.

Overall I’d have to say that “iZombie” just isn’t my cup of tea. It’s alright and I do like the Allred art but I don’t care about making zombies cool.

Sometime you just have to start. That’s my motto for this afternoon. I’ve had some sort of sinus/cold thing going on for the past week. Nothing too dramatic but it’s been slowing me down. It’s been okay getting the paying work done but being self motivated and getting my own work done has been a struggle. It always is when I’m not at my best. Heck, I don’t really have to be at my best to get things done. Maybe I should say, “At my average”. Being even a little sick definitely puts me below my average. But this afternoon I decided to stop trying to get my brain to decide what to do and just start doing something.

I always find it a little amazing how hard it is to decide what to work on. I think that stops a lot of people from ever even beginning any of their own creative endeavors. Everybody knows how and why to start paying endeavors. You start because the boss says to get it done and you’re doing it to earn a living. That’s easy. Why to start and make a painting, a drawing, knit a sweater, build a cabinet, or any other creative thing is a bit more tricky. I know a lot of people with an “If I’m not getting paid I don’t lift a finger” attitude towards life. I can understand that but that’s not me.

Often when I have no plan and can’t figure out what I want to next I draw. I pull out my sketch book, look for an idea that catches my eye, and work it into a more finished drawing. I can then use those more finished drawings for prints, paintings, or whatever else I decide to do. The drawing in and of itself is not the finished thing so that makes them easy to start and work on. There isn’t a lot of heavy lifting at this stage. It’s mostly a fun stage. The problem is that because of my sinuses that’s all I’ve been doing this week already. I haven’t had the strength for much else. Today I’m still not one hundred percent but I decided to get something going anyway. Luckily I had an unfinished painting hanging around.

I almost never have unfinished paintings hanging around. I’m a methodical artist. That means I’m method based. I come up with an idea and then I start with step one and move through all the other steps it takes to complete my vision. I leave room for improvisation, otherwise things can get dull, but overall I’ve got a plan. A method of doing things. Not every artist works that way, many are much more improvisational, but it suits me. As a result once I start a painting I usually finish it. Finishing is built into the method. But things don’t always go according to plan.

Sometimes things go astray. It’s usually the result of two things. One is when I’m just working by rote. When I’m going through the motions. I come up with an idea but it’s a pretty boring idea and I’ve got nothing else so I continue to execute the boring idea. Sometimes I don’t even realize how boring an idea it is until I struggle to get it done. Usually by half way through it’s obvious to me that the idea is dull and things aren’t going to work out. Mostly that’s before I get to the actual painting stage so it doesn’t result in many half finished paintings. Bad ideas usually reveal themselves as such before I’m at the “Committed to painting” stage.

The second way things go astray is when I lose sight of whatever vision I had of the work to begin with. I start with the idea, go through the steps, start the painting, but then the painting never quite comes together. The painting doesn’t match my original vision of it, often because my original vision wasn’t as strong as it should be, but the vision can also become blurred. It’s hard to match my original vision when I can’t see it anymore. It’s a frustrating problem.

This is also when a painting can become a real time-suck. It’s like being out for a drive and lost. You keep on driving and hope you’ll see something you recognize soon because it seems like the only option but you end up getting more lost and wasting more time. And it’s not like the painting is fundamentally bad and has to be abandoned it’s just directionless. And there is no end to the wandering in sight. Unlike driving a car there is no one to ask directions from.

The only thing I can do at that point is to make myself stop working on the painting and put it away. That’s hard to do because I want to finish it and make it work. I had just such a painting sitting around. I last worked on it about two months ago. I had a hard time putting it away because putting it away always feels like failure. It’s not failure because the key is to put it away long enough to forget whatever my original vision was and forget how much work I put into it.

That’s also what makes it hard to put the painting away. Knowing how much work I put into it. I worked on it for days and wanted to get it right but couldn’t. To put it away is to lose those days of work. But now, two months later, I don’t remember those days of work. They blur into the past and don’t mean anything to me. I’m free to obliterate whatever work I put into the ideas and the actual painting and just make it good. I don’t remember or care what my original idea was and now am free to follow whatever path works. That’s what putting it away does for me. But that takes time. I tried to pull it out after a month but couldn’t. I didn’t even want to face it.

It turns out today was the perfect day for working on it again. I not only wanted to get started on something but I wanted it to be something that I maybe could get finished sometime soon. Finishing something is also a way to get things going again. And here’s a good thing about these abandoned paintings of mine. I can often finish them, after they’ve been left for a while, fairly quickly. Usually there’s something good in them but they’re directionless. As long as I can find a new direction things go well. And a new direction is much easier to find after I’ve forgotten the old one.

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got eight new comics:
It was a “Try new things out” week for me

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

”Conan – Volume 10: Iron Shadows In the Moon” by Tim Truman and Tomas Giorello

Here we go with the eleventh volume of Dark Horse’s Conan series. There was a volume zero so that’s why volume ten is the eleventh in the series. At least they haven’t started adding point ones like a lot of the current Marvel books.

Since this is the eleventh book in this series that I’ve purchased I obviously like the series in general. The last two volumes were among my favorites of the whole series so there was bound to be a drop off at some time. This volume was kind of that drop off. Not that it was bad in any way but it wasn’t among my favorites. That’s the law of averages for you. I don’t blame it for not being a favorite. It probably has more to do with me.

“Iron Shadows” is a straight forward Conan adventure tale. He gets stranded on an island with a beautiful former princess. Of course the island isn’t safe. It is inhabited by men who were long ago cursed to be every full moon monsters plus a giant man-eating ape. A bunch of pirates who hate Conan also show up. Conan has to protect himself and the ex-princess from all that. There isn’t a whole lot more to the story but it does push forward the overall series story arc a bit too.

The artwork was good. Giorello has been drawing Conan for a while now and he has it down. His storytelling is good and he drew some lush jungle scenery. The colorist, Jose Villarrubia, also did a nice job adding texture to Conan’s jungle island. A solid job from top to bottom.

Like I said I don’t have much to complain about here but I think I like the Conan stories with political intrigue in them better than the straight forward adventure stories. Someone else’s taste might be the complete opposite of mine and this could very well be their favorite Conan volume. It’s well done. If you’re in the mood for some sword and sorcery check it out. I’ll be back for the next one too.

This week I read my first digital book on my new iPad. I have to say that I enjoyed reading on the iPad more than I thought I would. I read the book through the Kindle app on the iPad. It was a spy novel that happened to be on sale at Amazon for 99¢. I hadn’t heard of the author or read a spy novel in ages but bought it because of its low price and to try out digital reading.

I have read a few comic books on my iPad and also on my laptop but I didn’t like that experience. The iPad is a little too small for comic book reading and though my 13 inch laptop is about the perfect size when turned sideways it’s a bit clumsy reading a comic book on a sideways laptop. Even one as light as the MacBook Air. Plus comic books on a screen are really bright and a little too hard on the eyes at times.

Another knock against reading comics on my iPad has to be the plethora of mediocre comics that I have for it. Circumstance has conspired so that good comics don’t make it onto my iPad. Y’see, I’m a regular comic book reader. I go to the store every week and buy a few comics. I also buy hardcover and softcover collections of comics. I probably have at least twenty collected editions laying around waiting to be read. I’m discriminating so it’s all pretty good stuff. At least I generally like the stuff I buy. That’s not even to mention tons of good comics in my collection that I could reread if I choose to.

So what comics do I have digitally? A bunch of free stuff that I found around on the internet. Comics comics that I never thought were good enough to buy but kind of want to try out. Mostly mediocre comics. As a result I must have two hundred comics on my iPad these days. But why would I read them? When I have a few moments to read something I can either pick up a comic I bought because I want to read it or my iPad to read some comics that I didn’t think were good enough to bother buying but could find for free. So far the actual comics have always won over the virtual ones so I don’t think I’m going to start reading too many digital comics any time soon.

On the other hand I don’t have a lot of unread books laying around. I don’t read as many books as I once did because my eyes could no longer take it as I got older. After working on the computer or drawing all day reading can be hard on the eyes. And as I settle fully into middle age my reading vision is just starting to fail me. I don’t need reading glasses yet but I can see that I will. There is never as much light as there used to be.

I also got in the habit of giving away books that I read. I have enough comic books filling up the place so there isn’t much room for novels and non-fiction books. Besides I rarely go back and read anything a second time. So in recent years I haven’t had a lot of books around in general plus they were a bit hard on my eyes so my reading habits dwindled. As I wanted to read a bit more I decided to give this digital thing a try. Why not? I had the iPad already.

When I bought my iPad this past Fall using it as an e-reader wan’t even a thought in my mind. I knew it could do it but I didn’t care as I had no interest in any kind of digital book reading. I’m not even sure what changed my mind. I downloaded the Kindle app for my iPad right away but it sat there for a month or two almost unlooked at. It wasn’t until I noticed that Amazon started a Kindle lending library for Amazon Prime members (of which I’m one) that I bothered to look at it. Turns out the lending library is not for the iPad but it got me to notice the 99¢ daily book deals. As an impulse purchase I decided to try a dollar book. I’m glad I did.

It’s the simple stuff that I like about the Kindle app and reading digitally in general. I can make the font a little bigger so that I will have less eye strain. That and I the fact that I can turn down the brightness and make the type sepia makes reading on the iPad all around easier on my eyes. It is quite pleasant. Easier than reading a real book. At least some real books.

I also like that just touching the screen turns the page. I don’t even have to think about it and it doesn’t break my reading concentration. As a matter of fact it turned the page so fast and smoothly that I think my concentration was actually better than when reading a real book. There was even an interesting little feature, that you can turn off, where you can underline passages and see the passages that other people have underlined. I found it interesting to see what passages other people liked. I even underlined one myself for the heck of it.

One thing my digital book buying highlighted is that comic book publishers are going to have a hard time with the pricing of their comic books. It the real 3D world a comic book is different than a regular book and those differences are obvious. A single comic is cheaper than a novel and has colorful pictures. After you read a comic you can look at it too. You can look at the drawings, relive some parts, and view it non-linear way. But somehow when faced with buying comics digitally they’re exactly the same as books with less bang for the buck.

I find that comic books lose a little of their uniqueness when they’re digital. I can’t flip through one like I would a real life comic but I can linearly sample a few pages. And with digital comics being two to three dollars a pop and at least some digital novels being 99¢ it’s tough to see the value. Especially since the post-reading “Flip through” value of a comic isn’t there with digital comics. It just doesn’t handle like a real comic. Comic books can be more social than a regular book and that is harder to do with a digital copy.

But anyway I’ve bought a couple other “Deal of the Day” books from Amazon plus I’ve downloaded a few free books. I actually stopped myself from getting anymore for the moment so as not to inundate myself with unread books. Sometimes that can be paralyzing. But I started reading a second novel and I’ll see how that one goes. Overall I’d have to say that this e-book thing is a s success for me.