Parked in the Park

I hit Bryant Park in NYC yesterday for the first time all year. I’ve wanted to get down there before now but the weather and my schedule didn’t allow it. It’s a small well kept park in the center of Midtown Manhattan and one of the things I like about it is that it has tables and chairs. Not the most comfortable tables and chairs but I can work at them. I can’t work on a typical park bench. Or picnic table.

I like to head into the city and work in the park every now and then just to get out of the house and work among the crowds. I take a local bus into the city that takes way too long. It takes an hour and twenty minutes to go twenty five miles. And now they just cut back on the bus schedule and raised prices. The new schedule has only one bus every hour. I might end up like everyone else and drive into the city. What is the point of slow and inefficient public transport? To get us to buy new cars and gasoline I would guess.

Figuring out what I was going to work on in the park was what I was having trouble with. I could just sit there and draw, as I have done before, but I find that a bit dull. I sometimes need more than a black marker or pencil when I’m in the park. I was also thinking about bringing some of the new tools I had purchased recently: markers, brush markers, and colored pencils.

I haven’t done much with these new tools since I bought them. I haven’t sussed out any kind of style or working method for them. I’ve worked with the same tools years ago and can still do what I used to do with them but that doesn’t interest me. I want to do something new with them. I also like to work with the surface of a piece of art and all of those tools go on flat and offer no surface. That could be the problem.

On Saturday morning I finally decided to bring my set of gouache paints. I used them in the park last year and enjoyed it. But I had no idea what to work on. I pulled out a big stack of half finished little (five by seven inch) gouache paintings to rummage through to see if anything interested me. Half finished stuff can give you an idea of in what direction to go.

I came across a few paintings of faces that I liked. I have no idea when I did them since they are undated. They are in a style that I only used for these three paintings. Sort of a mixing of transparent and opaque gouache in a painting that owed much to drawing and mark making. There was no modeling as I often do but color laid next to color. Plus no underdrawing. It was all spontaneously done with the brush. I packed up my paints and paper and headed to the park.

There were many people in the park that day since it was sunny and about eighty degrees. People were sunning themselves all over. Except on the lawn. The lawn was closed that morning. People respect the lawn being closed at Bryant Park. When the lawn is closed (usually after a good rain, a good dew, or if it’s been re-sodded) they put up a red rope that’s about a foot off the ground with “The lawn is resting” signs every now and again and every one stays off it. I find that a little amazing. When the lawn finally opened at 4 PM lots of people laid out their blankets and and basked in the sunshine.

I found myself a spot on the shady side of the park. It was less crowded than the sunny side and I like the shade anyway. My fair skin isn’t a fan of strong sunlight. Plus the shady side was busy enough for me.

I decided to do some drawing first because the improvised nature of the paintings I did originally was nice but hard to sustain. When dealing with painting a face there is only so much to be improvised. I lightly drew two sketches of faces on two sheets of five by seven inch watercolor paper. I still wanted to keep the painting free and open like the others so I left a lot of decisions to be made with the paint. Then I painted them.

It’s fun to work out in the open every now and again. It’s less comfortable and there are more distractions but sometimes distractions are a good thing. Most people leave me alone as I paint anyway. A few come up to see what I’m working on and that’s okay. The park is about interaction with other people.

Lots of people from other places are in the park. Being that Bryant Park is just off of Times Square you can hear lots of different accents and languages spoken. It’s a good place for tourists to take a break and have a seat for a little while as well as for locals to sun themselves. Or read a book.

The paintings came out alright. Not the best I have ever done but okay. I wouldn’t expect them to be the best since painting on those little tables while sitting in those little chairs isn’t easy. Still it is enjoyable. I even got a chance to indulge my photography habit as, after I painted, I went around the park taking pictures of people and things. Always fun. Of course that also leads me to believe I need a new camera. But that’s a whole other story.

Comics I Bought This Week: May 28, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Usagi Yojimbo - 120

Glamourpuss - 7

DC Comics Classics Library - Roots of the Swamp Thing

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

"The Grave Robber's Daughter" by Richard Sala

I haven't read much of Richard Sala's work. I have the first two issues of "Delphine" and like those but I think that's about it. "The Grave Robber's Daughter" is a digest size comic and I think it has been reformatted from some other size. The panels in the beginning part of the story seem oddly layed out on the page.

Never the less the story seems to work pretty well. I think Sala's art is stronger in "Delphine" but it's okay here and is nicest in the second half of the book when more imagination is called for.

The story is about a woman, Judy Drood, who's car breaks down near an empty town that holds a strange carnival filled with teenagers and clowns.

It's supposed to be a scary and creepy story and succeeds pretty well on that account but it's a bit different in that Judy Drood is rarely scared as the story is told.

It turns out that Judy Drood is teenage hard boiled detective character who can handle herself well. I didn't know this going in. It was nice to see a character unafraid of "scary" clowns. I never got the scary clown thing. They're clowns. How is it that people are afraid of them?

"The Grave Robber's Daughter" was a short read but a fun one. I'm going to have to track down some more of Sala's work. Including "Delphine" issue three which I think is out.

The End of the TV Season

Summer is nearly upon us and most TV shows have ended or are about to end for the year. I, like a lot of people, don’t watch much live TV anymore. I still watch but everything is recorded and time shifted. That means I get to watch what I want, when I want. I sure like it that way. Here is a recap of the shows I watched this season.

Law and Order - A show I still like after all these years. The cast changes all the time but this show is not about the characters’ personal lives. It’s about the cases. The formula it uses every week is relentless but a great example of how to use a formula. Law and Order: Criminal Intent is actually my favorite of the three shows and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is my least favorite. I have a bunch of SVUs I still haven’t watched and I don’t know if I even will.

Life - A series that I enjoyed but it has now been cancelled after two seasons. Life is about a cop who was framed for murder, sent to jail for life, cleared after having spent twelve years behind bars, and now is a cop again. He’s a homicide detective so he goes around solving cases and trying to figure out who framed him. It had one of the best season/series ending shows. Too bad it’s gone.

How I Met Your Mother - A sit-com I’ve liked for its whole run. The lead character, Josh Radnor, is a little whiney and annoying but not always. The supporting cast is the show’s strength. Alyson Hannigan, Jason Segel, and Neil Patrick Harris are standouts and get into lots of funny shenanigans. Cobie Smulders, who basically plays “The hot chick”, does a good job with what she is given but kind of has the least to do. How I Met Your Mother is a consistently funny show.

Big Bang Theory - I was ambivalent about the first season of this show but have really liked the second. Once they got rid of the annoying “Nerd has a crush on the hot popular girl” plot line things got funnier. Less moping around and more comedy is a recipe I can embrace. A solid funny season.

Battlestar Galactica - Here is a show I watched only because it was a favorite of so many people I know. It’s okay but not great by any stretch of the imagination. I thought that this, its final season, was the worst season of the show. The series ending episode was awful. It did so little to hold my attention that I actually started doing my taxes in the middle of the episode. There’s a bad sign for you.

Bones - Another cop/detective/mystery/find the killer show. I like that genre. This one is different because it involves scientists. The characters are pretty good and there is lots of scientific jargon. Maybe not the best season of it and I didn’t like the season ender but overall a solid show. I’l continue to watch it.

Burn Notice - My favorite new show that I discovered this year, its second season. It’s the story of a spy who’s been “Burned” i.e. fired and told to stay put in Miami or he’ll be killed. He goes around helping people in trouble, trying to find out why he was burned, showing us spy tricks of the trade, and being a bad ass. And he has a hot girlfriend. All in all a fun show.

Castle - A new show starring Nathan Fillion and another cop show. Fillion plays a famous crime novelist who is following around a NYC detective to get material for his next book. A fun show. Fillion plays the charming rogue well.

Doll House - The latest Joss Whedon show. It’s about secret underground programable people. The show started slowly got a bit better but was never really good. It’s okay. It’s coming back for another season so I’ll see how it is then.

Lost - This season started a bit slow and was annoying but finished strong. Anytime time travel is introduced to any story things can go very wrong. It almost did here but then they straightened things out a bit. I ended up really enjoying the second half of the season.

Mentalist - Another new cop show and another cop show that I like. A trend is appearing. The Mentalist is a former fake psychic who uses his powers of observation to help the cops solve crimes. He’s also the king of charm.

My Name is Earl - I think this was Earl’s funniest season ever. It’s a show about small town goof balls as opposed to TV’s usual big city goof balls. Another solid sit-com. I hear it might be cancelled which would be a shame.

The Office - A sit-com about medium sized city goof balls. This was I show I didn’t start watching until season two or three because I never thought I’d like it. I was wrong. It’s a funny show about all the weird characters that you’d find in the workplace. Well, their workplace at least. It was another funny season and shows no signs of weakening.

Everybody Hates Chris - I always enjoyed this show even if it was never a favorite. The cast is really good. I especially like Terry Crews who plays Chris’ father. This is a show that I also hear is cancelled. Too bad because it was good.

The Simpsons - A lot of people I know don’t watch this show anymore but I do. I think it is still funny and people just grow tired of things. Even good things.

Comics I Bought This Week: May 21, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got five new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Mysterious the Unfathomable - 1

Mysterious the Unfathomable - 2 (Crap! I already have issue 2. It's issue 3 I need. Found that out when I got home.)

Mysterious the Unfathomable - 5

Ex Machina - 42

G-Man "Learning to Fly" (Digest size comic)

Creepy Archives Volume - 3

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

"100%" by Paul Pope

I've been a bit ambivalent about Paul Pope's stuff. I never liked his "THB" comic but enjoyed "Heavy Liquid". I never bothered with his "Batman: Year 100" because I don't care much to read another Batman story. I almost bought "100%" back when it was serialized in 2002. But at six issues for six bucks a piece I decided I would rather wait for a collected edition. It took DC long enough to publish one.

It's tough to describe "100%" concisely. It's a romantic sci-fi story of some sort. It's about life and love in the year 2050 on the island of Manhattan. Life isn't really all that different than it is now. There are different gadgets and people have different attitudes but things are recognizable.

I've also been ambivalent about Paul Pope's art. It has alway seemed a little too rushed to me. It has a lot of influence from Japanese comics in it. He does some stuff I like and some stuff I don't like.

This book contains his best artwork I've seen to date. I came to realize upon reading this that Paul Pope has a tremendous mark making ability. Mark making is the vocabulary of lines that an artist puts on paper to describe things.

Most comic artists don't have many marks in their vocabulary. Many have one, two, or three marks that they build everything out of. All of that scritch-scratchy, crosshatched, early 90's, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Rob Leifeld style art is built without a wide variety of marks.

It's not necessarily better to have a wide variety of marks at your disposal but it is unusual for comics. And Paul Pope uses them well. His backgrounds can be lush and moody, filled up with all manner of marks, even if they don't mean anything literal. Though he wears his influences on his sleeve his stuff is fairly unique in the comic world.

I'm glad they finally put this out in a collected edition and I got a chance to read it. If you're in the mood for a lush, dreamy, sci-fi romance then check this one out.

Boxed In

Building boxes takes a long time. Even if they’re not really fancy boxes. That’s my observation for the week. I have these two cabinets that hold a lot of my paper and drawings on paper. And I have a lot of drawings. It’s tough to keep them neat and organized in such a fashion that they’re useful. Most of my drawings are on bristol which is a heavy paper. When piled up it gets cumbersome. Especially since the paper the drawings are on are six or so different sizes.

So I decided I needed some storage boxes to put the drawings in. Put some order in the growing chaos. I already have a lot of drawings in boxes. They are old cardboard stat paper boxes that were always lying around at an old job of mine. They are a few different sizes and do a good job. But they were already in use so I needed some new ones.

I know of some art supply places that sell storage boxes for art. I’ve sampled a couple of boxes from such places ant they are pretty nice. But at about fifteen dollars a box they can get pricey quickly. Time or money. That’s what it always comes down too. Which do I have more of. If I had more money than time I would buy the boxes. But right now I have more time than money. So I decided to make some of my own.

I hit the local art supply store and bought three sheets of thirty two by forty inch mat board. At eight dollars a sheet it would cost less than buying boxes but there was a lot of work to be done. First I had to decide what sizes I needed and how to cut them so I could get the most boxes out of the mat board.

I basically needed three different size boxes. One to fit eleven by seventeen inch paper, one to fit nine by twelve inch paper, and one to fit five and a half by eleven inch paper. These are the three sizes of paper I use most.

I used Adobe Illustrator to figure out how to cut the boxes out of the mat board. I made a Illustrator box the size of the board and then made a bunch of Illustrator boxes the sizes I need to cut out. It was then a like a puzzle moving around all the little boxes until I figured out the maximum amount of boxes I could cut out of my three sheets.

Then I drew my pattern that I made in Illustrator onto my mat board. I used an X-Acto knife and metal ruler to cut the board and then scored the board with the X-Acto where I wanted to fold the board. After that I folded the box and taped the edges with paper tape to hold it together.

That sounds easy enough and pretty much is. When you’re making one box. I was making about ten boxes. Plus they all had lids which were made the exact same way as the bottom of the box that I just described. The lid is slightly larger though. So it fits on.

It took me most of the day to make all those boxes. I knew it would and I had the time but it wasn’t easy. It would have cost me about $150 to buy storage boxes and they wouldn’t have been the exact sizes I wanted so I’m glad I built them but at about box number six I was wondering what the hell I was doing this for. Then I got my second wind and trudged on through.

After that I had to pull everything out of the cabinets and put the drawings in the boxes. That took a while too. Longer than I thought it would but not nearly as long as making the boxes. I was also having trouble organizing the drawings. Besides by size that is. So I decided to save the organizing for another day and just put them in the boxes. That’s where things are right now.

It’s a lot of work making boxes and those were only made out of mat board. I can’t imagine making them out of wood or some such. My level of craftsmanship isn’t that high. I’m glad I did it though.

One of the good things about a project like that is that there is a tangible goal to meet. I’m used to dealing with making art where seeing the right answer among the wrong ones is really hard. And a lot of the time I am unsure if I have succeeded. It’s often a struggle without a tangible goal at the end.

With making boxes I set out to make some boxes and in the end have ten boxes to show for it. I’ve reached a tangible goal. Ten boxes asked for and ten boxes made. They stay together and they are the right size. And the craftsmanship isn’t half bad. Mission accomplished. It’s good to reach a goal. Even if it isn’t a magnificent one.

So that’s the story of building boxes. Not too exciting, not too spectacular, but just one of those things in life that has to get finished. It’s good to get things finished.

Comics I Bought This Week: May 14, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got four new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Echo - 12

Savage Dragon - 148

The Walking Dead - 61

Jack Staff - 20

Invincible Ultimate Collection Volume 4

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

"Red Hulk" Volume -1 by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness

A brief snapshot of my recent Hulk reading. "Planet Hulk" I liked because it was fun but it wasn't great and "World War Hulk" I didn't like and found it no fun. Then I was waiting for Marvel to relaunch Hulk in a new book because Hercules had taken over Hulk's old book. But they never did. The did start a "Red Hulk" series though. Turns out that is the new Hulk series. Weird.

Anyway "Red Hulk" is pretty short on plot and long on fight scenes. The basic plot is this: A Hulk that is colored red shows up. No one knows who he is but he kills the Abomination and then gets into fights with a lot of the big guns in the Marvel Universe and beats them up. It's up to the good old Green Hulk to stop him.

There is a mystery going on about who the Red Hulk might be but it's barely touched on. The plot is paper thin and just there to string together fight scenes. Almost all of the "plot twists" are just someone new showing up to fight the Red Hulk. But I do give it points for the fight scenes being fun.

Unfortunately they could have been more fun. Ed McGuiness's art let me down a bit in the storytelling department. He can draw well enough and illustration-wise it was fine but he made it hard to follow things at times. The fights didn't always have the impact they could have had because sometimes I was confused at what was going on. I've seen worse storytelling but I've also seen better.

All in all it was a solid Hulk comic. Not great by any stretch of the imagination but it was fun. Besides "World War Hulk" I've been enjoying some Hulk collections, both new and old, lately and this one fits right in with them. So if you're in the mood for cover to cover Hulk fights check this one out.

And this week...

What's been happening? I ask myself that sometimes. Sometimes I even answer myself.

I got a flat tire on my new bicycle last week. The first flat tire I've gotten in a long time. I ordered a new tube for it but I also went out and bought a patch kit. It's been so long since my last flat that the glue went bad in my old patch kit. I wasn't even sure how well the patch would hold on these new high pressure tires on my bike. That’s why I hedged my bet and ordered a new tube.

Even though it's been a long time since I patched a tire everything came out okay in the end. I followed the instructions, which were as I remembered them, and the tire has held air just fine. My lack of confidence in my bike tire patching skills turned out to be unjustified. I have the new tube sitting on the shelf just in case.

I had to lock a groundhog out of his hiding hole under my front steps this week. They are your basic concrete steps that critters in the suburbs sometimes dig under to make hiding holes. A skunk crawled under there once and died. Not pleasant.

Last year a small groundhog starting hiding there whenever he thought he was in danger. This year the groundhog is bigger and hiding there again. That would have been okay with me except he started digging. A little at first but then I came home to find a big pile of dirt on my front walk. Enough was enough. Sorry dude.

I got myself a spare piece of 1x12 pine and some stakes (old and battered stretcher strips that I had lying around), put the board in front of the hole (which was on the side of the steps), drove the stakes in next to the board, and nailed the stakes into the board. Like a little billboard blocking the hole.

I didn't close the hole on the other side of the steps just then in case the groundhog was in there but I did lean a second piece of pine against the hole. If the critter was in there he could push the piece of wood aside and leave. But he wasn't in there.

I happened to be looking out the front window a little later when I saw the groundhog arrive. He looked confused as he went to the unsecured board side and couldn't get in and then went to the staked in side and also couldn't get it. It then quickly ran across the street and dove into another hiding place it had in a rock wall. I haven't seen him in the front yard since. And I secured the other side.

On the creative front I've been working on my first oil painting in quite a while. I've worked mostly on small 8"x10" canvases in acrylic paint recently but wanted to get back to bigger canvases in oil. It's going okay so far. It’s a different type of painting than I do in acrylic. I like the way oil paint holds its surface and texture. It does that better than acrylic.

Since I work larger in oil than I do in acrylic it’s more time consuming. Oil paint takes more of a commitment from me. That time consumption was why I started working smaller and in acrylic in the first place. I wanted to paint and explore more images in a shorter period of time. Instead of one image a week I wanted to make six. I enjoyed that for a while but now I want to spend some time with one image and get it just so.

This week I finished twenty five comic strips in the web comic series that I've been working on forever. The comic is as yet unnamed and about the tenth different concept I've tried but this is the first one where I've gotten it to where I like it. It’s still a work in progress but I’m happier to have made more headway on it than any of my previous attempts at a web comic.

I am going to make a web site for it but that is still to come. I want to get more strips done and have a lot to figure out in how to present it. I need to find an easy way to post and update the site once I get it up. Otherwise I’ll never update it and what would be the point of that? Still after so many web comic false starts I'm amazed I got this much done.

One final though this week has to do with women’s fashion. What the heck is up with shaving your eyebrows and then drawing a line in with an eyebrow pencil? I know it’s nothing new and women have been doing it for ages but I don’t get it. I can understand tweezing an eyebrow to get a shape you want but drawing an eyebrow on your face? That would be like shaving your head and then drawing hair on your bald dome. Some things I just don’t get.

Comics I Bought This Week: May 7, 2009

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:

Buffy Season Eight - 25

Spider-Man - "Death and Dating"

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

"Hotel Harbor View" by Natsuo Sekikawa and Jiroh Taniguchi

Here is something I decided to pull down off of my shelf and read. "Hotel Harbor View" was originally published in 1990 by Viz. I remember liking it then but haven't picked it up since. It's a Japanese graphic novel from before the time when every Japanese comic was a toy or card game tie-in.

"Hotel Harbor View" is a melancholy book about life and death as told through the tales of a couple of people who are doomed to die as someone has been hired to kill them. Though the story involves a hit woman it's not really about killing or the mechanics of killing that we often see in fiction. It's going for a film noir vibe and there is sex and violence but it's not a typical hitman story.

It's the storytelling that is the star here. The script is sparse but effective and relies on the visuals to tell most of the tale. From setting the mood to slowing down time the artist, Jiroh Taniguchi, uses a variety of angles, panel shapes, close ups, medium shots, and establishing shots to really clarify what is going on in an interesting way.

I'm glad I hung on to this obscure graphic novel. There really isn't a lot of comics like it out there. There is really not a lot to say about it besides that it is good. It's a comic that doesn't aspire to grandness but is about a feeling. A sadness with the world. But "Hotel Harbor View" isn't a downer. It doesn't leave you thinking that the world is a really screwed up place. It leaves you thinking that those people are a little sad and that's just the way of things. Give it a read if you can find it.

Marked As Such

I've got no tattoos. I almost don't even understand the concept. Or at least my mind never goes to the "contemplating a tattoo" place. Sure I understand it's people decorating their bodies but it's just not a thought of mine. Someone would have to see a picture and like it so much that they decide to permanently paint it on their body. Or they would have to decide they want a picture permanently painted on their body and then go out and find a picture they liked enough to do that with. Neither of those streams of thought have ever entered my mind.

I'm not against tattoos in any way. Most of them I've seen are pretty well done and generally attractive. Some people even have whole thematic concepts going on as tattoos blend and merge across their whole bodies. That takes some thought and dedication. Neither of which I have ever had in relation to tattoos.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm an artist. I'm most interested in whatever piece I'm working on right now. Pieces I've finished hold less interest for me. So I might grow disinterested in any tattoo I would get as soon as it was finished. This could also be the reason that so many others get more and more tattoos. But I know plenty of artists who have tattoos. Could have nothing to do with it.

I don't decorate myself in general. No ring, earrings, bracelets, or jewelry. Sometimes I wear a watch but that's not decoration in my book. It's a tool for telling time easily when I need to.

I think the no jewelry thing started for me when I was a kid. I got the usual kid jewelry presents every now and again. A gold-ish chain with a cross on it, some leather or charm bracelet, or a small trinket ring. They were a chore to keep track of and not lose or break. Every gold chain I ever wore was broken in a pickup football game or wrestling match that happened around the neighborhood.

Jewelry became a burden. Anyone who gave me a present of jewelry when I was a kid was giving me a bit of responsibility that I didn't want. There was no upside for me. Eventually I stopped wearing anything I was given, not that it was ever a lot of jewelry, and just put in in my sock drawer. That way I always knew where it was if someone asked and it was never going to get lost. Or worn.

Piercing is another thing that passes me by. Probably because of my aversion to wearing jewelry in general. Piercing is an easy way to keep track of your jewelry though. Just affix it to your skin.

But once again the thought process that leads to getting a piercing has never entered my mind. You have to like a piece of jewelry so much that you want to punch a hole in your skin and attach it to yourself. Or you have to want to attach jewelry to yourself by punching a hole in your skin and then find some jewelry you like enough to attach. I don't even know how to get to that place.

Jewelry, tattoos, and piercings are really old ways of decorating the human bodies. They have been going on for thousands of years. I wonder what the future of human body decoration will bring? Computer chips embedded in the skin to change color on demand?

Imagine a programable tattoo. Nanobots crawling all over your skin and making a new design whenever you want. They could change the taste, smell, or even sound of the skin. Press someone's knee and the smell of strawberries is emitted along with their favorite tune.

I don't think and of those computer controlled ideas have the level of commitment of a tattoo. I'm sure there are a lot of people who mark their lives as pre and post whatever their tattoos are. But computerized jewelry could offer a wider variety of things than you average jewelry collection. I think I'm going to enjoy the future.