Making Not Taking
I’ve been asked to do this so many times and I’m finally (starting) to make good on all my Yeah I’ll Get To It I Promise. Except that I haven’t completely pulled back the curtain to show what it is I think everyone’s been asking for. That is, exactly how I’m creating certain photos. Which is because I never think about it.
That photo up top is, of course, the AfterWork. I took it on Thanksgiving day at the farm. You’re looking at what’s been called The Bottom for eons, and it’s a section of the land Cute Redhead and her family grew up playing in. We’ve quite continued weaving that fabric into the lives of the spawn and their cousins, and Thanksgiving day just isn’t Thanksgiving day without a walk to it.
A few words on how I photograph: first of all, every photo in this post was taken with the iPhone 4S. No flash (I never use the flash. ever.) (Ever.) I have a Canon Rebel XSi, which I consider a brilliant camera for certain work. But the ease and quick access of the iPhone, as well as the image editing apps I use mean that most of what catches my eye also catches me reaching for it…which is always in my pocket.
A few words on what I photograph and why: I have no idea what to tell you lol. Being asked to slow down and think out loud about what happens to capture my eye and interest to where I trip-wire into I Have To Photograph That is like stopping me on the dance floor to analyze how I’m dancing…which only makes me look at my feet. Which makes me mess up. Which is a pain and a bucket of cold water thrown over me. Which I also hate.
Nevertheless, it’s not like I don’t know how I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s just that when I do it, I’m honestly not thinking about how I’m doing. Just doing it. Just giving my soul over to what I have to capture, tilt, angle, stop and backup and checkout that shadow again…never questioning it. Ever. I mean ever. (Who does that??) I can’t even tell you why something captures my eye. Rather, I’m not going to waste time articulating every aspect of every moving part, inside and out, only to demonstrate that I could talk for a day about it and still fail to sum it up.
So it’s not taking a photo. It’s making a photo. And if I have to explain that, trust me…I can’t. And you wouldn’t understand anyway. And neither would I.
The light through the trees and the spreading shadow of the pine trees was nothing more than an obvious composition. *iPhone*point*shoot*done* Cute Redhead is used to me lagging behind, constantly stopping, long ago gave up her Hurry-upping, and left me to start messing with the image to force into the digital what I actually saw in my head when I took it. Which, come to think of it, is me using photography to sculpt, excavate, unearth, or prove in the final piece what I saw in my head.
Which is the real reality (prove that one, left-brainers! ha!)
I used several image editing apps but can’t tell you exactly which ones or in what order or in what combination of filters and effects. It never occurred to me to confine myself to one app or effect any more than I’d confine myself to what pen or paintbrush. So edit here, save the image, open another app, play around there, save it again, turn it upside down, get mad, open another, try this try that, get mad again, remember something about a weird red I remember in something else, love it, apply it, decide I hate it all over again, change my mind, burn that, contrast that corner, straighten it, turn it…and basically keep on Not Thinking until I see finally what I saw in the first place.
Which is the very top photo.
Here are a few other photos I took that day employing the same processes, right down to looking up and wondering where everyone went and how long I’d been standing there in full-on artistic Time Out Of Mind.
And one last Before-And-After I took just this morning when I decided I needed fresh-ground coffee. I slammed the door shut on the car and noticed how the frost looked like trees. I liked the blue I saw inside my head so, naturally, everything had to stop for a few minutes.
And, lastly, here is just one of the apps I use. I promise next time my mind trip-wires into Must.Capture.That, I’ll stop Not Thinking enough to note how I’m doing what I have No Idea How I’m Doing.
.
Moving Parts
I was asked about my work space and the tools I use to get things done. If you ask me, none of it is anything particularly interesting; I’ve used it all for years without thinking much about it. The photo up top is just a container of some of the paints I’ve used when putting cartoons to canvas. They’ve often been seized all Public Domain-like by Miss Child and her pals as evidenced below.
After all, if you’re garage band (The Clackers) (I have no idea either) is going to take the milk and the paper towel rolls and all manner of all kinds of other What Cute Redheads Recycles (I don’t) and turn them into instruments…well. You certainly can’t do any of that without your dad’s paints, right? Right.
Those are called ‘chips.’ Pantone Matching System chips, to be exact. Or PMS colors, to be hilarious. Sometimes I’m tickled PMS 493 ha ha! Get it?
(I know it was lame shut up)
There used to be a big dry eraser board on that wall, directly across from my desk. It bore the Have To’s and the Urgent in a variety of color-coordinated days and priorities. It liked to think it ruled my creative processes. So I had it destroyed and replaced it with things I liked. A photo of the day Beta threw off the training wheels and Became A Man…the 2011 Rockies schedule….a bunch of Baby Girl’s art work…shells from Hawaii…a newspaper clipping of a cabin I’d like to one day build up in the mountains far away from Far Away. Oh, and see the black vertical thing at the lower right? Ha ha…that’s just the size of the cartoons I’ve started posting on WiP. I place that under the sheet I’m sketching on so I know I’m drawing within the space we creative types call the ‘live area.’
Stupid Cat was watching me take these photographs and was Not Amused.
I drew this the other day while I was on the phone talking to I Have No Memory Of Who I Was Talking To. My teachers used to hate it when I did this. And I did it all the time. That is, draw while they spoke to the class. It appeared for all the world that I wasn’t listening by virtue of the Very Intense Illustrating with which I was much more interested. Then they’d do that signature reprimand where they go, “Perhaps Mr. Clary can tell the rest of the class what we’re discussing.”
And then Mr. Clary would. Word for word.
And then Mr. Teacher would get royally ticked off because it wasn’t supposed to happen that way ha ha.
Some of the new WiP cartoons I’m working on and putting up on the home page. They’ll go on a new interior paged called The Drawing Board or something stupid like that.
A closer-up of the first one I did. You can, I think, see some of the pencil lines under the ink. Also, my own notes on the copy (that’s CreativeSpeak for ‘the words’) up top as well as the pixel dimensions I need to work within in order for the final to be properly (more CreativeSpeak coming here) ‘stage’ properly on the main page.
(please be as impressed with me as I am)
Okay, those two babies are my babies.
Do not touch them.
Ever.
The one on the right is my pen tool. I don’t use a mouse. Mortals use a mouse.
I do not use a mouse.
Brushing or drawing (I never ‘draw’ on the computer, by the way) in Photoshop or what have you with a mouse is like painting with a bar of soap.
I though this was hilarious. Just some of the wires coming into the studio from the outside world to connect me to the internet and radiate the signal throughout the rest of the place. That yellow wire? Powers the Pac-Man game on the International Space Station. Swear.
That little device is a micro-cell. It takes the phone signal coming into the house and then amplifies into enough bandwidth to power the Pac-Man game on the International Space Station.
Swear.
.
.
Forgive Me
I hate to do this to you…but, well…it’s Christmastime and I don’t see why we get to be all merry-merry about some things but hold off on others. And since Constraint and Restraint are swear words in my house, share the wealth I say! I mean, what with the running around, the buying, the lists, the budgets, the What’sABudget?, the insanity…don’t you want something to look forward to at the end of the 12 Days of Christmas? Something to kick back and unwind?
Enter a variation on a concoction I was introduced to a few years back. It has a name but not a name I’ve ever warmed to so I’m leaving out the name. Besides, since I’ve adjusted the original recipe, it begs a new name altogether. Which I’ve come up with but which I’m not putting here either :) And if you ever got enough of these in mean to loosen my inhibitions and spill the beans, you’d know why.
In the meantime, mix 1 part Butterscotch Schnapps (I know, right?)
and
1 part Bailey’s (wait for it) CARAMEL Irish Cream
Then call me and sing my praises, because trust me: you’re going to.
The One And Only
Waltzing in Perdition is about to bring something new to the table. Something I’ve been trying not to bring, in fact.
I used to sneak my dad’s Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens and draw cartoons. It used to drive him stark raving mad, being more the artist than I was and father to five kids with no sense of boundary line and no shame when it came to pilfering his favored tools of the trade. I suppose it was the professional precision in the pens themselves, the exactness of each line, the perfect pitch black of the india ink. Or perhaps the special casing in which they resided and displayed like some set of rare jewels. Whatever it was, I couldn’t keep my hands off the forbidden fruit and the only solution to keep him from locking them (or me) away permanently was to get me my own set.
Which he did, which I loved, and with which I proudly drew my cartoons with gusto. That is, until the day, many years later, I misplaced my entire collection never to find them again. Which happened to be the same day I found myself on a phone call needing to occupy my mind by doodling. Which found me reaching instinctively for a pen and grasping that pen you see up top. And commandeering the paper on the desk I happened to be sitting at—a very cheap copy paper. Into which the ink from this pen bled in a way that can only be described as conversational (let it go).
All that nonsense to say that, after having access to the best pens and the best papers, and demanding as much with no forgivenss, my world was rearranged in the space of five minutes and the pedestal on which everything enjoyed unchallenged status fell over with no ceremony and no effort. And all that nonsense to say that there is soon coming to WiP cartoons to accompany certain stories, perhaps (brace yourselves, those of you who have been asking me for decades for this one) an actual comic strip.
I’m still thinking about that one.
So. That pen up top? The company who makes them actually stopped making them several years back, and the only place I could find them was on eBay. Fine. Just last evening, while on the phone with the best WordPress coder on planet earth, it was suggested I bring to the blog my own illustrations. I met the idea with something embarrassingly close to a whine because I could no longer find my pen even on eBay. Tendering from him a perfectly aimed reprimand (one artist to another) (allowed) resulting in my scouring the internet to discover (joy of joys) that the company which manufactured the pen has brought them back into production. Something about a certain cartoonist out west stringing up the board of directors or something like that IForgetOkayThanksBye.
So I ordered a dozen.
Stay tuned for a return to the drawing board, folks.
In The Middle Of Our Street
That look is headed for Broadway. We know this because that’s Chloe and she is the street’s up-and-coming ballerina. And though she wasn’t on stage and this wasn’t a performance, I couldn’t help but realize the kid knows how to look into a camera.
At least long enough so as not to mess up her art work, that is. And Charlie Girl along with her.
It was Tuesday and that means Miss Alma, once again, has something unique to pass along to the kids in the neighborhood lucky enough to have secured a spot in her ever-popular art class.
There is no telling what they’ll come home with but it’s always hands-on and always worth a frame or a honored location on the mantle.
Very. Hands. On.
Whether Miss Lucy likes it or not (and she didn’t, by the way). But her mom, Annie, isn’t new around here and knows the exact balance between Here Let Mommy Show You and FINE YOUNG LADY, DO IT YOURSELF! Which sounds more like a yell than Annie ever would. Annie, like Cute Redhead and I (and like so many other parents in our season are admitting more and more and more), is in the wrong decade altogether. Meaning we’re ten into the 2000′s and all of us are thinking that the 1950 through the 1970′s had it more right than they ever had it wrong.
Which plays out something like “Get out of here and don’t come home until the street lights come on.”
And if you’re a product of those decades you know exactly what I’m talking about.
(This isn’t a word I throw around at all — it’s just not a guy word, sorry — but when I said “face this way and smile, honey” and she faced this way and smiled, I couldn’t stop laughing and had to say The Word I Don’t Throw Around Because It’s Not A Guy Word: Fabulous!
Of course I’ll take a photo of yours, sweetheart.
Is it just me or does this beg a two-page magazine spread for perfume lol?
And this is Miss Alma showing off the more masculine approach to the handiwork, courtesy of Ian. He and his brother David Michael joined the effort and produced pieces of their own. Not bad.
And not bad for our street.
Summer is well under way and I just discovered there remains but one home still occupied by its original owner, just across the way. Another neighbor, Kitsie, who was a young mom back in the day, tells us that our block alone (and not the all-the-way-around-the-block block…JUST up and down this side of it) once had (sit down for this one) 100 kids on it.
And, nowadays, our house is in the middle of the street.
And in the middle of that street is a riotous number of new kids learning all the things you learn on your street. Including how to carve up the summer months by hauling it over to Chloe’s driveway and making something cool like Mexican Niche Shadow Boxes.
Oh, and this little dude is our Y-Y. Which is what we call him. And how it’s pronounced. But it’s short for Wyatt.
And he rules.
Just ask his grandmother, Miss Alma.
Watch Kirsten Undress
Don’t even pretend you didn’t click on that so fast you almost hurt yourself.
I meant undress some cabinets. Which is what we found Kirsten (our wonderful neighbor) doing today when Beta Male came barging into my studio with, “Dad! Kirsten wants you to come see her project!” Which I did and right away, too. If there’s one thing I know about Kirsten it’s that when she takes on a project, it’s usually one I want to see.
This is Kirsten. And those are her cabinets. And that’s Kirsten on the phone refinishing the cabinets. While she’s on the phone. Which is because Kirsten is a mom of five. Which means Kirsten could change the oil and a diaper at the same time.
But not today. Today Kirsten is doing what she told me is ‘undressing’ the kitchen cabinets.
She knew I’d want to see this because our homes, built on the same block in the same 1960′s still sported the same Not At All Nice Looking cabinetry. And Kirsten had stumbled upon a solution that blew my mind. So, before she could say “here, watch me undress!” (ha ha she didn’t say that but it made me laugh), I ran home and grabbed the Rebel Force to get these photos.
That’s what goes on the woodwork first. No other prep in the world, if you can believe that. It looked like tacky dough like Bisquick is when you make those drop-biscuits. And if you don’t know what those are we can’t be friends anymore. (Policy. You understand.)
And then she lightly sanded down the surface to something smooth, which apparently wasn’t that difficult to do considering the texture you’re going for at the end.
Then she brushes on this stuff, and it apparently comes in all kinds of different colors. Do you see where this is going yet?
There’s a close up of one she finished. Bright sun made it a bit challenging to appreciate.
She had three tables set up outside. When this woman crafts, she does not mess around and I don’t mean maybe. Those are finished doors…
…and this is the finished result. If you could envision very plain, very ugly, very boring, very personality-less cabinets—that’s what these were. But now? Now they’re vintage and cottage and all kinds of other words that garner a look that looks On Purpose but not like you’re trying to fake anything at all. And I think that’s a fine balance. And Kirsten nailed it. I can’t wait for Cute Redhead to see them.
Because our kitchen cabinets are very plain, very ugly, very boring, and have no personality.
Which I wanted to discuss with Kirsten a little more. But…well. The phone rang again.
Did I tell you Kirsten can undress and talk at the same time? (ha ha I made myself laugh again).
Too Perfect
I felt like messing with a cartoon so I pulled this one out of my pile and scanned it in.
I drew it back in 1991 or 1992, I think, and the character was a shot at a single-panel comic strip entitled Grizelda Kanarpfarkle (and summarily rejected by every syndicate it was sent to). The original caption was “Morning has broken.”
It’s been my plan to create videos of some of the process I employ on a daily basis—and I promise I will do just that. But I wanted to first try showing how things happen with some photographs of the craft.
I didn’t anticipate what happened though. Which was a bit of frustration with the coloring process.
This was rendered by hand, obviously. Or, perhaps, not so obviously: I use a Wacom drawing tablet, but never for actual drawing. All that is done by hand. And it always surprises me how many people, upon seeing the pen tool in lieu of a mouse assume I’m drawing on it and onto the computer monitor.
Never.
The reason, for me anyway, is that, when I draw I’m looking directly past my fingers holding the pen and at what it is I’m drawing. Using a pen tool and tablet means looking not at my hand, but at the monitor, which means there’s a gap in the process. Other brains might have adapted to that anomaly, but mine never will.
Ever.
What you likely don’t know, can’t know, is that it’s been an embarrassing number of years since I’ve actually produce any cartoon work for a client. And I mention that only to mention this: I never did it on the computer.
Ever.
I sketched, inked, and colored it all by hand. And loved it.
Always.
So, you’ll forgive the Moody Artist for his complete disdain for what I’m posting anyway. That is, a drawing I Don’t Hate (artist never Like anything they create…the best they’ll give you is I Don’t Hate It).
See that background? Photoshop.
And all the other colors? Photoshop.
Not a big shock.
But as I laid in the color using the tools of the trade nowadays, I found a frustration I’m none too pleased with:
It looks too perfect.
I used to draw on hot pressed watercolor paper and color with a certain brand of marker. Then I’d ink the final piece using the only pen I ever liked. And I used all those tools because of how they behaved together. The watercolor paper had a certain composition that allowed the markers to bleed in just such a way I came to love. Depending on how firmly I held the marker, or turned the paper or did whatever it was I did…well…the final piece looked Good.
Not perfect.
Good. And I’m a big believer in Things Were Never Meant To Be Perfect…Just Good.
But this…
…this just doesn’t do it for me. I’m used to a whole different process, a much more organic and basic one. One that has my feet on grass, not in shoes on asphalt, if you get my meaning.
And, trust me, I know Photoshop. I’m a master with the program and I don’t mean maybe.
But it’s that the program has algorithms designed to exude the qualities and properties of the natural materials and processes that I find myself shaking my head at. More, I realize how unimpressed I am.
At the end of the day, there is just no substitute for doing it all by hand the old fashioned way.
So. There it is. I didn’t intend to not like this. But I don’t like it.
It’s too perfect.
Space and Time
That small pewter desk lamp weighs about 15 pounds and surprises me with its deceiving heft every time I move it. I mention it because you could say the remodel of my studio started the day I purchased it several years back. I had a Someday in mind. It’s been very out of place for a long time, waiting for the day when the rest of the space would catch up.
I’m happy to say that day has finally come. But before we celebrate the new, let’s take one last ghastly look at the old…
I’m genuinely sorry lol. See all that orange? I’ve tried to say it was supposed to be like a deep caramel-leather brown. But it behaved like orange. The laptop was sitting on top of the light table because I ripped out one wall-length shelf over by the window…thus the strip of non-orange.
Thank God all that is over. Good riddance.
And hello, new paint.
Water Chestnut and Olivewood. Very understated. By themselves very plain and possibly even boring, but thanks to the addition of several antique wood features, they do their job very well. That is, balancing some old with some new…which is just the way I like it.
Cute Redhead sent me, with her blessing, to a local market which I’ve passed through before. But not looking for anything in particular rendering the time little more than Okay, Can We Go Now? It’s a whole different ball game when you’re on the hunt for something specific, however. And this time the goal was a table and chair for the new studio. It had to be just the right height, just the right width, and just the right depth. Too old wouldn’t work and too new would be passed over. I’d know it when I see it.
And I saw it. One solid plank of wood making the top, nails all over the place, and just enough history (built in the 1920′s) to satisfy me.
And a drawer with one divider making two compartments or seven of varying width should I decide to employ the available slots. I’m not one for drawers for some reason. What’s more, the height of the chair I found was ergonomically ideal for my lower back but completely disallowed my legs to fit under things. Not good. On closer inspection I discovered the single supporting piece of wood on which the front of the drawer rested surrendered itself with just a bit of encouragement from the hammer. No damage done and, I think, a one inch by five foot piece of wood with which to dream up some new function.
What do do, though, with the drawer itself. A shelf maybe. On the wall or on the floor somewhere. I can’t decide. Any ideas anyone? The aged smell all by itself begs display.
Couldn’t be happier with this find. The couple I bought it from sold it for less than half the amount they paid for it. “The economy?” I offered by way of understanding.
“No. My husband just wanted to unload it. He doesn’t like tables.”
I could have kissed her.
Solid square legs. This table, by all accounts and purposes, should wobble. A lot. I mean, come on, at 90 years old I’m sure I’m going to wobble some. And you get a peak at the barn wood flooring installed yesterday.
On my way out of the market I spied this chair. I’d already written one check for the table and the college funds were precariously close to evaporating if I didn’t get out of there quick.
I took one look at the original plaque on the back and another at the tag. I realized immediately the vintage quality. And the price tag promised I’d find nothing with half the character in any store while paying more than twice what the gentlemen was asking. “When would this chair have been made?”
“Late 1940′s, early 50′s.”
Sold.
And here it is…the finished, newly remodeled studio. New paint, new (old) barn wood flooring, the perfect table, just the right chair and no more excuses for avoiding the stories I need to write…the cartoons I need to draw…the photography I need to touch up…the books I need to complete…the web sites I need to design…
A shot looking toward the light table. I removed the box from the base and set it atop the built in shelf. This is a garden-level room by the way, so that window looks out on the backyard, the cherry tree, the apple tree, the tree fort, the vegetable garden and, now and then, two or three noses pressed against the pane. Good times.
Also, time to get to work.
If you need me, I’ll be in heaven.
Floor It
Okay, I know it’s just wood. Old knotted up and roughhewn barn wood. But I’m in love. Love, I tell you.
It’s the new floor in my studio. Which I used to call ‘my office’ and though I likely will call it ‘office’ again, ‘studio’ is much more given to creativity and inspiration.
So. Studio.
Cute Redhead and I decided last week that the old had to go. Meaning I had no idea the old had to go until Cute Redhead told me that we both decided it needed to go. Welcome to marriage, boys lol.
I considered taking a photo of the place in its current state but I’m afraid of a lawsuit because you reached for bleach to pour into your eyes. It’s that bad. What was supposed to be something closer to a caramel-leather kind of color when the afternoon sun graced the hue, turned out to be more orange. And the white ceiling accented the deep chocolate brown of the table tops just enough to make me realize one day: I was working in a giant bowl of candy corn.
And the carpeting? You don’t even want to *cough*shag*cough* know.
I ripped out one wall-length table which was where my laptop and drawing tablet used to reside. Which forced me to move things along, like it or not. I eyeballed the Mayline light table sitting in the corner and grabbed the screwdriver to tighten up the wobbly legs and had a temporary workstation in nothing flat. The light table you’ll see soon when I fire up the cameras and walk you through a variety of design projects. Particularly cartooning. It’s an indispensable tool in my arsenal which I’ve had since 1993. Wasn’t cheap either, but you can’t even find them used nowadays for the price I paid. Worth its weight in gold.
Also too high to work comfortably. Enter the new desk. I found this online and unless Cute Redhead can smoke another out of the upcoming weekend markets, it’ll find its new home in the middle of the room as soon as I can get the place ship shape. Once that’s set up, the light table top will be removed from the base and set atop the remaining shelf on the other side of the studio.
I know you’re all atwitter with this information and can now go on with your life safe in the knowledge that my studio is coming together nicely.
(You’re welcome).
And it is coming along nicely. Paint, floor, new blinds on the window, just like Cute Redhead and I agreed on. Oh and a 53″ HD flat screen TV with Bose surround sound system and leather theatre chairs, which I haven’t bothered her pretty little head about. I see no need to mention the small things.
(Let’s just see how often Cute Redhead reads any of this, shall we?)
It’s Show Time!
Welcome to the Waltzing in Perdition Studio. Here we’ll get into some home-made video tutorials showing you some practical Photoshop tips and tricks—and some over-the-shoulder cartooning (something I’ve never shown anyone)!
Check back soon for updates as the newest videos start rolling out.
