Badgetoons – Page 3 – Comics , activism

The Creators Desires

In Buddhism there’s desire and renunciation, renunciation giving up of things for a greater happiness. If we follow our desires around we only end up wanting more, how many comics do I have and how many more can I get? In drawing comics commercially the first desire was always for more work, financial success of big royalty checks, movie deals fame and fortune. These often conflict with the ideals and desires of a young revolutionary who thought I could promote world revolution with comics.

On top of this I had my own artistic interests that took me far outside what any publisher was interested in. When I went to art school I had all these mature, sophisticated cool teacher of 35 to 40 who taught the first year Illustration students, life drawing, composition and color and design. They sent us off to Soho (it had galleries once), The Met and the Modern. I went into art school thinking Barry Smiths’ Conan was the highest achievement of western civilization. Came out of art school wanting to do comics that integrated Kandinsky, Klee and Albers and life drawing into super heroes.

The mission statement was set and my destination was out in front of me. Everything since has been figuring out the path.

Buddhism

Stop the Brain Farts

The worldly Winds howl into the brain and start generating farts as hit it, if I’m not careful I can spend the day farting. It’s like a circle of farts as Pleasure & Pain, Praise & Blame, Gain & Loss, Fame & Disrepute bounce my head around in circles from my own behavior to all the horrible demons I have to live with.

In meditation the most common solution to any problem is to go back to paying attention to the breath, the pleasure, refreshment and wonder of the breath coming in and going out. If you stop and watch, you can develop it like a craft, sure I’ve been breathing all my life but I haven’t paid any attention to it. It really is a learned skill to notice a small physical breath and what is pleasant in the breath and what exactly is unpleasant.

Everyone assumes that if you sit down to meditate the lotus pose and a little chanting empties out your skull. It’s never worked that way for me and the thoughts just keep popping up, what happens now is I see a thought and I don’t have to chase after it like a deranged hound dog. I just go back to my breath.

Unfortunately Worldly Wind Farts can often keep stinking up the place. That’s when the next paintbrush in the craft comes out.

Teaching

Desires of Comics

In considering thought Buddha broke it down into two part, the cognitive, as in here’s all the crap I know about doing comics, and in the action oriented thoughts, the intentions you create. And in all of this there’s two sides of this the thoughts one controlled by desire, ill will and harmfulness and the opposite of this Renunciation, Good will and non-harmfulness.

So what are my desires in drawing comics? Of course I want to draw “good” comics in itself a well done comics page can be fun and a pleasure to create. But obviously drawing comics should make me filthy rich and praised from the mountaintops. Hollywood should be making movies of my work and I should be hanging with the movie stars. Buddha calls this 4 of the Eight Worldly Winds, things that happen in the wold, they are all Pleasure & Pain, Praise & Blame, Gain & Loss, Fame & Disrepute. Reviewing my work I’ve seen all of these howling through my life.

So the next question is how to deal with my desire to draw comics? That’s tomorrow’s challenge.

Teaching

An Intention of Doing

To just breathe actually requires a fair amount of attention, developing the craft of watching things come up and letting them go. That intention is the first thing to set which is for sense input, a creaking wall can generate a hundred thoughts of doom says the homeowner. Bad smells can create even more doom. But if you look at those sense inputs (which include thoughts) and realize they can create only three kinds of feelings positive, negative and neutral, the hundred thoughts of doom are fabricated out of the labels you apply to it, you then group those labels into stories and soon you’re worried about your houses collapse.

Understanding that process is going on almost continuously as we live is important because then you can say, just a negative feeling and stop there. That process of noticing this sequence is what you are doing over and over again.

IN doing a drawing breaking your craft down helps immensely in setting your intention for your work. Make a list of what you are doing when you draw, gesture, composition, form, light and shade, costume, expression. Then do just that, one panel at a time. It’s just to easy to jump into an expression, a costume detail or a cool little background piece when I am working on a composition and or a gesture.

The moment I go off of just that one thing is when the problems start and my brain wanders off seeing something that creates a negative or positive feeling. Evaluation happens when you finish the drawing not when you are working.