My Mutant Ability
Sunday, January 27th, 2008Back when I used to read a lot of Marvel comics there was a character in the New Mutants named Doug Ramsey. I’m not sure if he’s still around. I think he was killed off, but that never means anything in comics. I remember the character because he was hanging around with the other heroes but didn’t have any superpowers. Ironically, it turned out he did have a mutant superpower which was the ability to understand languages. What a weenie power (in superhero terms anyway)! I loved it!!
Anyway, I’ve discovered I have a mutant ability almost equally as useless. I can draw pretty close to a perfect circle. When I started drawing the sky kayak, I didn’t want to use a template or anything for the balloon because I wanted it to look a little uneven as if the air inside it was shifting around. As I was drawing it over and over and over, I began to realize my circles were looking pretty good. Occasionally, I check one of my pencil sketches out after I’d scanned it in to Photoshop, and it’d be almost spot on. It kind of freaked me out.
Of course, then I’d go over it in ink and screw it up. I don’t know how it is with other artists out there but drawing a long curved line is the toughest thing for me to do with a pen, especially if I go back over it with a brush or something to try and add some weight to the line. So I guess in the end I got the uneven character in the balloon that I wanted. Funny how things work out like that.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I /loved/ Doug Ramsey. Such an awesome character. His power applied to ANY language, too — throughout the universe, if I recall correctly.
Because of his physical weakness, he teamed up with Warlock regularly, and he did die eventually, but after Warlock also died, they came back as a hybrid called Douglock. That’s right about the time I stopped collecting comics, so I can’t tell you anything from there, though.
Also, I remember hearing in high school that there is some portion of the population that has a natural talent for drawing perfect circles, and that having the talent correlated strongly with some other beneficial (but totally unrelated) trait. I don’t recall the other trait, and I have no idea how accurate this idea is, but it makes interesting food for thought.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Hey Don. Thanks for reminding me about Warlock. I had completely forgotten that character. He was a great one, too. I remember the way Bill Sienkewicz drew him was so cool. I don’t remember the Douglock character, but that’s probably just as well.
So drawing perfect circles correlates with some other trait, huh? With my luck it’s probably something like bed-wetting, although I guess that’s not beneficial.
Uh, not that wetting the bed is a trait I possess.
January 29th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Drawing perfect circles and straight lines is pretty awesome and I think it has been linked to genius, as far as mapping the brain. I think DaVinci and/or Jefferson had that ability. Jefferson could also write with both hands at the same time, and if I recall correctly, in two different languages simultaneously. I may be remembering wrong, though.
January 30th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Hey Arik. That’s really cool stuff. I wasn’t aware of any of that about Thomas Jefferson, although I had heard what a smart guy he was. I think the trait that those two shared that made them genius’s wasn’t the ability to draw circles so much as they were both insanely curious about everything. What I do know about Jefferson was that there wasn’t really a subject that he hadn’t researched or didn’t know much about. He was interested in it all.
Straight lines are a purely mechanical thing. You pull the pen or pencil with your shoulder as opposed to your hand so you’re using your whole arm when you draw it.
Like DaVinci always did, I can write backwards so that you have to hold your writing up to a mirror to read it. It’s actually pretty easy. I think the trick is you have to get your mind to think of the letters as shapes instead of letters, if that makes sense. Once you get oriented like that, then you can go crazy writing stuff and impressing all your friends.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I love how you just bring in an airplane every now or then…
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:06 pm