Welcome to the latest issue of the Skook Works In Progress newsletter. Thank you for looking at the pictures. If you also read the words, thank you again! I’ve been making good progress converting the scans of hand drawn cards into printable designs. Some of that is because mail volumes have dropped since Christmas giving me a little more time at home in the evenings. Some of that is my current tendency to wake up before my alarms so I have a little time after the coffee kicks in and before I have to start getting ready for work. Everything I’ve been worked on so far in 2021 is in my Zazzle shop.

Card Conversions

If you’ve read previous issues you know I am upgrading a series of hand drawn cards into slicker, hopefully more marketable designs. Here’s this week’s set of befores and afters.

Bunny Dracula

And here is the final version –

Bunny Mummy

Of all the “classic” monsters, the Mummy is my least favorite. The original Mummy movie (and its remake) are a lot of fun but they don’t really feature the shambling bandage zombie that most of us picture when we think of “the Mummy”. Oddly, this bunny mummy card illustration is one of my favorite bunny monster designs. He looks so much happier than the human mummy monsters.All the “classic” bunny monsters come bearing flowers. They don’t want to kill you. Probably. 
Hase Nosferatu

Dracula has acquired a reputation as being a sexy fellow. That’s fine. I don’t think he comes across as sexy in the original novel but that’s me. I’d seen versions of Dracula in picture books when I was a kid but my first encounters with “real” vampires was in Montague Summers’ book. I read that in grade school. Those vampires were a long way from being sexy. The “hideous bloodsucking corpse” is what I think of when I think of vampires. So I have a fondness for Nosferatu. Any line up of bunny monsters had to include a bunny Nosferatu. 
I tweeked the colors a bit for the revised version. Red seemed more in keeping with a vampire than violet. 
A Little Dino

I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I could tell you the names of most of the dinosaurs that had been discovered by the early Seventies. Between then and now the number of known species and our understanding of them has expanded beyond what I can pay attention to. When I was a kid, we were told that dinosaurs were dumb, slow moving lizards who became extinct because they just couldn’t hack it in a rapidly changing environment. Now we see them as the relatives and ancestors of birds who were wildly successful and needed the impact of an asteroid to unseat them as rulers of the earth. Yet, in my mind’s eye, I still see dinosaurs as more reptilian than avian. Even when you know better it takes a lot of work to overcome childhood conditioning.

Apparently I have a thing for blue butterflies. That’s seems to be my fallback color when I depict a butterfly.

Pup Mug

In 2019 I posted an image a day to my website. The images were done in “widescreen” or “landscape” format. It turns out that size ratio works pretty well on coffee mugs so I’ve been converting my favorites of those drawings to drinkware.

This one required very little editing. I extended the backgroud to cover more of the circumference of the mug. What a friendly trio!
Inspiration – The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster has written a lot of books. I’ve read very few of them. This is probably because, at the time I was reading the most science fiction, his books weren’t available. A big chunk of my science fiction reading was of books checked out from the library. A lot of what he wrote got published as paperback originals and, when I was a kid, the library didn’t stock paperbacks. The Man Who Used the Universe was published in hardback in 1983. It’s been reprinted a few times but, based on the bare bones nature of its wikipedia entry, I’m assuming it’s not one of Foster’s more popular works.
It tells the tale of a sociopath who rises through the ranks of the underworld and into power in legitimate business and politics. And makes the world a better place in the process. I’ve forgotten most of the details of the plot. What stuck with me was the idea that being an evil person didn’t mean you had to make the world a terrible place. If you thought ahead and considered consequences you’d realize that making the world a better place for everyone made the world a better place for youself.

This is one of the books that helped shape my character. I’m not a sociopath. I’m not terribly ambitious and I’m certainly not a master planner. I am selfish and self centered and empathy isn’t my strong suit.This is one of the books that suggested to me that those traits could be strengths. I could be big in my selfishness. I could be selfish about the world around me. I could include the well being of others in the self that I’m centering. I don’t need to feel others pain in order to recognize that they are in pain and do something about it. I can consider the longterm effects of my decisions and plan accordingly.

These Days …

On Friday I got an email notice from Zazzle –
“Unfortunately, it appears that your product, Stardust Superwizard Superhero, contains content that is in conflict with one or more of our content guidelines.

We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly.”

I checked the guidelines and responded –
“I’ve received your review of my product 16801659427862834 The Stardust Superwizard mug. Thank you for your vigilance of possible copyright issues.

The art used on the product is my own, slightly modified from art I posted to my website in 2019. The character, Stardust, is in the public domain and may be used by anyone. I researched this before I started producing art feature Stardust. I can provide links to my original website posting and the wikipedia article on Stardust if needed.”