Friday. Friday. Friday.

It arrives once a week. Millions of people anticipate it because Saturday follows after. I work most Saturdays so Friday has an appeal for other reasons.

YOU!

Welcome back!

Read on!
(Or scroll down the page and look at the pictures. I don’t mind.)

These Days …

We’ve been having a lot of sunny weather here in Seattle. It’s warm enough for short sleeves to be comfortable while cool enough to make being outside pleasant. Since most of my USPS job requires me to be outside I’m happy with that situation. The station has been requiring mandatory overtime on most days. We’re short carriers and clerks at my station and looking to hire.

Beyond that I don’t have much to say about the day job that I haven’t said before. Maybe next week.

Promises to Keep

The Heap was germinated in 1918. Baron Eric Von Emmelmann, a German fighter pilot, was shot down over a Polish swamp. He didn’t exactly die. What exactly happened to him is open to conjecture. He loved his wife. He had a new born son that he had not yet held. He was very stubborn man. Perhaps that stubbornness, that will to live kept a spark in his body as it was subsumed by the swamp. Perhaps the occult activities in which his ancestors were rumored to engage made his reformed body a revenant. Faerie beings in the swamp and/or the goddes Ceres have also gotten credit. Whatever the cause, flesh was replaced by mulch and moss and fungus, bones by roots and stems and vines. It took a decade but the spark held and grew and, in 1928, the Heap pulled itself from the muck and headed home.

The way was fraught with danger and horrors. The Heap seemed to be a magnet for evils both human and supernatural. He battled vampires and werewolves and more mundane evils.

Not surprisingly, the Von Emmelmann family reunion was strained. His former wife had married his former best friend. His son was now a ten year old boy. His estates were in ruin. He was no longer human and, having no vocal cords, could not speak. But they were all practical, rational people even when faced with the impossibility of the Heap. They reconciled. The former Baron let go of his former life and his spirit left the Heap.

The Heap remained. It wandered the world, a mostly mindless creature. It continued to encounter and defeat all manner of menaces.

From 1951 until 1963 the Heap housed the mind and spirit of Jeremiah Cartier, an African spiritualist and adventurer. He and his family defended the world from secret occult conspiracies and supernatural dangers.

In the mid-1970s the Heap bore the mind of Jesus Robertson, a former crop duster pilot. His human body died in a plane crash and his mind transferred to the Heap when it pulled him from the wreckage. He had a variety of adventures before he settled down on his parents’ farm to help them through their remaining years. When they passed away his spirit left the Heap.

These days the Heap is inhabited by the spirit of Isabeau Bienvenu, a former Air Force pilot, bartender and DJ. She lives in Mississippi with her young niece and two adopted orphan girls. Of course they fight monsters and menaces from beyond on a regular basis. That’s part of the package of being the Heap.

Shop Talk

I’d thought that, when I reached 100 designs, I would start replacing some to keep to a nice even 100 but, after updating a few older designs, I’ve changed my mind. There are a few images that I plan to replace with completely new versions. But the more I work on this project the less I want to limit it. I’m having fun. The “Explore Designs” pages give me a more expansive and easily updatable portfolio than I’ve currently got on my own website. So, on beyond one hundred.

This forest god illustration is a bit cramped.

So I’ve given the old creature more room to move …

The next piece is a bit different. I did the original back in 2015. I had finally gotten settled enough in my USPS carrier job that I could make time to do art again. I’d started posting new illustrations to my website. I was just working in black and white at the time. I didn’t yet have the energy to work in color.

When I was going through my desktop to find the original photoshop files of images I was planning to update for the shop I was reminded of this piece. I liked it when I did it. I still like it.

Between 2015 and now I’ve had a lot of practice drawing digitally so expanding the original image was easy. And fun. Adding color was even more satisfying.

This is currently design #98 in the Redbubble store.

And that’s it for this week. Take care of yourself and those you love. Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll. You know the drill.

See you next week!