Good morning fabulous reader! Thank you opening this email. The only viruses it contains are love and appreciation.

These Days …

Cleviosity is not a recognized word. Not yet. It’s a term invented by Patrick McLean. He says, “Cleviosity (or Cleviousness) is my term for when you are trying so hard to do something smart that you wind up doing something stupid”. He has an essay about his own Cleviosness here.

I’ve been using the word frequently since I read it. There’s a lot I do that’s intended to have one result but ends up producing different ones, ones that could have been predicted if I had thought three or four times instead of just twice. This newsletter is a good example. I started it because I’d been reading a lot of other email newsletters and I found a lot of them inspirational. I’ve been writing it in part so I get practice writing. Writing and producing writing to deadline. And I’m getting that – the experience of writing and producing a newsletter to a weekly deadline.

The thing is … I want more practice writing and drawing comics. Writing a newsletter gives me practice stringing words together. Comics are not words. Yes, most comics have words in them. Yes, most comics start with a written script. But a comic story is not a newsletter. I can ramble on here for a few hundred words and get a satisfying product. I don’t have to plan much.

A comic story requires more planning. Whether the story is five pages or five hundred, each page needs to be composed so that the images can be read clearly. If there’s dialogue it needs to be considered while planning the page so it can be read cleanly. Too many words can overwhelm the images. If the story requires a page count it must be planned so that the action is presented well.

A newsletter is not a comic book. Also, the audience for a newsletter might not be the same audience for a comic story. Not everyone who reads this newsletter will want to read my comics. Heck, not everyone who subscribes to this newsletter opens it. Not everyone who opens it reads it, I know some folks just look at the pictures.

That’s fine. Really. I long ago stopped worrying (much) about the results of my creative endeavors. I do notice the results and, when the results aren’t what I was hoping/planning on, I make adjustments.

Putting out this newsletter on a weekly basis is useful. I do get practice hitting deadlines and writing prose. I made a commitment to put out this version of the newsletter for a year and I will. We’re now far enough past the half way point of 2021 that I’m thinking of how I want the newsletter fo function in 2022. I have some ideas. If you’re one of the folks who reads each issue, I’d love to hear your feedback.

In the meantime I need to figure out how to add “write and draw comics” into my schedule.  Hopefully I’ll manage it with less cleviousness this time.

Transmission 02

Wilhelmina Grace arrived gently. The transimission process was supposed to work that way. The machines were supposed to calculate a stable arrival point for the subject and desposit it there precisely. Theory and application were not always the same. Grace was relieved that this arrival had actually gone as designed.

She was disconcerted that the transmitter had placed her on top of some sort of stalk. She wondered it was a plant or a fungus and recognized that she was attempting to apply Terran biological classifications to organisms existing in otherdimensional realms. She also recognized that she would need to maintain her balance on this stalk for the ten minutes until the transmitter forwarded her to the next destination. The transmitter would find her if she moved but she realized that she could see the ground from where she was balanced. All she saw were waving stalks and floating creatures.

She was beginning to think that the ten minute destination visit idea might have been poorly thought out. 

Expansions

I’ve been continuing to update older images to better fit on merchandise in my Redbubble store. I’ve realized that most of my earlier images were composed as if they were comic book panels. I tried to fill all the available space as if I only had so much space available. That meant, when I tried placing the images on a variety of different products I’d often either have to crop out cool parts of the image or just not place the image on some products. Fortunately most of the work I’ve done in the last five years exists as large, layered photoshop files. I can make adjustments to sizes and lines and colors pretty easily.

Singing for Shub Niggurath 

The original –

The updated version. More space at the top and bottom of the image, more flesh on the singer, and simplified colors.

It Came From the Landfill

The original – inspired by creature in the movie The Milpitas Monster.

The updated version – more room at the top of the image, more vibrant (lurid?) colors.

Three Girls and the Heap

The original –

THe updated version – more room at the top and left side. Highlights on the figures.

And that’s it for this week. I appreciate you spending some of your no doubt limited attention here.

Get some rest. Say hi to friends. Give your work the love it deserves.

See you on the 27th!