We are in the season of ghosts and spirits. The time from the beginning of October until the end of December is a time of haunting. The world gets dark and cold. The dead and other spectral beings wander. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens isn’t an anomaly. Dickens was working with the tradition of his times. In many places Christmas was a time to tell ghost stories. With the exception of Carol, in modern America we push scary stories aside. Halloween is consider the cut-off date for spooks. Carol likely endures because it has a happy, family friendly ending. And it’s in public domain so anyone can adapt it or use it as a template.

I bring this up because one of my recent commissions let me lean into the season. The client wanted an illustration that echoed one of those old black and white cartoons from the 1930s – a detailed old haunted house with toony ghosties coming out the windows. Like this …

The client doesn’t have a website up yet for this project but when he does I’ll be happy to share a link.

Yesterday (here in America) it was Thanksgiving. We’d celebrated the holiday a couple of weeks ago when I had a Long Weekend. Our housemate wanted to celebrate on the actual holiday so we had more friends over and ate tacos. There was ground turkey in the tacos so the meal wasn’t completely untraditional.

Today I’m going in to work at 6 am. The busy season for USPS has arrived. Not that it has slowed down.

So, less words. A few sketches –

Thank you for accepting this email. Or for dropping by the website.

Reminder that I have a calendar available at my Zazzle store. And lots of schtuff at my Redbubble store.

This is the last email that you’ll receive from tinyletter. All future newsletters will come from my regular website. Most of you should be subscribed now to emails from skookworks.com so you’ve been getting double emails every Friday. So this should also be your last double email.

Take care. Be kind. Have some eggnog. See you next week!

Greetings fellow travelers on this planet as it spins around its sun as that sun spins around its galaxy as that galaxy travels through the cosmos!

We’re on the move folks!

Today is the fifth day of my “Long Week”. I’m working six days from Monday to Saturday.

This has followed my “Long Weekend” – that time when my rotating days off came together to give me three (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) days off in a row. Since Veteran’s Day came on Thursday I ended up with a lovely four day weekend. We took advantage of this time to have friends over on Saturday for an early Thanksgiving. Since I’ve been working for USPS Thanksgiving has often felt like a rushed event rather than a celebration. This year we got to plan and cook and relax. It was lovely. The leftovers disappeared a little too fast though.

Rain. Earlier than necessary darkness because we keep repeating the time change thing even though it no longer serves its purpose. Cold. Winter has arrived. So this is another short newsletter. A few pages of sketches and a sales pitch at the end.

The Sketches –

The Sales Pitch –

I run two online stores that feature my art on schtuff. If you like my art and want it on schtuff, please check them out –
The Skookworks Zazzle Store
The Skookworks Redbubble Store

Thank you for dropping by! May your days be pleasant and your nights be warm and comfortable.

See you next week!

Good morning! Happy Friday! Feliz Navidad!

Last Sunday I entered the tinyletter subscriber list into the skookworks subscriber database. You should have gotten a request to confirm that new subscription. This week and for the next two weeks you should be getting two versions of this email. The first version will come from tinyletter.com and the second will come from davidleeingersoll.com. (Davidingersoll.com and skookworks.com are all parked on the small internet address but davidleeingersoll.com is considered the primary one.) If you don’t get two copies of this email please check your spam filters.

From December 3rd on I’ll just be sending this newsletter from skookworks. Thank you for your patience with transition.

These Days …

We have a new new manager at the USPS station where I work. I don’t yet have a strong opinion on her. She seems like she’s both confident in her abilities and willing to listen to input from the carriers. We’re still short staffed and we’ve still got a lot of vehicles that need repair. The vehicle that is assigned to my route has needed a new engine and a headlight replacement for about a month now. It’s been sitting sadly in the parking lot, untouched and unloved. Every day I come to work and the supervisors have to figure out which route has an available vehicle for me to use.

Bleah.

Not Quite It

The last few weeks I’ve shared pages from my sketchbook. Mostly the sketches were practice – me working out random ideas rather than developing a specific project. The following sketches are my first attempt at working out illustrations for my 2023 calendar. Maybe.

One of my recent commissions was a recoloring job on a series of illustrations of the zodiac originally done by a famous artist in the 1940s. (I’ll post examples and links to project when it’s ready to be published.) That inspired me to consider doing a series of zodiac illustrations of my own. I thought a post-apocalyptic version of the signs would be fun – mutants and monsters and Mad Max style survivors.

I got six sketches done before deciding that this wasn’t the direction I want to go. Part of the idea process is figuring out what doesn’t work. These are a little too serious. I want bigger and louder and more ridiculous.

In the meantime, here’s half a zodiac.

Aquarius

Aries

Cancer

Sagittarius

Leo

Taurus

—–

That’s it for this edition. Short and simple. Be well. Be good to each other.

See you next week!