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!