Welcome back to another edition of the Skookworks Newsletter! I hope the previous seven days have treated you kindly. If they did not, I hope you gave them a stern talking-to so that they improve their performance in the coming days.

As for me –

These Days …

More doctor visits about family medical issues. These were new and different issues than last week. Fortunately, the news was good. Therapeutic rest, along with slow exercise, is the prescription.

Not for me. I’m still delivering mail. We’re still understaffed and overworked. The post office is consistent.

My postal truck broke down on Wednesday. We have specific trucks assigned to each route. It endured through almost my entire shift, including having to deliver part of another route, before giving up the ghost at an unscheduled stop. Normally I’d delivered that particular mail into a mailbox at the side of the road without having to turn off the engine but, that day, I had to deliver the customer’s mail to their front door. Their mailbox had been infested with ants and they were trying to kill off the poor buggers. I delivered the one catalog that I had for them, got back in the truck, turned the key … and … nothing. I’d been having more and more trouble starting the vehicle as the day went on so I wasn’t really surprised.

I delivered the rest of that swing on foot (normally it’s a mounted section of my route), then walked over a street and delivered the last of my mail. I called a supervisor and got a ride back to the station to clock out. My truck was left parked in front of the ant infested mailbox, waiting to be towed back to the station.

Thursday, that is, yesterday, I came to work expecting to have to drive another route’s truck. Surprise, surprise, the vehicle maintenance guy was already there fixing the problem. I got to deliver with my own truck. Yay!

When the biggest excitement of the work week is a temporary broken down truck, I guess it’s not a bad work week.

The Lovecraft Kids

Back in 2019 I did one of my favorite jobs – color illustrations for The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection for Golden Goblin Press. I’m stealing the description of the book from Golden Goblin’s website –

I showed this process GIF of the cover illustration when the book was first published.

Illustrating the book was a challenge. Every illustration would feature all six of the Morgan cousins, the location where the action of the scene was occurring and usually a few other characters. That meant I had a lot to draw, often in a small space.

I did the above “old tyme” version of the cover image for the fun of it. It ended up being used for the cover of the fiction collection.

Included in the kickstarter for the RPG was a companion book of fiction featuring individual stories for each of the cousins. I did an black and white illustration for each story in the volume.

I will be posting my illustrations from the book here in the newsletter over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

Surrilana Sketching

I have an Intuos 5 Wacom tablet. It’s at least ten years old. It got a lot of use. When I replaced my old computer I went for a while without doing much illustration. I was mostly writing and the art that I was doing didn’t need the pressure sensitivity and variation of line that the tablet was good for. When I did try drawing digitally none of the lines varied. I’d been chalking that up to the age of the tablet and been thinking that it might be time to get a new tablet.

Before I did that I decided to do some research. Maybe I’d turned off some settings or made changes that I hadn’t realized? In the process of researching it occurred to me that maybe I needed to update the drivers. And that’s when I figured out that the folks who’d set up my new computer hadn’t installed Wacom tablet drivers on the computer at all. The tablet had been functioning as a second mouse.

Once I actually installed the tablet’s drivers I suddenly had a new tool to play with.

And what’s the best way to learn a tool?

Practice!

And what else did I want to learn?

Mastering Clip Studio Paint!

And what project to I want to make progress on?

The Surrilana Depths!

So I’ve combined practicing using the tablet with learning CSP by sketching concepts from the story.

Below is my pencil sketch.

Then the process GIF.

And the final illustration.

I’m trying to do as much of the finished work as possible in CSP. I’ve fallen back on Photoshop a few times for things that I didn’t want to take the time to figure out in CSP. I’m sure that CSP can do those things but I haven’t figured out where in the program those features are.

Last week I posted the page with the first four sketches that I’m working from. I did another twelve while waiting in a doctor’s office on Saturday.

I’ll be posting finished sketches, sometimes with process GIFs, sometimes not, over the next few weeks. Once I’ve finished this set, I’m going to try doing a set of drawings entirely digitally, from sketch to finished colors.

Practice, practice.

I hope your week goes well and that, whatever projects you’ve got on your plate, you’re enjoying working on them.

See you in seven!