Tomorrow I’ll post the last sketch from this sketchbook. I’m mainly saying that so I have something to say. My brain is fuzzy this morning.

If anything on this page (from spring of 2000) was drawn for a specific project I’ve forgotten now. There’s a very rough something on the right side that looks like it could be the beginnings of a Weirdsmith mask. In which case the old guy could be the Weirdsmith’s poor burnt out human alter ego. But I don’t remember any details.

I did this illustration for the front of a thank you card in 2000. After a year of managing the Southcenter Half Price Books I’d finally gone to the main office in Dallas for training. This involved touring the Dallas area stores, hanging out with other new managers, meeting Sharon “Boots” Wright and the rest of the executive staff and generally having a grand time. Upon my return to Seattle I did up a card (the final art was in color) and sent thank yous to some of the people I’d met while in Texas. I’d meant to send thank yous to everyone but unfortunately I ran out of steam about halfway through the list.

I left Half Price Books soon after. Nizzibet and I moved to Portland and I ended up working as Assistant Manager at the Powells minifranchise at PDX. Sigh. I miss working in bookstores.

Bits of action from the King Roach story. I’m afraid that I’m not going to explain the context of any of this action. Sorry. I don’t have that much writing in me today.

Just enjoy the sight of a kid getting a hole blown through him and wonder about the rest.

This general character design (a hunchbacked creature with one limb and part of its body covered with blobby flesh) shows up a few times in my sketchbook. The design is like the name “Brian Daniels” – it will probably keep showing up until it either finds the perfect character to stick with or until it’s used on a character that appears in print somewhere.

The figure with the skeleton arm was an exercise in drawing something weird. While it may seem like most of what I draw is weird, weird is a relative thing. I don’t think most of what I draw is weird. Something becomes weird when it surprises me in odd ways. It’s a challenge to draw (or write or sculpt or …) something that surprises the artist doing the drawing. I can’t succeed at it that often. I have to both be drawing fairly well and relaxed enough to just draw something without having a mental picture of how it will turn out.

To the right of the figure is King Roach getting ready to toss a car at something.

Along the bottom of the page is some poor schmuck caught between a shoggoth and a giant Deep One. Sucks to be him.