Author Archives: skook

Skook WIP #10

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Well hello! It’s a delight to see you again! The constant insanity of the modern civilization doesn’t seem to be infecting you at all!

Me? I’m okay. There are been some bumps in the road but whether those bumps are problems or high points is something I’m still figuring out. I’ll talk about those next week when they are more sorted out. This week, let’s just talk about some art. We’ll start, as usual, with some greeting card conversions, before (scans of ink, colored pencil and marker drawings) and after (digitally cleaned up and edited) versions. (The final designs are available in my Zazzle shop.)

Carving Your Face

In America, Halloween is the season for giving faces to oversized, hollowed out squashes. This is, apparently, an evolution of an old European traditon of carving faces into hollowed out turnips. A long series of films to the contrary, it is not a season for killing teenagers. Killing teenagers is frowned upon by all right thinking people. If you’ve been thinking about killing teenagers, please consider carving pumpkins instead.

Admittedly, killing teenagers will give you more cardiovascular exercise. However, most teenagers are actually more entertaining when they are alive than otherwise. Pumpkins are much more entertaining as objects to carve than teenagers. Plus, you can roast the seeds for a tasty snack!

There are No Weak Kittens

One day Sarah, my fabulous wife, described herself as feeling “weak as a kitten”. That comment inspired this card design. She has the original.

That original was done on a sheet of 8.5×11 folded in thirds. For the version that’s in my shop I had a lot of fun moving and reorienting the elements to fit a standard 5×7 greeting card design. Climb those curtains baby!

A Bit of a Breeze

There you are, walking with your umbrella, staring at your feet, thinking out what you’re going to have for lunch, trying to keep dry and suddenly …

The wind gives you a new perspective!

The world is suddenly a much bigger place. So many colors! So many birds! So much moss on people’s roofs!

Love Is …

Time is short. Spend as much of it on the things that bring you joy in the company of those you love.

A little peace and some cuddling makes the chaos of the rest of the day so much more bearable.

Hail to the King!

Photoshop is a massive program and my knowledge of it is actually pretty minimal. I know how to do a few things fairly well but the program can do so much more than I use it for. Lately I’ve been practicing making gifs of my illustration processes. I save my work in layers so making gifs is fairly easy. This process gif is of one of my King in Yellow portraits.

Influences – Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones is the one of the first film directors I remember identifying. I didn’t really know what he did, I just knew I liked his cartoons more than most of the other cartoons I saw on television. The short cartoons were funny. The smart characters outwitted the buffoons. The drawings were attractive.
As an adult I can identify why I liked Jones’ work more than other cartoon short directors. His character designs are a mix of angles and long curves. His heroes were the smart guys. They succeeded by being more clever than their adversaries. When the clever ones crashed it was usually from failing to think out the ramifications of their latest plan. (Hello Wile E. Coyote!)

I saw most of his work on television. There was the regular Bugs Bunny show on Saturday morning and during the week there were blocks of cartoons that played on a local station in the afternoons. There was The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Horton Hears a Who. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. He drew a comic strip that ran in our local paper for awhile. I loved the art but it didn’t really stand out from the other strips. Jones was a master at motion and timing in film. His strip looked good but didn’t have the space to play to his strengths.


My Moe and Detritus/Misspent Youths comics owe a lot to Jones. The heroes (mostly) succeeded by being smarter than the bad guys, by being (mostly) calm in the face of chaos. Hell, I owe a lot of my personality to Jones. I got bullied and picked on as a kid. He gave me examples of characters who faced bullies and survived (and thrived) by being more rational and much weirder than their foes.

Model Sheeting the Super-Wizard

Last week I posted concept sketches and a model sheet process gif of the Heap. This week I’m posting concept sketches and a process gif of Stardust the Super-Wizard. (Superwizard? Super Wizard?)

The first thing I realized as I started sketching Stardust is that, in the original comics, his expressions were pretty much the same from panel to panel. They ran the gamut from stern to slightly more stern. I spent all of two seconds considering making my version of Stardust just as stoic and blank faced as the original before deciding, “Nah. That’s no fun!”


The original Stardust seems to be a giant – taller than regular humans. I made him about ten feet tall, lanky and stretched out. He’s a space wizard. Maybe he grew up in zero gravity. Maybe he grew up on a planet with lighter gravity than Earth. Maybe his practice of superscience has transformed his body. I’ll figure it out later.

Expressions!

I updated Stardust’s outfit slightly, more for the fun of it than because there was anything wrong with the original. I don’t question the fashion choices of technosorcerors.

That guy in brown standing behind Stardust? His name is Bill. He’ll be in most of the model sheets for size comparison. He claims he’s 5’10” but, you know guys, he may be exaggerating somewhat. He is on the taller side of average. The average height for men in the USA is 5’9″. Since I’m an American that’s the height I’m conditioned to think of when I have to think “taller than” or “shorter than” average when designing characters.

What do I plan to do with Stardust? When I know I’ll tell you!

These Days …

“Bad art is forever.”

I have a friend who likes to quote that when talking about why he noodles on all his projects and has abandoned many altogether. I get that. I want to be proud of the work I produce. I want it to be the best it can be. I’m also plagued with more ideas and images and thoughts than I will ever get down on paper. I plan the work. I do the work. I fix glaring mistakes. I resist noodling. I put it out in the world and leave it to the world to judge whether it is good or bad.

I will always see the faults in my work. Most creative folks can tell you everything that sucks about their work before they can point out what’s good. But art, good and bad, exists in interaction between the work and the audience. Once I put art into the world it’s no longer completely mine. I retain the copyright and the trademark but the interpretation? The judgment of goodness, badness, coolness, greatness? That belongs to the audience. And that’s great! Not because the creator is a bad judge of their own work (although they often are, both rightly and wrongly) but because humans are social animals and art is part of the conversation we have with each other.

I got an email recently about Misspent Youths, a comic book series I created back in 1991.

Hi, there! I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been a fan of Misspent Youths for a while now–since they came out, actually, when I was a disgruntled and disaffected teenager working in a comic shop. The shop I worked at brought them in and I snatched them off the shelf eagerly whenever they arrived, but for whatever reason (it might have involved the store eventually going under; it’s kind of hard to remember) I never got to read Issue #5. Flash forward three decades and my original copies have long since vanished into the aether and I’m in lockdown halfway across the continent from my hometown. Regardless, I got a hankering to read Misspent Youths again and found a set on eBay for a reasonable amount, so I ponied up my money and waited. Well, they arrived today and I couldn’t be more pleased. I’ve read the first issue again so far and it’s just as great as I’d remembered it (and captured much of the flavour from my hometown’s punk scene in the ’90s (minus the Pile and the cop homicide (though we sometimes wished it were otherwise)). Interesting characters, fun dialogue, compelling story–just great  all around. In any case, I just wanted to shoot you a quick line to let you know that those comics you put out all that time ago imprinted on and have stuck with someone since they came out, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to read the entire series through for the first time. Thank you very much for the quality read.

I thanked the author, Chris Eng, for writing, saying –

Your email made my day. I’m delighted that, thirty years later, someone would track down issues of Misspent Youths. I hope issue five was a good read!

He replied:
Issue five was, weirdly, really touching. I mean, it did bring back the shitty kitchen job I had in my teens (where I put up with the first of many exploitative managers but thankfully not a hostage situation), but the issue in general was a nice coda on the (too) brief tales of Detritus and Moe (and all of the other assorted and endearing members of the cast of characters). The series in general summed up my time in my hometown’s punk scene: all of us living as best as we could and looking out for each other while scraping bottom. Good times all round. (Also, can I just say that I would have loved to have seen Detritus and Moe in Bugtown? That would have been a hell of a story. I’m imagining the bizarre and intense meeting between Detritus and Hiroshima. Or the Pile jamming with the Bulldaggers.)

His letter did more than make my day, it made my week. I loved doing Misspent Youths. I loved the characters. Doing that book was fun and exhausting and satisfying and … unprofitable. The publisher didn’t make any money. I certainly didn’t make any money. I did draw 160 pages of comics in about a year while working a part-time job. Brave New Words (the publishing company – they also put out the first four issues of Oz Squad) put out more issues of Misspent Youths than any other series they printed. Cancelling the series was a mutual decision – the guy behind Brave New Words was reassessing his business plan and I wanted a break to improve my art skills. I’d planned to pick the series up again, to publish it myself.

Other things happened instead. My drawing skills did improve. I drew the Misspent Youths characters in some calendars that got printed at Kinkos and sold to friends. I got married. I moved from Santa Rosa, California to Seattle, Washington. My wife and I tried running a publishing company and put out few anthology magazines. I worked in a couple bookstores and as an office manager and now as mail carrier. In the thirty years since Misspent Youths I’ve illustrated/collaborated on a lot of projects (comics, RPGs, novels) that haven’t gotten finished. I’ve enjoyed that work. I got paid for most of it. I’ve improved my skills in the process. But I’ll never get any fan letters complimenting or complaining to me about that work. It sits, unfinished, in my files.

Bad art in the world is more fun than great art in a drawer. I’m not saying that Misspent Youths was bad. Not at all. I put my heart and soul into it. It was the best work I could do at the time. And it’s out in the world. Copies can be found on ebay and on comics specialty sites. If the internet crashed all the art on my websites would be unavailable but someone could still read an issue of Misspent Youths.

I’m a different person than I was when I did that book. The characters still keep me company but they’re older and wiser and (mostly) more settled. They wave to me from the back of my imagination. I love the idea of drawing comics but, so far, working as a mail carrier doesn’t leave me the time and mental energy necessary to do an ongoing series. Drawing is relatively easy. Writing takes more concentration than it used to.

So what’s my point?

Number One –
A big thank you to Chris Eng for writing! Chris has finished some projects of his own. He has a couple of novels available through Amazon: Molotov Hearts and ZeroWave. He didn’t ask me to include those links.

Number Two –
That project you’re working on? Finish it. Put it out into the world. Art is ephemeral. Do the best you can and let it go. What was brilliant once is often considered terrible by a new audience. What was obscure and forgotten originally can find new fans. But it needs to be available.

Yes, I’m talking to myself as much as to y’all.

Back to work. See you next week!

Skook WIP #9

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Welcome to the ninth issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter. You are a fabulous person and very good looking. Give yourself a gold star!

Greeting Card Conversions

In which I present a sampling of before (scans of the original ink and colored pencil/art marker drawings) and after (adjusted in Photoshop) greeting card designs. The final designs are available at my Zazzle store.

Probably Not Bob

In the January 15th issue of this newsletter I posted a card design featuring a beer drinking, cigarette smoking reptile. One of my reader’s asked if it was a portrait of Bob the Lizard. My response was, “Who?” The reader sent me an image of Bob saying that he was a character in the Grimjack comics published in the Eighties and Nineties. I read a good chunk of those Grimjack comics but I don’t remember much about them.

My beer drinking, cigarette smoking lizard is Aunt Hortense. She made her first appearance in The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus minicomic, issue 5. She’s the parental figure of a bunch of dimension hopping lizards. I published that minicomic in 1989. I don’t know when Bob the Lizard started showing up in Grimjack comics but the first issue of that series was pubished in 1983. Did Bob influence my creation of Aunt Hortense?

I don’t remember. What I do remember is that, sometime in the mid-Eighties, a good friend of mine got tattoos of some drawings I had done. One of those drawings was the silohuette of a lizard. I remember thinking, “I should draw more lizards!” From that seed came Aunt Hortense, Seth, Zerro, Lamallia, Missi and Willy. I first drew them as basically identical but, over the years, they evolved distinct appearances. Aunt Hortense got craggy and squarish. In the Nineties I featured the lizards in a series of xeroxed calendars and some issues of GLYPH magazine.

In recent years I’ve only drawn Hortense a few times. Once was the previous greeting card design. More recently was this portrait done for my tattoo sporting friend for her birthday.   

I didn’t do much to update the image for a greeting card. Hortense is not someone you mess with.

Good Buddies

This image is blatantly inspired by the Chuck Jones directed cartoon Feed the Kitty. I saw it as a kid on one of those afternoon cartoon shows and it stuck with me.

We all need friends and having friends who are very different from us is good for our character.

A Smile and a Dance

I have no idea what’s going on in this illustration. He’s happy so I’m happy when I look at him. That’s good enough for me.

Let the joy shine!

A Little Monster

Inside every big monster is a little monster that just wants a hug. And a cookie.

Giving this critter a cookie and a hug will not only bring you joy, it will keep you from feeling those claws and teeth. It is a monster after all.

Spreading the Heap Around

I did this drawing of the Heap as one of my daily sketches back in 2019. It’s one of my favorite pieces from that project so it seemed like it would look good on a mug.

To better fit a mug I extended the image, colored the figures and redid the background. Here’s a process gif showing the main stages.

I usually imagine there’s story behind my illustrations. The Heap and this girl are grooving at a night club. Why?

I don’t know. I often always know the story. I have to think about it.

The Heap as a DJ? As an MC? Maybe this image is part of an album cover?

Okay then.

And if it works as an album cover, why not on a t-shirt?

Okay then.


Influences – J.C. Leyendecker

It’s hard to discuss J.C. Leyendecker separate from Norman Rockwell. Rockwell is now the more famous of the two illustrators but Leyendecker came first. Rockwell idolized Leyendecker and his early style is strongly modeled on Leyendecker’s. I was glad to read that the two artists did become friends.

I love Leyendecker’s art for its precision. It’s deceptively simple. It’s all sharp angles and clean lines, geometry and design. All his characters, even the (rare) down and outers, have a sparkle to them. No grime.

Oddly, it was easier to find good images of Leyendecker’s work online than Rockwell’s. The link in my first paragraph will take you to a ten part blog series that features a wealth of his paintings. I only grabbed a few for flavor. The man did thousands of paintings – magazine and book covers and clothing advertisements.


It occurs to me that Leyendecker’s idealized men and women could have been models for the original comic book superheroes. The artists of early comics would have known his work. Today, he is a nostalgic footnote. In the late thirties and early forties, he was famous. It would have been hard not to think about Leyendecker’s work when you wanted to depict a heroic figure.

Character Concept Sketches and Model Sheets – The Heap

The Heap. The Face. Octobriana. Fantomah. Stardust. You’ll find depictions of all these characters in my shops. They are all comic characters who have escaped into the public domain. They are actually just a few of the comic characters who (mostly) debuted in the early days of the American comic book industry who are now available for anyone to use. So why am I  interested in this bunch?

Honestly, it feels like they found me. I didn’t go looking for public domain comic book characters to illustrate. I’ve participated in online remake/remodel challenges using other public domain characters and none of them stuck in my imagination.
Each character has a different appeal.

Stardust is a space wizard. His sorcery is of the “Technology so advanced as to seem like magic” variety.

Fantomah is a jungle vengence goddess.

The Face is … so basic he’s fun. He’s a guy who puts on a scary mask to fight crime. No superpowers. No tragic backstory.

Octobriana is a kick ass revolutionary.

The Heap is the original comic book swamp monster.

Until now, all my illustrations of these characters have been one-off images. I hadn’t considered drawing any of these folks on a reoccurring basis. Because of that they often look significantly different from version to version. I’m now past the “just get started” phase of creating merchandise in my shops and I’m moving on to the “create a consistent brand” stage.

That has meant doing what would have been preliminary sketches. These are to try out different versions of a character to see what looks good. I figured I’d start with the Heap. I’ve drawn him quite a few times over the years and his design is pretty simple. He’s basically a humanoid haystack with a sort of a carrot nose. In most of my illustrations I’ve given him some sort of eye. The Heap was drawn by a number of different artists during his original comic book run but most of them just gave him shadows where his eyes might have been. Having eyes means there’s more of a chance of having expressions so I decided to keep them. Most of my earlier versions have had some sort of roots and fungus on them. That gives a little variety to his design.

The Heap is a compost pile that’s come to life. It grew up around the body of a WW! pilot who had crashed his plane in a Polish swamp. It shambles about the world fighting monsters and human evil doers. 
Once I’d gotten a feel for the details of the character I set about creating a model sheet. I plan to do this with all the characters I will be using. Model sheets are usually created when a character is going to drawn by different artists in a variety of media (animation, comics, toys, breakfast cereal, whatever). It gives the creative team a base to work from. I’ve done model sheets for myself when I’ve been designing characters for comics and graphic novels. Most model sheets feature a character in a series of standing positions – front view, side view, back view. Most of my model sheets will have character in motion. It’s more fun to draw.

I basically stuck to my Big Swamp Boogie version of the Heap. I liked it when I drew it in 2019 so why not?

I’m mostly going to be showing my process work as gifs. I like watching an image as it evolves but, if you’d rather (or would rather also) see the different stages as separate images, just let me know.

These Days …

I like deadlines. But only deadlines that I’ve either given myself or negotiated with a client. I like them because they help me to structure how to manage a project. If something is due in two weeks I know I should be finishing at least 1/14th of it every day. I therefore know the minimum of work I need to complete. I also know that life happens and I may not be able to do 1/14th of the project every day so I aim to get 1/7 of the work done each day. That does not mean I push myself to do twice as much work as possible every day. I hate rush jobs. It means I’ve planned (or agreed to) a schedule that allows me to do good work at a comfortable pace in the time I have available outside of my USPS job and my responsibilities at home.

Last year’s newsletter was an exercise in getting myself to write on a regular basis. The art I posted was primarily from past projects. I published an issue a week. That was my goal and I met it. Yay me! My one frustration was that I wanted folks to subscribe and only a couple of people did so. Apparently the set up of my website made the subscription link difficult to find. I subscribe to a couple dozen newsletters. I don’t read every issue but having them show up in my inbox reminds me that they exist. So for 2021 I decided to use an email newsletter service to see if that would make it easier for readers to sign up. A number of the newsletters I read are hosted by tinyletter.com. Most of the rest are hosted by substack.com. Substack allows writers to charge for subscriptions. Tinyletter does not. I don’t plan to charge for subscriptions so I chose tinyletter.

Because I like being ahead of a deadline I started setting up emails. At the moment I’ve got images prepped (and some writing about those images) for newsletters into April. The first seven newsletters went out with no problem. You folks subscribed. Thank you!

Last week I hit a snag. I pressed send on issue 8, went to have a cup of coffee and came back to this message –

“Your account has been flagged by our abuse prevention system. Our team reviews all accounts for Compliance with our Terms of Use. If your letter has not been sent after 12 hours, please reach out to our Support team with the username for your account.”

Issue 8 was stuck in limbo and, most annoyingly, I didn’t know why. Was it the Rockwell images? Was it the joke about the red canid with the trumpet? Did I have too many links? I read the Terms of Use. I checked FAQs. I missed my Friday posting deadline. Phooey. After 13 hours the newsletter hadn’t sent so I sent tinyletter an email asking for help. Friday became Saturday became Sunday. I

The really embarassing thing is that, having concentrated on putting together this newsletter for the last few weeks, I’d kind of forgotten that I still had a website. Having remembered I recreated the issue as a blogpost and sent out links via tinyletter as a test to see if it was just my 8th issue that was blocked or my whole account. Those links went.

On Monday morning I got a response from Stanley at tinyletter –

“Hi there,

Thank you for reaching out about your TinyLetter account. We’ll be glad to help offer some clarification here. 

Taking look at the account, it appears that our automated prevention system, Omnivore, detected content, keywords, or activity that can indicate the possibility of harmful information being sent through our service.

Upon review, however, we can see that the letter is fine and has been moved back to drafts where it can be resent. 

We appreciate your patience during our human review. As the specific keywords and content that Omnivore detects are constantly changing, we’re unable to provide a full list of all potential triggers, however if you run into any issues in the future, please reach out and we’ll be happy to assist. 

You can read more about our detection practices here:
http://mailchimp.com/omnivore/

Please let us know if you have any questions. We’re here to help. “

I responded, jokingly asking if it was my joke about the horny fox. Stanley then answered with –

“Hi David,

Thanks for the reply. For proprietary reasons I wouldn’t be able to divulge exactly what set off our system, but rest assured we’ve made adjustments to prevent it from stopping letters in the future 🙂

Let us know if you have any questions. Take care :)”

I sent out issue #8 on Monday afternoon. If you haven’t read it yet it’s available in both the tinyletter archives and my website. Hopefully you’re reading this issue on Friday morning in your email as planned. If not, check my website on Saturday. I’ll be reposting it there.

Hopefully you are also doing well and only a little stir crazy. I get outside as part of my job and I’m stir crazy. Hopefully you’re managing better than I.am. See you next week!

​

Skook WIP #8

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Welcome to the eighth issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter. Thank you for reading! Or at least looking at the pictures.

Greeting Card Conversions

As usual, we’ll look at a few before (ink and marker/colored pencil drawing) and after (Photoshop edited) greeting card designs. The final versions are all available in my Zazzle store.

Out of the Depths

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is my favorite of the Universal Monsters. Hanging out in the sea with fish seems like a cool way to live. I’m pretty sure I saw Revenge of the Creature before I saw the original movie. Of course I did a cartoon bunny version of the character!

All the Creature wanted was companionship. It was the last of its kind. Sure, it killed a few people but a lot of those people had it coming. If they’d left it alone it wouldn’t have gotten so aggro.

Hmmm. Companionship. Solitude. The eternal conflict of the sensitive soul.

Cuteness and Cuddles

Kermit claims that it’s not easy being green. It seems more likely that it’s just not easy being Kermit. A lot of my favoite things are green.

This critter has no problem being green. She’s got her ragdoll for company and a good set of specs to see the world in all its wonderful detail.

 

A Little Bit Shy

I mentioned last issue that I like dragons but I don’t often draw them because there are already a lot of great depictions of dragons out there. Still, once in a while, a dragon must be drawn. Even shy, self effacing dragons can make demands.

Yes, shy dragon. We see you. You’re a handsome critter. Please don’t set the furniture on fire.

Fox Music

I will not make a joke about a horny fox.
I will not make a joke about a horny fox.
I will not …

Ooops.

Shhhh. Don’t interrupt this solo.

Drink This

Greeting cards are momentary expressions. A mug is a necessity. One of the best surprises of my daily sketch project in 2019 is how many of those sketches were good drawings. And good bases for mug designs. Here are a couple of repurposed illustrations of two Fletcher Hanks’ most famous characters.

Stardust Superwizardry

Stardust is a superwizard. He uses highly advanced technology to punish evildoers.

When need arises he can multiply himself for extra wizardry. And to show off.

Fantomah Will Get You

Fantomah hates you. Fantomah hates just about everyone. Fantomah is not a people person.

If you value your safe human existence you will stay out of Fantomah’s jungles.

Influences – Norman Rockwell

I chose the following three Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations to represent my love of Norman Rockwell’s work because they are great comic strips. It’s fun to imagine that in some alternate world, Rockwell drew a Sunday comic. Or produced graphic novels.

Rockwell was prolific. Over 300 paintings for the Post. Over 4000 published paintings in his lifetime. Book covers. Interior illustrations. Movie posters. I love the detail and expression in his work. Every person depicted is unique. Every object seems to have a history. His images are moments captured, snapshots of an ongoing story.

Every time I look at his work I’m inspired to be a better artist, to pay more attention. To think about the story an illustration is encapsulating.

These Days …

I got lucky. I had a week off from USPS when Seattle got hit with a heavy snowfall. Snow was predicted at the end of that week so we got as many chores and errands out of the way as possible early in the week. We had light rain and clear days. It didn’t seem like snow was acoming.

We went to bed Friday night with a cloudy sky but that’s typical for Seattle. We had canceled plans to have a friend stay overnight because we were worried we wouldn’t be able to give her a ride home in the morning. It looked that might have been too much caution. We woke up with a few inches of snow on the ground and more falling. Between Friday night and Sunday afternoon we got 11 inches. On Sunday evening it started to rain. By Monday afternoon the roads were as safe to drive as they ever are.

Tuesday I went back to work. The mail for my route had not been delivered for three days. Saturday there had been too much snow and only the regulars delivered parts of their own routes. The mail for my route got cased up and left. Sunday was a regular day off. Monday was Presidents’s Day. There were Amazon parcel deliveries both days but I’m guessing they only concentrated what they knew they could get out. I started work at 6 am. I had a tub of unsorted mail left by carriers who didn’t know my route. I did a parcel run before I started sorting my route and I still ended up with a truck overflowing with parcels. (Literally. For the first two hours parcels would fall out of the back of the truck every time I opened the back.) Once it got dark I had to slow down. I put in a 15 hour day. It would have been longer but the night supervisor called me back to the station. I had to bring back two swings worth of mail.

I had spent my week off hanging out with Sarah, doing a lot of art and watching some good series via streaming. (No cable. We haven’t had cable in a decade.) I knew that my route would be a mess. I knew that mail would be heavy. I had gotten some rest. The sun came out and the day was relatively warm. So those 15 hours had some annoying parts but I did enjoy a lot of the day. I feel satisfied making chaos into order and getting mail and parcels to their proper places.

It didn’t hurt that I had Wednesday off. My body hurt but I got a day to recover. I got new tires installed at Costco. I have one of my old tires put in the trunk so I finally have a spare. During the last big snow (in 2018) I had run through a hidden pothole and shredded a tire. I discovered that my car didn’t come equipped with a spare in the trunk. Yes I should have checked sooner but since all my other cars had had them I just assumed that spares were standard. I am clearly not a car guy. Further evidence – my “new” spare is just a tire. It’s not a wheel, ready to just be popped on if needed. I had expected a wheel despite clearly not having an extra rim hanging around. Silly me. But it’s better than the nothing I had before.

My big sister came by with another “Corona Cooler” of her wonderful cooking. Puerto Rican pork ribs and red beans. Gluten free corn muffins. Lentil sausage soup. Gluten free Mexican chocolate upside down banana cake. She often exchanges the new cooler with the previous one after we’ve gone to bed but this time the sun was still up. We got to chat and give each other air hugs.

Thursday was a much shorter, easier day than Tuesday. Rain. Lots of parcels too big to carry in my satchel and therefore requiring extra trips. Still easier and shorter.

And now it’s Friday. Other parts of the country are getting a snowpocalypse that makes our weekend look like a tea party. I’m happy to complain about my week but I know it’s minor compared to the mess in Texas. If you’re in the middle of it I hope you are safe and warm. If you’re somewhere else I hope you’re safe and warm as well. Everyone should be safe and warm.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. See you next Friday!

Skook WIP #7

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Welcome to the seventh issue of the Skook Works In Progress newsletter in which I show off some art and write a lot of words. Thank you for joining me. The finished version of each image is available in some form at either my Zazzle or my Redbubble store.

Card Conversions

I’ve spent a few weeks converting scans of hand drawn greeting card illustrations into more print friendly images. The originals were done with primarily with black ink and art markers or colored pencils. The print versions have been been cleaned up and had color added using Photoshop.

Little Red Dragon

I love dragons. I haven’t drawn that many of them because lots of other artists who also love dragons so there are plenty of beautiful pictures of dragons already out in the world. But once in a while it’s fun to add my own depictions to the horde. 

Clearly this is a friendly dragon. It’s the sort of critter that hordes buttons instead of gold. 

Bunny Frankenstein Monster

This fellow is part of my series of classic monsters recast as cartoon bunnies. Because bunnies are terrifying.

I find it amusing that the Universal version of the monster is often depicted as green. He wasn’t intended to be. Charles Pierce, the designer of the creature’s appearance used green make-up because it looked better as grey when filmed in black and white. The original Universal Frankenstein films were all filmed in black and white but color publicitiy photos of the green make-up led the general public to believe that creature was supposed to be green.

An Ice Scream Dream

While I was doing bunny versions of classic monsters it seemed like a good idea to also do bunny versions of modern horror icons.

Three scoops!

Smile!

This critter is one of my favorite drawings. It’s so damned happy.

We all need some happy!

The Beast Within

Sweet and innocent outside. Big jerk inside. Your typical cat.

The original art was done as one of my daily art posts in 2019. I’ve now updated it as a design for a mug. 
Coloring Fluffy

I haven’t managed to do new work for my Redbubble store yet this year. When I do I’ll be sure to make gifs of the process. I’ve now made enough of them I can do it without having to google the process every time. Until I can do (and show off) that new work, here’s a gif of Fluffy putting on his Easter colors. 
Inspirations – Fletcher Hanks

Hmmm. Fletcher Hanks is both inspiration and … anti-inspiration to me. I’d read I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets, the first collection of his work, a few years ago. That got me sketching versions of Stardust and Fantomah. Since I’ve started to create merchandise featuring the characters I felt compelled to do a reread of the book. I discovered that there’s now a complete collection of his comics – Turn Loose Our Death Rays and Kill Them All. I was tempted to buy the book. I mean, I’d need it for reference, right?

Fortunately my skinflint side prevailed and I checked it out of the library instead.

Paul Karasik is the book’s editor. He loves Hanks’ work. This interview gives a good explanation why. His reasons make sense to me. Hanks was working at a time when the comic book industry and the superhero genre was being invented. He worked solo when comics were mostly being done assembly line. He had a big weird imagination. I admire that. I understand being a fan of something because it’s a weird seminal work.  
Now that I’ve seen all of it I’m also quite happy to not own any of his work. Besides Stardust and Fantomah, Hanks created the characters of Big Red McLane (a lumberjack) and Space Smith/Whirlwind Carter/Buzz Crandall (same guy, same girlfriend, different names – a riff on Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon ) and some one shot characters. 300 plus pages of Hanks is too much Hanks for me. Intellectually I get the raw appeal. He was one of the pioneers of early comic books. He was doing superheroes before the genre had been codified.
Unfortunately decades of comic reading – superhero, underground, manga, bande dessinee, etc – as well as drawing my own comics means that I have a hard time appreciating his comics as more than artifacts. Fantomah and Stardust are his stand out characters. They are more fascinating to me for their potential than for most of what Hanks did with them. They are in the public domain which means anyone can use them in art and stories. Other folks already have. That potential wakes my imagination. What could one do with a space wizard and a jungle vengence goddess?

These Days … 

So far, so good.

When I’m out delivering mail I’m often asked how I’m doing and that’s my answer. I wear my mask. I get my job done. I come home and do work that wakes me up.

Writing this newsletter and having my online shops has given me a focus that, until recently, I didn’t realize I was missing. I’ve enjoyed doing commissions the last few years. I’m proud of the work I’ve done. In between the commissioned work I did a lot of one off illustrations and posted them to my website. I did those for fun, for practice, to fill my time. Between commissions and one offs I kept pretty busy but everything I did was short term. If it was a commission, it had a deadline. If it was a one off it needed to be a small project because I was doing it around the commissions that had deadlines.

I finished my last commission in early autumn last year. With nothing on my plate I looked for something else to do. I considered setting up a Patreon account but I didn’t feel comfortable asking folks to send me money to just indulge my whims. If I was going to ask for support and subscriptions I wanted to be sure that I was providing something predictable. I was also interested in creating things that were real and physical, not just more digital ephemera.

And then I remembered that print on demand online stores existed. When something seems like a good idea I tend to dive in first and figure out what I’m doing as I go along. I signed up for a Zazzle store. I made some merchandise. I did some research and decided that Redbubble was a better platform for some of my work than Zazzle so I set up a store there too. Suddenly I had places to put all those one off illustrations I’d been doing between commissions.

As of this writing I have 174 products on Zazzle and 77 designs on Redbubble.Yes, none of this merchandise actually exists until someone orders it. That’s part of the fun. I’m creating potential products. I’m not putting up images that I think will sell. I don’t know what image will catch someone’s fancy. I’m delighted when someone orders something unexpected.

I’m now in the process of creating new art for my stores.I’m thinking more of specific designs. A cup design is not a greeting card design. What works on a t-shirt probably won’t fit on a mask. As I think of specific designs I’m also thinking of consistency and style and branding. Ew. Branding.

I don’t plan to apply a hard style to future work. I’m not going just do one type of image because I think it will be popular. I’m a terrible capitalist. I’m doing this for my own amusement as much as to sell things. Hell, I’m making art so I have something to write a newsletter about. By publishing this newsletter every Friday I’m prompting myself to make art to put in the shops. One thing leads to another and another and back.

The idea of branding comes up because I know I like consistency in the work of others so, probably, others would like consistency from me. I’ve got a number of characters I’m planning to use regularly. I’m creating model sheets of them so I can keep them recognizeable, consistent, from image to image. I’ll post those and other process sketches in the upcoming weeks. More art!

I’m waking up earlier so I have more time to work on the art, the shops, this newsletter before I head to USPS. I put in a little more time before I go to bed. (Big thanks to my wife for pointing me at my drawing board on those days when I think I just want to sit and stare into space.) Focus is … oddly relaxing. Instead of a lot of little projects I now have one (somewhat vaguely defined) project. It’s an evolving project. A work in progess. Heh.

Thank you for your help. You subscribed to this newsletter so I have to show up with something for you every Friday. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think would enjoy it. I welcome any comments or suggestions. Hit reply and start typing.

I hope your week has gone well. I hope you have the focus you want and projects that give you purpose. See you next week!

Skook WIP #6

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We’ve made it six weeks into 2021! Congratulations to us! It’s Friday and time for another issue of the Skook Works In Progress newsletter i.e. this email. Here. Look at the pictures. Read the words. Form an opinion about something and send me an email.

You don’t have to do that part. I already appreciate that you’re spending some of your precious moments here. Thank you!

​Card Design Upgrades

Here is the latest set of before and after greeting card illustrations. The originals are scans of hand drawn illustrations. The afters are available in my Zazzle shop.

Mamas Don’t Let Your Puppies Grow Up to Be Cowhounds

He’s a good boy. A very good boy! He won’t fetch your slippers but he will round up the herd.

He’ll also look darned good doing it. He won’t get dusty or mudsplattered and he’ll always have a smile.

Dancing ThunderI have a friend who is very fond of rhinos. This happy critter was done as a commission for her. Below is my scan of the original. 
And below this is the modified version. What kind of music would inspire a rhino to dance?More Tea?This illustration was originally done as a thank you for a friend.

It’s the image I’ve made the least adjustments to. I increased the contrast so that the blacks are more prominent and the whites are brighter. I also replaced my original signature with my signature chop.

Feeding the Birds

All my illustrations are moments captured from a story. I don’t always know what the story is. I’m often simply trying to capture an image I’ve seen in my mind’s eye. If asked I know I could find a story to fit the illustration. I could find many. I’ve read a lot of horror stories and seen a lot of Sylvester and Tweety cartoons so if asked I might go to those sources for inspiration. That would be my mind following well worn grooves. I know that’s not the story here. I had friendly thoughts when I started drawing. 
To me, the additional colors suggest that friendlier story. 
Fantomah Needs Coffee

I did this black and white drawing of Fantomah in 2019. I like the drawing and thought it would look good on a mug. 
I made some adjustments – extending the illustration, changing the background and adding color – to make the design work better on the new “canvas”. Below is my process gif. 
Influences — Bernie Wrightson

I loved monsters as a kid. Some things don’t change. I started reading comics in the early Seventies. At the time the Comics Code had started to loosen up and comics featuring supernatural monsters – werewolves, vampires and the like – started being published. My allowance was small so, to begin with, I couldn’t buy any of these new horror comics but I did skim through them on the stands. I didn’t have friends who read comics but I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon reading the comics of the son of a friend of my mom’s. This comic was among the books. I mostly remember having read it. The cover stuck in my memory more than the story it is depicting.

Apparently that issue sold well enough and that story (Swamp Thing) got enough positive responses that DC Comics decided to launch a series based on the character. My budget didn’t let me buy the comic but I did check out each issue when I saw it on the comics rack.

Time passed. My allowance got a little bigger. I finally decided to start collecting Swamp Thing with issue 24. It was the final issue of that version of the series. It was cancelled after that. 
I was able to catch up with the whole series when we discovered Perelandra, a comic book shop. By then my brother and I both had paper routes and, for us, significant spending money. Swamp Thing issues 11-23 were drawn by Nestor Redondo. Redondo’s art was good but it was the art of the first ten issues that really hit me. The illustrator for those issues (and the original short story in House of Secrets) was Bernie Wrightson. I’d seen a lot of comic book art that I liked and thought was well done. Wrightson was one of the first artists I saw who both drew the way I wanted to and in a way I thought I eventually could.

Besides Swamp Thing I also found Wrightson’s work in the Warren black and white horror magazines. His style was a wonderful combination of the cartoonish and the grotesque. He drew handsome men, beautiful women and hideous monsters in way that had them all seem to exist in the same world.

Outside of comics Wrightson is probably best known for his illustrated version of Frankenstein first published in 1983. His work in the book is insanely detailed. His depiction of the creature is one of my favorites. 
I met Wrightson once in 2007 when he was a guest at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. I had brought a copy of the first edition of his illustrated Frankenstein with me in the hopes of getting him to sign it. He looked at the book like seeing an old friend.

These Days …

At the end of each day I read a few pages from a book to Sarah. The last few years I’ve mostly read mysteries. We’ve got a stable of authors that we rotate through as their latest novel becomes available. We have two Sherlock Holmes adjacent series that are favorites – The Mycroft Holmes books by Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Anna Waterhouse and the Mary Russell books by Laurie R. King. The Abdul Jabbar/Waterhouse stories are prequels to Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories and focus on the adventures of Sherlock’s older brother. The Mary Russell books are sequels that feature the adventures of a young woman who becomes Sherlock’s partner and, later, wife. There’s a forty to fifty year gap between the events of each series. We finished the most recent Mycroft Holmes book, The Empty Birdcage, a few weeks ago. We’re currently reading Laurie King’s not quite latest: Rivera Gold. Surprise, surprise! Zedzed is major character in both books.

Who?

“Basil” Vasily Zaharoff was a Greek arms dealer and general no-goodnik who lived from 1849 to 1936. He was known as Zedzed to his friends. I don’t remember having heard of him before meeting him in these novels. Apparently he’s the originator of that evil supervillain plan where you start a war so you can sell weapons to both sides. (More Sherlock Holmesian connections – that was Moriarty’s plan in both the movies A Game of Shadows and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.) When he appeared in Birdcage I had assumed that he was a fictional character. Hs appearance in Rivera meant that he was either a real person or the authors had collaborated on creating a villain. The latter seemed unlikely so I looked him up.

The Mary Russell books are full of meetings between the detectives and real historical people. It appears that Mycroft Holmes books will follow that pattern as well. I may want to do research on some of the background characters to see how “real” they are. There are many Sherlock Holmes sequel series that feature the character meeting prominent historical figures. There are also quite a few stories that feature Holmes meeting other (less) famous fictional detectives or dealing monsters from popular horror fiction. The character of Holmes has been in the public domain for years and he gets a lot of work because of that. This article at The Guardian goes into greater detail about what he’s up to and who is writing about him.

I’m not actually a fan of Sherlock Holmes. I think he’s a great character. I’m happy to try new movies or television series that feature him but I don’t really seek him out. I read most of Doyle’s short stories when I was a kid. I enjoyed most of them well enough. Holmes solves a few of the mysteries with deductions or facts that, even as a kid, I knew to be wrong. Either Doyle hadn’t done his research properly or new facts had been discovered since he wrote the stories. I’m generally forgiving of old stories having outdated information but the stories themselves didn’t make me feel like I had to read everything Holmes. Hound of the Baskervilles is the only one of the original novels that I read.

Doyle famously got tired of writing the Holmes series and tried to kill the character off. It’s not surprising. It’s hard work writing about someone who is smarter than you are. I don’t think Doyle was stupid but he did have a number of beliefs that Holmes would have thought illogical. It’s telling that Professor Challenger, Doyle’s attempt at another series character, is far more id than superego.

Sarah is a fan of Sherlock Holmes in that the character exists at the center of a Venn diagram featuring other things she’s a fan of – English costume dramas and murder mysteries. She’s watched the Jeremy Brett series more than once and we’ve caught most of the new films and series that have come out in the last 20 years. She isn’t so inspired that she’s hunted down other written versions besides the King or the Abdul-Jabbar/Waterhouse series. We started the King series in large part because we knew it featured a smart female detective working with Holmes. She started the Abdul-Jabbar/Waterhouse books because she’d liked enough of Jabbar’s nonfiction that she wanted to try his try at fiction.

Zedzed meets with Mycroft briefly in Birdcage. We’re a third of the way through Riviera and he has only been spoken about. I expect he’ll have a more prominent presence as the novel continues.

Outside of books, real life continues. I was disappointed to discover that getting a new President doesn’t automatically result in a new Postmaster General or Postal Board of Directors. Unless the current batch resigns or the new President fires them they’ll be on the job for another three years. Or more.

Last week I sent in my vote on the new contract between the union and USPS. We’ve been working without a contract since 2019. If this one gets ratified it will mean a little back pay and more certainty of employment for a few years.

Parcel volumes are low so I’m working less overtime. Smaller paychecks but more time to work on art.

Thank you for reading! I hope your life is pleasantly boring. If it is exciting I hope it’s because you’ve chosen that state. See you next Friday!

Skook WIP #5

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Welcome to the latest issue of the Skook Works In Progress newsletter. Thank you for looking at the pictures. If you also read the words, thank you again! I’ve been making good progress converting the scans of hand drawn cards into printable designs. Some of that is because mail volumes have dropped since Christmas giving me a little more time at home in the evenings. Some of that is my current tendency to wake up before my alarms so I have a little time after the coffee kicks in and before I have to start getting ready for work. Everything I’ve been worked on so far in 2021 is in my Zazzle shop.

Card Conversions

If you’ve read previous issues you know I am upgrading a series of hand drawn cards into slicker, hopefully more marketable designs. Here’s this week’s set of befores and afters.

Bunny Dracula

As I was thinking of new designs I thought it would be fun to do a series of cartoon critter creatures – silly versions of classic monsters. My first design was a cartoon bat version of Dracula. I showed that image a couple of weeks ago. I then thought it would be more fun to do all the monsters as bunnies. Below is the original bunny version of Dracula.

And here is the final version –


Bunny Mummy

Of all the “classic” monsters, the Mummy is my least favorite. The original Mummy movie (and its remake) are a lot of fun but they don’t really feature the shambling bandage zombie that most of us picture when we think of “the Mummy”. Oddly, this bunny mummy card illustration is one of my favorite bunny monster designs. He looks so much happier than the human mummy monsters.All the “classic” bunny monsters come bearing flowers. They don’t want to kill you. Probably. 
Hase Nosferatu

Dracula has acquired a reputation as being a sexy fellow. That’s fine. I don’t think he comes across as sexy in the original novel but that’s me. I’d seen versions of Dracula in picture books when I was a kid but my first encounters with “real” vampires was in Montague Summers’ book. I read that in grade school. Those vampires were a long way from being sexy. The “hideous bloodsucking corpse” is what I think of when I think of vampires. So I have a fondness for Nosferatu. Any line up of bunny monsters had to include a bunny Nosferatu. 
I tweeked the colors a bit for the revised version. Red seemed more in keeping with a vampire than violet. 
A Little Dino

I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I could tell you the names of most of the dinosaurs that had been discovered by the early Seventies. Between then and now the number of known species and our understanding of them has expanded beyond what I can pay attention to. When I was a kid, we were told that dinosaurs were dumb, slow moving lizards who became extinct because they just couldn’t hack it in a rapidly changing environment. Now we see them as the relatives and ancestors of birds who were wildly successful and needed the impact of an asteroid to unseat them as rulers of the earth. Yet, in my mind’s eye, I still see dinosaurs as more reptilian than avian. Even when you know better it takes a lot of work to overcome childhood conditioning.

Apparently I have a thing for blue butterflies. That’s seems to be my fallback color when I depict a butterfly.


Pup Mug

In 2019 I posted an image a day to my website. The images were done in “widescreen” or “landscape” format. It turns out that size ratio works pretty well on coffee mugs so I’ve been converting my favorites of those drawings to drinkware.

This one required very little editing. I extended the backgroud to cover more of the circumference of the mug. What a friendly trio!
Inspiration – The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster has written a lot of books. I’ve read very few of them. This is probably because, at the time I was reading the most science fiction, his books weren’t available. A big chunk of my science fiction reading was of books checked out from the library. A lot of what he wrote got published as paperback originals and, when I was a kid, the library didn’t stock paperbacks. The Man Who Used the Universe was published in hardback in 1983. It’s been reprinted a few times but, based on the bare bones nature of its wikipedia entry, I’m assuming it’s not one of Foster’s more popular works.
It tells the tale of a sociopath who rises through the ranks of the underworld and into power in legitimate business and politics. And makes the world a better place in the process. I’ve forgotten most of the details of the plot. What stuck with me was the idea that being an evil person didn’t mean you had to make the world a terrible place. If you thought ahead and considered consequences you’d realize that making the world a better place for everyone made the world a better place for youself.

This is one of the books that helped shape my character. I’m not a sociopath. I’m not terribly ambitious and I’m certainly not a master planner. I am selfish and self centered and empathy isn’t my strong suit.This is one of the books that suggested to me that those traits could be strengths. I could be big in my selfishness. I could be selfish about the world around me. I could include the well being of others in the self that I’m centering. I don’t need to feel others pain in order to recognize that they are in pain and do something about it. I can consider the longterm effects of my decisions and plan accordingly.

These Days …

On Friday I got an email notice from Zazzle –
“Unfortunately, it appears that your product, Stardust Superwizard Superhero, contains content that is in conflict with one or more of our content guidelines.

We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly.”

I checked the guidelines and responded –
“I’ve received your review of my product 16801659427862834 The Stardust Superwizard mug. Thank you for your vigilance of possible copyright issues.

The art used on the product is my own, slightly modified from art I posted to my website in 2019. The character, Stardust, is in the public domain and may be used by anyone. I researched this before I started producing art feature Stardust. I can provide links to my original website posting and the wikipedia article on Stardust if needed.”

I didn’t get a response on Saturday. I didn’t expect one since Zazzle appears to give its human staff weekends off. SInce the mug was still available I thought maybe I’d changed their mind. On Sunday morning I posted a link to my newsletter to Facebook that I illustrated with product image of the Stardust mug. On Sunday afternoon the product vanished from Zazzle. Bugger. I discovered later that the digital file used to create the image had also been deleted.

In the comments on the FB post I mentioned the Zazzle objections.

On Monday I was back at USPS and couldn’t do much myself but two things happened. One of the folks from the FB thread called Zazzle and got someone to approve the design for sale. (Case Number: CAS-6095831-G2V6M3) I also got an email response for Zazzle –
“Due to intellectual property concerns, your submitted design was not approved for the marketplace because Zazzle is not licensed to sell or produce unauthorized merchandise of Stardust the Super Wizard. We are sorry for any disappointment but hope you understand our position in this regard.”

Hmmm. On the one hand, I do understand their position. They don’t want to get sued. A lot of people try to sell merchandise on Zazzle using images that they’ve just grabbed from the internet. Zazzle is also full of shops that mostly feature repurposed public domain art. I hate to think of the effort it would be to check the provenance of every image.

On the other hand – there’s already a shop on Zazzle that features images of Stardust the Superwizard using scans from Fletcher Hank’s published artwork. Hanks is the fellow who created the character back in the 1940s. It doesn’t seem to be currently active. The last upload was in 2017. I’m guessing the designer swiped his images from one of Fantagraphics’ Fletcher Hanks collections.

What puzzles me is – who did they think owns the character of Stardust and where did they get that information? As I told them, I did some research. Aside from the wikipedia article I also checked the listings in both the US trademark and the US copyright websites. No copyright listings. There are 237 trademarks using the word “Stardust” but none for “Stardust the Super Wizard” (or “Superwizard” or “Super-Wizard”).

I’m not going to poke the bear. My friend got the design approved. He did it by sending them the wikipedia article, something I clearly should have done instead of giving them the opportunity to do the research themselves or ask me to send them the links that I said I had. I recreated the mug design on Monday night. My friend has a referral link that gives discounts. Feel free to take advantage of it.

As of this morning the Stardust mug design is still available. I’ve added another Stardust, two Fantomahs and a Heap to my mug designs since then. I’m finding that I really enjoy doing images for cups and mugs.Greeting card designs are fun but greeting cards are ephemeral. They are given and then (unless you’re a packrat like me) discarded. One does not wear the same t-shirt every day. But one can have a favorite cup that one uses every morning. I like the idea of making someone’s favorite mug.

That’s all for this issue. I hope you are doing well. I hope you’ve had some moments of peace and joy. See you next week!

Skook WIP #4

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It’s Friday! Time for another set of before (original drawings) and after (ready for print) images, a few words, an appreciation and a few more words. All you folks who have subscribed in the last couple of weeks – THANK YOU! Time is precious and I am honored that you’re spending some of your time here.

All of the final designs below are available in my Zazzle store. I’m mostly concentrating on creating greeting card and coffee mug designs right now but I will be creating other products down the line. Feel free to make requests!

Grizzly Bear Boogie

Yes, the Crocodile Rock was amazing but you haven’t gotten down until you’ve done the Grizzly Bear Boogie! The original version, as performed by actual bears, not the lame covers performed by tiny humans.
The above image is larger than most of the others in my card design series. It was originally done as a commission. Below is the version that appears in my shop. 
Koala Cone Contentment

When I was a kid, books about wild life told me that panda bears were not actually bears, that they were actually more closely related to raccoons. This was before DNA was used to determine animal ancestry and relation. It turned out that pandas look like bears because they are bears. Their divergent diets and odd “thumbs” are the result of evolutionary adaptations to their environment.

Koalas are not bears. At all. They don’t wear polo shirts and slacks either but I’ve taken liberties. I did an internet search to see if koalas are known to like ice cream but nothing turned up in the early results. I’m guessing they do. 
Koalas are also not blue. But with all the other liberties I’ve taken, what’s one more?

Any guesses as to what flavors he’s enjoying?
Not a Bronto

When I was a kid there was a dinosaur called a Brontosaurus. Unlike the Panda, who was misclassified, the Brontosaurus was misconstructed. Or, to be more precise, misreconstructed. When its fossil remains were displayed it was given the wrong skull. The skull actually belonged to a dinosaur named the Apatosaurus. The Brontosaurus was retired. Scientifically. But the Brontosaurus (the “Thunder Lizard”) was, to the general public, one of the most known and popular dinosaurs. Eventually the original fossil skeleton, minus the Apatosaurus skull, was designated Brontosaurus. Again.

That’s the simple version of the story. The above illustration isn’t based on any known species of Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus. It’s likely that neither species was pink. Or orange. But we’ll probably never know.

Little Monster Bubbles

This little monster knows how to blow some big bubbles!

Pink bubbles for a blue monster. It’s only blue in color. It’s very happy emotionally. 
Stardust in Your Cup

Stardust is a comic book character that has fallen into public domain. He’s fun to draw so he’s made a few appearances on my website. The image below was one of the daily drawings I did in 2019. 
I did those daily drawings in landscape format and I’ve found that they look pretty good on coffee mugs. The original drawings don’t cover the entire mug so, when possible, I’ve extended the illustrations to better fit the “canvas”. Below is the version of the illustration that appears on the mugs. 
And here is the mock up that I’m showcasing on Zazzle. Drink up! Stardust can’t be everywhere. You might need to take on an alien supervillain or two yourself!
Inspiration: Bill Peet

I own more Bill Peet books as an adult than I did as a kid. We owned a lot of books but our budget was limited so we didn’t just buy a book when we wanted to read it. Usually we checked it out of the library. My brother and I read a lot. We’d visit both our local library in Sebastopol and the main branch in Santa Rosa. Different branches had different selections of books. I think you could have books transferred from one branch to another but that would have required talking to a librarian. I did become friends with librarians when I was older. At picture book reading age I was much more reticent to ask grown up for things so I just read what the library had on its shelves.  
I’m not sure which of his books I read as a kid but there a couple that stand out. Cappy Boppy made a huge impression. I’d never heard of capybaras before. A giant ginea pig as a pet? Cool! I don’t currently own a copy of the book. If you’d have asked me I would have told you that the illustrations were in color. When I looked for example online I discovered that they were black and white. 
His other book that really impacted me was The Wump World. The Wumps were cute capybara type critters whose planet gets colonized by aliens in big ships that looked like Nixon heads. I don’t remember if we read this or Cappy Boppy first. I do own a copy of this book. 
Peet created his illustrations with a nib pen and colored pencils. The characters in the drawings are animated and lively and have clear, wonderful expressions.  I reread a few of his books as I was writing this entry. His stories were anywhere for 32 to 48 pages (and longer) and included a good chunk of text. They make me want to do my own childrens’ books.

These Days … 

My wife, Sarah, and I are gods. Small gods of a small universe with small furry worshippers. The universe is our apartment. The worshippers are our two cats, Chemo and Sabe. Sarah is the god of comfortable laps and food that can be sniffed but not tasted. I am the god that provides food and refreshes the litter box. For Chemo, the younger cat, I am also the god that throws toy mice and provides an auxilary lap when the god of comfortable laps is not available.

Some folks would suggest that we are not gods but simply servants to our cats. But what are gods? Gods are big mysterious beings who provide things according to their own whims. One prays to ones gods for boons but there’s no guarantee that the gods will follow through. Gods are, for most people, powerful yet unreliable personal assistants with too much responsibility and a poor respnse time who can’t be fired.

Chemo is very direct about his prayers. He makes them loudly. “This door is closed! Why is this door closed? I know you’re in there! Open this door! You’re home! Time to throw the mice! You’re sitting! Pick me up! Put me on your lap! Is it Tuesday yet? What is a Tuesday?”

Sabe is more subtle but more insistant. He sits at my feet and stares at me. If I fail to respond in a timely manner he bites my toe. It’s not a hard bite but it’s definitely noticeable. Answering his prayers is pretty easy. If he’s asking for my attention he probably wants to be fed. I sometimes try to pet him or provide him with a lap but, while he sometimes goes along with getting a good scratching, unless I follow through with a feeding he’ll be back there biting my toes.

This relationship seems to work for all of us. Yes, Sabe occasionally attempts to escape his small universe in order to explore the larger universe he has observed from the windows but those attempts are done with minor force and are easily countered. Yes, Chemo will yowl outside our bedroom door in the middle of the night. I’ve learned not to let him in. He isn’t planning to curl up and go to sleep. If I let him in he’ll wander around inside our bedroom yowling. Sometimes gods don’t answer prayers.

We keep them fed and warm. They provide us with attractive beings who we can love who don’t need to be taken on walks or borrow the car or watch stupid comedy shows or otherwise disturb the rhythms of our lives. Our divine responsibilities are manageable and simplier than our secular obligations. The cats seem more satisfied with their gods than many humans are with ours.

Thank you for reading. May your gods keep you safe and warm and answer your necessary prayers. See you next week!

Skook WIP #3

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Welcome to the third issue of the Skook Works In Progess Newsletter. I appreciate you taking the time to read (or maybe just look at the pictures). All of the finished images here are available on … stuff … at either my Zazzle or my Redbubble store. The card designs below all currently have blank interiors but if you’re interested in a design and have a message you want to put in the card, let me know. We can probably work something out.

Arnie Dillo Approves

My first project of 2021 for my online stores is converting scans of handdrawn card designs into print ready card designs.The original art was simple and I suppose it could have been used without changes but I’m a fan of bold loud colors so …

This fellow is Arnie Dillo. I originally did a version of him back in the 20th Century as one of a group of cartoon characters meant to promote work safety and environmental responsibility. Here he’s just cheerfully giving his approval for whatever is on your mind. He’s not a judgmental guy.


The version of Arnie below is more vibrant and slightly resized to fit standard 5×7 greeting card dimensions.
 
Aunt Hortense Welcomes You

Most of the critters featured in these card designs were making their debuts. Arnie was an exception and so is Aunt Hortense. She first appeared in the Moe and Detritus minicomics and calendars I did back in the early Nineties. She’s always fun to draw.

She’s also a bad influence. Keep your children far far away from her.

Going UP!

You’re a cat. You have daggers on your fingers. You like getting atop the highest thing in the room. What do you do when that thing is slippery and keeps going up? Careful with those claws!

Careful. Careful.
 
Doesn’t Drink … Wine

I love monsters so I thought it would be fun to do a series of card designs of funny animal versions of famous monsters. Batula here was my first stab at doing a Creepy Cute Critter.

 
I’m sure he’s friendly. He’s a little guy. He only wants a little of your blood.
It’s All About Planning and Coordination

My Big Sister has many skills and talents. She was already a wizard in the kitchen before she started taking cheffing (probably not a real word) classes. During these plague times she hasn’t been able to go to classes or invite folks over for dinner. She still tries out new recipes and puts together wonderful meals. I know because she drops “Corona Coolers” of goodies at our door on a regular basis.

She had a birthday last week. As a gift I upgraded an earlier birthday picture to fit a large soup mug. She should have gotten that yesterday. Below is my process GIF showing the image from sketch to finished design.


And yes, as a soulless capitalist I’ve made the mugs available for sale. But Big Sister got hers first.
Inspirations: Ken Macklin

In 1977, Santa Rosa hosted Octocon, its first science fiction convention. My brother and I attended. I don’t remember much about the event. The biggest thing that sticks out is that I saw the work of Ken Macklin. Most specifically I saw him creating art in person. He had a table at the con and he was doing sketches, customized convention and other things. He specialized in what was then called funny animals – anthropomorphic cartoon critters – the sort of things I’m drawing in those greeting card designs up above. His drawings were slick and polished and way beyond anything I had the skill to create at the time. He did them using felt markers. That made a huge impression on me. I knew about painting and I’m sure I’d used felt markers before but until then I didn’t realize that there were markers other than the poster making things I’d used in school. Those things were crude. Macklin’s markers were magic wands in comparison. They were also way more expensive. We were a poor family. I generally stuck to the cheapest tools I could when I made art. My spending money came from delivering newspapers. Seeing what Macklin did with those markers convinced me that I had to have some of my own. Little by little I collected art markers and incorporated them into my work.

I’ve got a huge set of markers now. You can see that I use them.

Macklin is still actively producing art. He teaches with Integrated Awareness and has an Artstation gallery here. Below is a sample of his work. No markers, watercolor and acrylics. Back Door
Star Wars Macklin Style

Forest Friends

I didn’t talk to Macklin at Octocon. While I wasn’t a shy kid I wasn’t exactly outgoing either. I watched him draw when I could, when I wasn’t being distracted by other things.

I met Macklin in the early Nineties when a mutual friend had a few of us over for a creative brainstorming session for a project whose details I’ve now forgotten. He was a friendly guy and fun to work with. I can’t remember if I thanked him for his earlier inspiration.

These Days … 

I went to Zazzle this morning to upload some images and found this message –

“This past week the world witnessed the crossing of the line- where democratic freedom of expression transgressed into a call for violence and mayhem. At Zazzle, our belief in creative expression is equally supported by values of integrity and heart. We do not tolerate or accept hate. Zazzle cannot allow for content that is patently harmful and inaccurate to exist on our site. As a result we have made the decision to take down all current and future messaging and designs brought to our attention that suggests or implies that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged or stolen, or riddled with voter fraud.

As an open marketplace, we firmly believe in freedom of expression. We embrace our members’ creativity and their enthusiasm for their passions, but we choose not to display content that perpetuates false information and/or may incite violence. As a private company, we can and we will continuously work on the Integrity of the marketplace and how to use our technology resources and human capital to ensure a marketplace that is free from violence, hate and misinformation.
If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please reach out via support@zazzle.com. We value and appreciate feedback from our Independent Designers.

Thank you for your continued efforts

Zazzle Team”

Interesting. This notice is dated for the 12th. There’s an awful lot of stuff on Zazzle that I haven’t seen. It doesn’t surprise me that the site would be used to make and sell conspiracy oriented material. I’m fine with Zazzle choosing to delete any material that it doesn’t want being sold on its site. The 1st Amendment is about preventing the Federal Government from censoring the peoples’ expressions. Zazzle is a private company. They don’t have to produce anything for anybody. If tomorrow they decided they weren’t going to print images of cartoon animals, well, I wouldn’t like it but I’d just move on.

One of the reasons I have my own website is so I can post whatever I feel like posting without worrying about “community standards”. I’m unlikely to post anything offensive, much less seditious, but I like having a space of my own. I also recognize that, at best, I’m renting that space from a host and, if that host decides to boot my site there’s not a lot I can do about it.

Freedom of expression does not, to me, come with freedom from responsibilty. The more power and resources one has, the more responsiblity one has to use that power and those resources to improve the world. Human beings are cooperative animals. Nothing we have accomplished has been done solo. Yes, there have been many talented human beings who accomplished great things but their successes came with the support of their community. And those horrible individuals who committed heinous acts? They also had cooperation from their communities.

There’s a long essay to be written about human interconnectedness that I won’t be writing today. My time is short and I’m guessing you came for the pictures not the philosophy. I did. And it’s Friday and time to let this newsletter out into the world. Thank you for reading. Please share this letter with anyone who you think would be interested. Wear your masks. Stay physically distanced but social engaged. You make the world a better place by being in it. See you next week!

Skook WIP #2

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Welcome to the second issue of the Skook WIP Newsletter! Thank you for joining me. I hope your year is off to a good start.

From Hand Drawn to Print on Demand

I’ve got two online shops, one at Zazzle, one at Redbubble. I maintain both shops because they have different focuses and different audiences. Zazzle has the best set up for doing indvidual greeting cards. Back in 2013 I had an Etsy shop where I sold hand drawn greeting cards. I did the art in ink, colored pencil and markers. I did about 50 different designs. I sold a few cards but, at the time, not enough to maintain the shop. I made high resolution scans of each card on the off chance that I’d be able to use the illustrations again at a later time.

That later time came last year.

A Well Read Mouse

This was the first card design I decided to put up on Zazzle. Below is my scan of the original art.

I did the original drawing on the front of a folded sheet of cardstock – 5.5×8.5. Standard greeting card size is 5×7 so I had to make some adjustments to art to make it look good at the new ratio. Since I was making adjustments to size I also added some more color. This is the result that I posted in August –
Catching up on the News

Below is the original version of second image I chose to update.

Handsome fellow isn’t he? (That’s assuming that he’s a he. Which may not be true. I’m showing my cultural preconceptions aren’t I?)

The version below was posted in August as well.

Nuts to You!

After I posted the first two images on Zazzle I got sidetracked creating the store at Redabubble. I’ve decided to make converting all those original Etsy images my first big project of 2021. My goal is to set up at least four card designs each week. Here is the original scan –

And here is the updated version.
Shining Through

It rains a lot here in Seattle. The rain keeps the countryside green and pleasant but it does mean we often find ourselves longing for the sun. Below is the original scan –

And here is the updated version. I think a few changes in color really improves the image.
I’m planning for all of this set of cards to be blank inside. I may go back later and add text to the interiors. Part of the fun of POD production is that I don’t have to maintain (much less sell) stock so all the designs can be works in progress.

Feeling Undead

The process GIF below is of a new Get Well card design. It’s my first card with interior text. It started out as random practice sketch that, after I looked at it a bit, seemed like it was destined for more. Unfortunately I didn’t think to scan the image in the pencil stages so I’ve missed out on a complete start to finish documentation. I’ll try to remedy that in the future. If you’d like to read the message inside, follow this link.

Inspirations: Wayne Barlowe

Every artist is inspired by the work of others. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes that inspiration is less in technique and more in an artists approach to their subject matter. I’ll be using this part of the newsletter to show off the work of illustrators and cartoonists whose work has fired my imagination and helped me to improve my work.

I’m sure I’d seen his work on the covers of science fiction books previously but I first really discovered Wayne Barlowe’s illustrations in 1987 with Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, a book featuring his visualizations of a number of alien races from a variety of popular science fiction novels. I was hooked by the rigour that he brought to his work. He used his background as natural history illustrator to depict extraterrestrial life in ways I’d never seen before. The creatures looked both realistic and realistically alien. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Above: one of the creatures depicted in Expedition, his account of a serveillance of an alien planet.

Above: a scene from Barlowe’s Inferno, an illustrated tour of Hell.

Above, one of the dinosaurs depicted in An Alphabet of Dinosaurs.

I’m always inspired when I look at his work. If you’d like to see more, check out his website.

These Days …

I was given this certificate at the station on December 31st. For most of my working life I haven’t used sick days. For most of my working life I didn’t have much in the way of paid sick days. I’ve worked through food poisoning, many hangovers and many more flus and colds. I did this not just to get a paycheck but because, somewhere back in my youth, I stubbornly decided to refuse to let being sick stop me from doing what I thought I needed to do. And because I’d rather work sick than have to catch up on work after calling in sick.

I suspect that not wanting to have to catch up on work is the biggest motivator. When we were in junior high school my brother and I spent a couple of weeks each year in Hawaii with our Dad and his new wife and kids. While we were enjoying the sun and the ocean my classmates back in California were learning mathematical formulas that I needed to properly do higher math. Gradewise I still did fine in math but my comprehension was lacking. It wasn’t until I took math again in college that I felt like I had a handle on the logical processes of higher equations.

I didn’t miss a day of high school. In my decades of employment after graduation I’ve really only missed work for a broken leg and when my back went out. Since working at USPS I’ve only used sick days to take my wife to doctors’ appointments and I scheduled those in advance.

I’m glad to have available sick days. If someone is sick they should stay home and they’re more likely to do if their paycheck won’t suffer from it. A lot of folks took sick time when the pandemic began. I haven’t taken any sick days because I’ve stayed healthier than in years past. It turns out that wearing a mask and keeping physically distanced also helps one avoid regular colds and flus. In the last year I haven’t had a real sore throat, snotty nose or other debilitating symptoms. So I’ve continued to store up sick days. I’ve seen enough carriers have to use theirs because of twisted ankles or other fall related problems that I want to have as many days waiting as possible. I have quite a few years to go until retirement.

Mail volumes have dropped. That happens every year at this time. Parcel volumes have dropped as well but they are still higher than in previous years. Actual parcel sizes are larger as well. When I started this job seven years ago I could usually carry all the parcels intended for a swing in satchel. These days I have a dozen or more packages that require car hops – driving my truck directly to the address and schlepping the thing to the customer’s front door. But I am and will be working shorter days for a while so I’ll have more time for art.

I hope that this year is looking better for you than last. I hope that you are healthy and warm and having good days. See you next week!

Skook WIP #1

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This is a reposting of my email newsletter hosted at tinyletter.com.

Welcome to the first issue of the Skook WIP Newsletter! 2020 was not a great year for most folks. I hope this year is an improvement. I will do my best to make my portion of the universe a little better. That’s not so much a New Year’s Resolution as a daily practice. I was working to make 2020 a good year. I know things could have been worse.

Much of what I’ll be showing here is art intended for products in my online stores. I’m still pretty tired from the USPS Christmas season. I didn’t get much chance to start completely new work but I’ve got quite a few older pieces that I’m tweaking for new uses. I’ll be showing those in the weeks to come.

Updating Little Red

Say hello to The Mighty Nizz. Expect to see a lot of this kid in this newsletter. Well. Sort of.

The picture above is the first portrait I did of her. I did it as a birthday present for my wife, Sarah, back in 2011. Sarah had a terrible childhood. A simple, non-traumatizing summary of it would be that it involved a lot of discipline and punishment and a little fun as possible. The Mighty Nizz is Sarah, if she’d had a proper childhood, raised by a Sasquatch in the vastness of the Night Forest.

The who? The what?

We’ll get there. Sarah is a writer. We’ll be presenting stories and illustrations featuring Nizzibet on the Mighty Nizz website. Right now, that site is pretty empty. Oops.

Here, in this issue of the newsletter, I’m documenting a few changes I made to that original illustration as I got used to drawing the character.
The first changes I made were simple. In 2013, after I’d done some more drawings of Nizz, I sharpened the contrast on this one so the blacks and whites stand out. That makes the image look better when it gets printed. I also made the paws of her cloak white to match up with the coats of actual wolves. 
Last year I updated this image again. I’ve done a lot more drawings of Nizz at this point and I’d standardized some of her costume. The Red Wolves of the Night Forest have red coats with yellow accents. Nizz usually wears a green dress. I gave her an overall skin tone and highlights in her eyes. I also replaced my hand written signature with my signature chop. This remains one of my favorite portraits of Nizz.

Revising the Red Right Hand

I often listen to music while I draw. It helps me to focus. Mostly the songs occur as background and have little influence on my artwork. Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand is an except. It is one of my favorite songs. There’s a story to it but the details are left to the listener’s imagination. It’s danceable and creepy.

Above is the uncolored image inspired by the song.

Below is the original color version of my illustration. I did the piece as practice in 2016. I draw fairly quickly but color slowly. I’ve spent the last few years working on improving my speed. I’m not a fussy artist. Mostly. I like to finish a piece and move on. I’d had the image of a red glow eminating from the man’s right pocket but I didn’t have any specific idea of how to color the rest of the piece. Last year I started online stores at Zazzle and Redbubble. Most of the images currently there were originally done for the fun of it and as “practice” in years past. I’ve had a great time finding homes for a lot of weird one-off illustrations. Most of them have gotten placed without making changes. When I got around to this one I decided it needed an update. Blue just doesn’t fit the song. The world it evokes, to me, is dusty and dry.

Fortunately I save all my color illustration files in layers so making changes is relatively simple. Out went the blue. In came muted browns.

I’ve posted this version to my Redbubble store. If you prefer the blue version, let me know. I can post that as well.

Public Journal

This issue is a short one. As I mentioned up top, I’m still tired from schlepping packages during Christmas. I went to bed early last night and woke up late. If anyone set off fireworks in our neighborhood I slept through them. Today I plan to catch up on chores and take the day slowly.

Thank you for joining me. I hope 2021 looks bright for you. See you next Friday!