Sometimes you’ve just got to admit to yourself that you’re not going to get a project done. That it’s time to set it aside and move on. When I first started contributing to the Kaijuphile Gallery I decided that I was only going to post what I considered to be finished work. I’d been posting to Epilogue.net for a couple of years by then and, while frustrated that Epilogue rejected art that I thought was good, I’d gotten to like the idea that a submission should be a finished piece. Since I started submitting to Kaijuphile I’ve had occasional bursts of creativity when I’ve begun multiple illustrations. One or two will get finished and the others will be set aside for “later”.

For the next few weeks or so I’m going to be showing the ones that aren’t going to be finished. My schedule has gotten a little too full for me to keep kidding myself that I’m going to dust them and get them ready for publication.

This one is of The Black Scorpion. I think this was the last film that had special effects by Willis O’Brien. The story concerned a group of giant prehistoric scorpions, released from their underground prison, going on a rampage in Mexico. I believe this drawing is from 2004.

I’ve been commissioned to illustrate a couple of t-shirts for The Black Seal. One of the illustrations is a colorized version of this picture. The other is a depiction of the King in Yellow. And with the King in Yellow there is usually the Yellow Sign. Unfortunately, the Yellow Sign that I’ve come to know and love is actually copyrighted (and possible trademarked) by Kevin Ross and TBS is good at respecting such things.

So I set about designing a new Yellow Sign. I figure that the Sign is probably not a fixed image. It’s much harder to defend against something that twists and mutates. So I narrowed things down to these six images and sent them off to Adam Crossingham and he showed them to the Cabal and now there’s another Yellow Sign. As to which one of these it is, well, when the t-shirt are available, then we’ll all know.

And this is the last page from the 1995 sketchbook. I’m sure there’s other work from that year that will show up here in the future but that book is done. Tomorrow we’ll start some more recent work.

Who is this guy? I’m not sure if I ever named him. He’s one of a trio friends/roommates who rescue an angel while drunk at the beach one night. That is, they are drunk and the angel falls to the sea in front of them. They rescue her and take her home with them. Hilarity ensues. Or not. Most of the stories I think of have some element of the absurd while not actually intended to be comedies.

The sketch here is the next to last one I scanned from my 1995 sketchbook. Tomorrow’s image will be the last one and then we’ll start looking at some more recently pieces.

Via Craig’s List we found a 1989 Honda Civic to replace our poor crunched Toyota Corolla. It needs some work, not surprisingly. Nizzibet had most of that done the day we bought the car. The tires will need to be replaced. That might be a project for this weekend. It’s also an automatic, the first such we’ve owned. I prefer manual transmission. It makes me pay attention to driving just a little bit more. But I’ll get used it. I’ve driven enough automatics in the past.

When I was doing sketches of the characters for Bonecage Graffiti I needed to make some revisions since that story took place before The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus and therefore before Misspent Youths. Moe ended up with a wild bush of hair. At the time BG began he and Lili are living in an abandoned clock tower. They hadn’t yet developed the circle of friends that would encourage things like taking care of your hair.

So that’s Moe in the upper left. As is often the case the rest of the page looks like practice.

I don’t remember the genesis of this illustration. I know it didn’t see print anywhere. It’s a frog, with a box of Amway soap. I’ve never written any articles for or against Amway. Nizzibet and I told a stab at being Amway distributors for maybe a year back in ’95 to ’96. We created no downline business. Barely used the products ourselves. I’m not much of a salesman even when I believe strongly in a product or idea. I tend to think that if I need to spend much time changing someone’s mind about something then I’m just being annoying. And I’ve got other things I’d rather do with my time than annoy people.

On the left, one of the Lizards’ hands. Couldn’t tell you which one. Their hands look pretty much all alike. Well, maybe not Aunt Hortense. Her hands might be more scaley and gnarled.

On the right, the head shapes of the Lizards who aren’t Aunt Hortense. From the top – Missi, Lamallia, Willy, Seth and Zerro. Missi and Lamallia are the girls, Willy, Seth and Zerro are the boys.

I adore Aunt Hortense. She’s vile, manipulative, amoral, cruel and just doesn’t care. She can create doors between dimensions and she knows more than she lets on. She seems to have a Mission. Maybe her actions are part of a Plan. But she’ll never tell. That would be ruining the show for the rubes. Can’t do that. It’s a wonder that I haven’t done more with her.

The head at the top right and the figure on the bottom right are from the story A Taste of Fertile Soil. They’re versions of a sort of otherworldly gardener. They hunt invasive “weeds” and removes them from the garden. In the context of the story the garden is the human race.

On the left we have our standard anonymous practice drawings. Pompadours are fun to draw. Never actually tried to wear one myself. I tend to favor the shaggy look.

This is one of the flying boys from Bonecage Graffiti. The flying boys were actually from another, even less finished project called Wild Shadows. When Nizzibet and I decided to put together the Glyph magazine anthology my contribution was to be a serial that featured many of the characters from Misspent Youths. It was an ambitious undertaking and would have eventually run over 300 pages. The flying boys were one of the Shadow Tribes; groups of humans who, through supernatural means, had become something other than wholy human. In their case, the flying boys (I never did come up with with a name for their tribe) were a tribe of eternally prepubescent boys who could fly as long as they stayed loyal to the tribe and never tried to grow up. Yes, they were inspired by the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, though in 1995 I was still eight years away from reading the novel. I’ve still never seen the Disney version of the story.