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Skook Words (and Pictures) #42

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It is a day like any other day. It has 24 hours like other days. The sun rises. The sun sets.

You spend some time awake. You spend some time asleep.

This newsletter is posted to Skookworks.com and arrives in your email mail box. If you think you have time, you read it. If you feel your time is short, you look at the pictures. Either choice is fine.

If you just delete this email without looking at it you are cursed for eternity. You’ll never know why your coffee is always weak and your car’s gas mileage is pitiful. Your dreams will be haunted by a six foot teddy bear that refuses to be hugged, it just wants a cigarette.

Aren’t you glad you’ve avoided the curse?

These Days …

More accurately, this coming week. The week just gone was pretty much like other weeks but with less medical drama for both people and pets. Kemo the cat got out of his cone-of-shame and we’ve let him out of isolation. It’s the week ahead that I’m thinking about.

Starting today and running until November 6th I’m on vacation. I have two goals –

1. Sort my comics collection. Back in 2003, when we moved my mother up to live with Sarah and me, my brother and I cleared out her house in California. Living nearer, he did most of the work. I went down for quick visit and sorted the stuff I’d left. A big part of that was the comics collection I’d acquired from about 1971 to 1994. I did a quick separation of them into Stuff-I-Don’t-Really-Care-About and Stuff-I-Think-I-Want-To-Read-Again. I gave the first batch to a friend and, a few months later, my brother shipped up the boxes that contained the second batch.

Those boxes have been unopened since their arrival. I have an idea what comics are in them but I don’t know specifically. So this is going to be a bit of an adventure. I have 18 long boxes and multiple stacks of magazine sized publications. My goal is to end up with three or less long boxes of magazines and two or less boxes of magazines. The rest will … magically find some other place to be.

Yeah. I haven’t thought much past sorting the things.

2. Finish the physical art of the second Mighty Nizz story. I have five pages done and thirteen pages in various stages of completion. Once it’s all complete I can format, color and letter it in Clip Studio Paint. This might be the last comic I do physical art for. I like doing physical art. I like ink and paper and brushes and pens. But working digitally is quicker. Not because I draw faster. My actual drawing time is probably the same. It’s more because I can just pick up my tablet and go. I don’t have to set up paper and ink, watch out for the cats, and clean my tools afterward. I can work for five minutes, do something else, work for ten, do something else, work for an hour, rinse, repeat.

Sarah and I will do a few things together. We’ve got a day trip planned for Bremerton. We’ll get out of the house and drive around. There’s the Billi 99 Kickstarter to prep for. And we’ll nap. Napping is a goal these days.

The Lovecraft Kids – Easter in Arkham

The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection (former The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection) featured four adventures, each set and themed for different holiday – Easter, Independence Day (July 4th), Halloween and Christmas. In the book the adventures run Halloween, Christmas, Easter and Independence Day. I’m going to showcase my illustrations for Easter first because … I don’t actually remember if I thought I had a good reason.

What happens? Well …
In the city of Arkham, the cousins gather for an Easter egg hunt on the quad of Miskatonic University. The cousins fall into a mystery when recently departed pets begin returning to their owners, but changed, tainted, and unstable. As tensions mount over reports of a strange new disease affecting the pets of Arkham, drastic measures are proposed to protect public health. The cousins must work fast to get to stop these unholy resurrections as the barriers between life and death blur. Unless successful, every pet in the city is destroyed, and an even larger tragedy will befall witch-haunted Arkham. Arkham’s only hope are our six intrepid cousins. Can they get to the bottom of things before it’s too late?

CSP Practice or Making Mistakes Faster

I’ve spent part of most mornings in the last week practicing drawing in Clip Studio Paint with my Wacom tablet. A big part of the fun is the ability to make quick changes and corrections. It turns out that, when given that ability, I use it a lot.

I didn’t use it much for this first piece. I based it off the photo below. This is a tree stump next to one of the houses on my USPS route. I took its picture because I thought it looked creepy. I like creepy.

Once I’d posted the photo on my Facebook page my imagination started coming up with ideas for drawings based on image. The illustration below is the idea that I thought would be most fun to draw.
Next I did this cheery little fruit bat. A friend of mine had seen my illustration of a Surrilana vulture bat and said she wanted me to draw a bat that she could have as a tattoo. Her favorite bats are fruit bats/flying foxes so …

Then … obviously (I hope!) the drawing below isn’t one of mine.
A few months ago one of my nephews had asked if I would do a better version of that drawing. Someone he knew had paid for that and felt ripped off. Since my nephew couldn’t pay me he didn’t expect me to make it a high priority. It would have been okay if I didn’t do a drawing at all. Last week I decided it would a fun bit of practice and I did the design below.
And then I started really making mistakes.

I’m doing character designs and world building for The Surrilana Depths. I wanted to do an illustration of Morgo (name to be changed) fighting one of Zorimi’s (also to changed) scaled men minions. I sketched out the basics using one of the “brush” brushes in CSP.

I’d rather not bore you with all the steps I went through. That’s what process GIFs are for.

And here’s a finished version that’s not part of a GIF.

Practice, practice, practice.

Updating the Mighty Nizz

And speaking of mistakes and learning – we went out for dinner with new friends on Sunday. Part of the conversation included the comics she and I had done together. The one that’s available online is Mighty Nizz so Sarah tried showing it to our companions on her phone.

That was hard to do. The first page of the comic loads fine, if a bit small. But it’s actually the last page that loads first because I posted it one page a week and, like a blog, the last page loaded is the one that shows when the site opens. You can use the navigation buttons under that page to go to the actual first page but by then you’re having to work at reading the story. The first rule of the internet – don’t make your viewer work to use your site. This rule especially applies to internet accessed by phone.

I don’t use my phone to surf the net much. I use it to text, read emails, check Facebook and Youtube, and, occasionally, make phone calls. When I read webcomics I do it on my desktop computer’s monitor. I keep forgetting that, for an awful lot of people, their phone is their main (or only) computer. So I’ve reformed the first Mighty Nizz comic as a scroll that can be easily read in a single blog post.

The current version is temporary. It can be read easily but it’s not as clean an experience as I’d like. That will get fixed before I start posting the new story. And, yes, there will be a new story.

And that’s it for this week.

Thank you for reading all the way to end.

May you blessed with good sleep, strong coffee and a flying car!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #41

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‘Tis Friday and thou art reading mine newsletter anon. Blessed be.

These Days …

I’m noticing that I’m liking Autumn. I’m not crazy about the extra darkness (and I will really complain when Daylight Savings kicks in) but I am enjoying the cooler-but-not-yet-cold weather and the extra colors that the fall leaves are providing. Plus the Halloween decorations that have sprouted up everywhere. Halloween is the best holiday. It’s not religious, it offends fundamentalists and it celebrates imaginary scaries. The only way it could be better would be if I got a paid day off.

The only medical appointment this week was for Kemo, our older cat. He’s been overgrooming the base of his tail, enough so there’s no hair and some of the skin is raw. The vet thinks he may have allergies to something in his cat food. She gave him a steroid shot, an antibiotic shot and recommended some high end cat food. She also fitted him with a cone-of-shame. We’re keeping him isolated in our bedroom in order to speed up the healing.

Work at the Post Office was only really eventful on Wednesday. Someone forgot to unlock the station’s gates for the sorting clerks Tuesday night/Wednesday morning so they couldn’t get in to throw parcels and divide up the palettes of flats (magazines/catalogs/random printed things). The clerks called around, no one answered, so they went home. When I came to work the loading dock was filled with pallets and bins of unsorted parcels. For the next three hours the supervisors and a tag-team of carriers got everything distributed. It was almost fun.

I had yesterday off. The vet appointment was in the morning. I alternated between chores and doing art. We got word from the publishers that they’re starting to build the Kickstarter page for Billi 99. We might have something to look at next week.

The Lovecraft Kids’ BFFs

For the Tails of Valor Kickstarter, Golden Goblin Press offered a reward tier by which backers could have their cat drawn into the book as a player character. For The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection Kickstarter they offered backers the chance to have themselves (or someone of their choice) drawn into the book as a best friend of one of the Morgan Family cousins.Then the poor folks got their portraits drawn by me. The characters were adolescents so the backers were asked to send a photo of themselves at the approximate age as their character. Three folks were able to provide those. Two folks didn’t have any age appropriate photos so I had to subtract a few years from the photos they did provide and then guess. One person wanted to give new life to a passed loved one. They had a photo of their chosen one as a very young boy and a few of him as an adult so I had to conjure of version of him somewhere in between.

Digital Sketches

I’m having a blast practicing Clip Studio Paint with my Wacom tablet. Remember the movie The Karate Kid? Daniel, the protagonist goes to Miyagi, an old man, and asks him to teach him karate. Miyagi agrees. And then he has Daniel paint his house and wash his car. Wax on. Wax off. Daniel does this for a while, expecting Miyagi to start teaching him soon. When days go by and Miyagi keeps having him do chores, Daniel gets upset at the old man. Miyagi strikes out. Daniel blocks him with one of the moves he’s learned from waxing the car. Miyagi demonstrates that every chore he’d been having Daniel do was teaching him a karate skill.

I’ve been working with Photoshop for a couple of decades now – mostly to color my work but also to make corrections and adjustments. CSP has a different interface than Photoshop. Some short cuts are the same but mostly I’m having to find the locations of various features (that I’m sure are there) on a regular basis. I won’t dive into the weeds as to what exactly I’ve done with Photoshop – suffice to say, every skill I’ve developed using that program is translating smoothly to CSP. Even when I have to DDG (DuckDuckGo) for the location of a feature.

These are this week’s pencil sketches.


And these are the digital finishes.

I’ve now started sketching right in CSP, no physical pencils first. I’ll show off some of the results next week.

I hope that the eventfulness of your week has been pleasant. I hope the coming week is pleasanter. Say “hi” to all the ghosts and goblins that cross your view.

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #40

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Time passes but the moments that matter last forever, even when we forget them.

True or false?

These Days …

Rain. Friends. Doctor visits.

I welcome rain on Sundays and my days off. It’s my hope that the most of it will come down on those days and, when I have to deliver mail, the most I’ll have to deal with is a light drizzle. I’ve been mostly lucky this last week. When it has come down like a heavenly judgement I’ve either been on lunch or I’m working one of the mounted parts of my route so I only have to drive through it not walk. Of course, for my fellow carriers who did have to work during the heavy rains … I’m sorry.

This Sunday we did a bunch of grocery shopping in the morning and in the afternoon had lunch with old friends from out of town who were in town to see a Peter Gabriel concert. We ate at a Cuban restaurant. We’ve never had Cuban food before. No rain. Good conversation. The usual catching up on what we’ve been doing the last few months.

Monday was Columbus Day – Indigenous People’s Day here in the Pacific Northwest. I end up liking this holiday more every year. Not because I have anything good to say about old Mr. “I Got Lost and Started the Genocide of Two Continents”. No, it’s just a holiday that I never remember until shortly before it’s going to occur and therefore I get a day off that I wasn’t expecting. Unexpected days off are always fun. I spent part of it cooking a big pot of something to eat for lunches during the work week.

But then … the day after a holiday tends to be a long one at USPS. There’s a back up of mail and parcels that have to be delivered. In the rain. It was mostly drizzle. When it did come down heavy I was mostly either delivering the mounted (driving) parts of my route or on break. I got finished just as it was getting dark. I’ve started carrying my head lamp in my truck. I didn’t need it Tuesday but I’m sure I will before the end of the month.

Wednesday was my scheduled day off this week. We spent it at doctor’s appointments. We’re not dealing with anything fatal. Just stuff that makes life uncomfortable. Sometimes really uncomfortable. Fortunately we live in the 21st century and have antibiotics and antifungals and a host of other chemicals that can treat our ills.

Thursday was another long day. Voter pamphlets and an ad for membership discounts at a new health club that’s opening up in the location of a former failed health club needed to be delivered to every customer on my route. I deliver to over 850 addresses.

Today I have to get out the Red Plums. Normally the things are supposed to go out on Tuesdays but this week’s high volume of mail on that day had them pushed back to Wednesday and Wednesday’s shortage of carriers meant that the people who delivered my route didn’t carry any of the extras and then on Thursdays I prioritized the voter pamphlets and the health club coverages so … Bleah.

I’ve managed to grab time to work on art most mornings and during my days off. That keeps me sane.

The Lovecraft Kids

The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection written by Oscar Rios (published by Golden Goblin Press) got retitled as The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection. The original title was less unwieldy but the publisher made the change to avoid confusion with (and possibly being sued by the producers of) Lovecraft Country, a popular novel by Matt Ruff that got adapted into an even more popular tv series. I’d argue that Rios’s RPG features more Cthulhu Mythos elements than Ruff’s novel so no change should have been necessary but I understand why Golden Goblin made it anyway. Getting sued is time consuming and expensive.

Eldritch Holiday features six playable adolescent members of the Morgan family – young cousins who live in four of H.P. Lovecraft’s favorite cursed townships. George Weedon and Edward Derby live in Arkham, Gordon Brewster and Gerdie Pope live in Dunwich, Donald Sutton in Kingsport and Alice Sanders in Innsmouth. Because the characters are kids (and possibly because Oscar wanted them to survive) the adventures stay away from encounters with the Great Old Ones, mostly featuring run-ins with ghosts, witches, zombies and the Dreamlands.

I did basic portraits of them to get Oscar’s approval.


Then I did the cover illustration so we had something to feature in the Kickstarter –
And then, also for the Kickstarter, I did individual portraits of the kids.

Next week – The Best Friends Forever!

Digital Sketching

Practicing Clip Studio Paint with my Wacom tablet has been a lot of fun. It’s the kind of fun where going I have to remind myself to get up and walk around before I completely screw up my posture. I’m able to make corrections and adjustments that I would have just ignored when working on paper. I’ve had years of working in Photoshop to inform what might be possible with CSP. I’ve also watched quite a few process videos of artists using CSP to further inform me of the program’s capabilities. Going to work delivering the mail is even harder these days. I want to keep making art.

Often times, after I’ve made a series of sketches/illustrations, I will post the results here over the course of weeks. This time I’m just splitting the results in two parts.

Here are the pencils sketches I started with –


And here are the “finished” digital sketches.

I put “finished” in quotes because I’m doing these sketches to learn CSP, to do basic character design for The Surrilana Depths and to practice coloring with a limited palette. I’m resisting adding a lot of fiddly details or, honestly, thinking too much about the composition. I’m learning what I can and moving on. Sometimes that learning means I really don’t like the results. Lucky you, I’m posting everything!

Until next Friday –
Be good to yourself.
Be kind for the fun of it.
Take a nap.

Mmmmm. Nap.

 

Skook Words (and Pictures) #39

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

As for me –

These Days …

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lovecraft Kids

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

Kids growing up in eldritch corners of New England have rather unique childhoods. Those growing up in Arkham, Kingsport, Innsmouth, and Dunwich know that shadows hide a darker evil. The six cousins of the Morgan clan are no different. The cousins are aware their hometowns aren’t like other places. They know that ghosts haunt empty fields, that monsters lurk beyond the Wall of Sleep, that horrors lurk below lonely graveyards, and that the darkest secrets are often kept by those trying to protect us. They also know that, whatever happens, they’ll face it together and do whatever it takes to set things right. They’re sure that the light of friendship and family can cast away any shadows.

But what do kids know?

The Eldritch New England Holiday Collection: A Call of Cthulhu® campaign of holiday-themed adventures for adolescent investigators. This combo package includes softcover print and PDF formats.

  • Halloween in Dunwich: A dark night of ghost stories on Great-Grandpa Silas’ farm.
  • Christmas in Kingsport: A magical holiday filled with surprises, adventure, magic, and horror.
  • Easter in Arkham: A week-long holiday in Arkham takes a very dark turn.
  • Innsmouth Independence Day: A long weekend on the beach leads to rebellion and secrets.

ALSO

  • The History of the Morgan Family
  • The Morgan Family Tree
  • An Overview of the Morgan Cousins
  • 24 Pre-Generated Investigators: The Morgan Cousins, Their Best Friends Forever, The Cousins as Adult Investigators, and The Cousins as Pulp Adult Investigators

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

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

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

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

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

Surrilana Sketching

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

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

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

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

Practice!

And what else did I want to learn?

Mastering Clip Studio Paint!

And what project to I want to make progress on?

The Surrilana Depths!

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

Below is my pencil sketch.


Then the process GIF.

And the final illustration.

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

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

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

Practice, practice.

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

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #38

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Greeting and salutations!

Welcome back to another edition of the Skookworks newsletter.

I hope you are doing well and that your week has passed pleasantly.

My week has had rain and family medical issues. Neither of these were a surprise. The rain is part of the reason we moved to the Pacific Northwest. It keeps things green. The medical stuff is manageable but it takes time and attention.

Which Team Do You Root For?

Vampires or Werewolves? Vampires vs. Werewolves? Out of the great variety of supernatural creatures in Western mythology the Vampire and the Werewolf seem the most popular. Vampires come out on top, most of the time. There are far more stories/novels/movies/series about vampires than werewolves.

It makes sense. The original vampires were bloodsucking corpses. Currently they are (mostly) sexy immortals.

The original werewolves were humans who transformed into wolves and killed people. They were generally pretty mortal. Sometimes they turned into vampires after they died. Currently werewolves are humans who turn into wolfpeople and then they kill people. Not in sexy ways.

In general, I prefer werewolves over vampires. Most vampires are murderous assholes. They don’t have to be. They know what they are doing  but they do it anyway. Werewolves, on the other hand, are most bloodthirsty beast, lacking the intelligence or human memory to stop them from snacking on whoever happens to be handy. And they look cool.

That said, here’s a sexy vampire lady.


This lovely creature is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Out of the Aeons

That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die.

In other words, you never know when a project that you thought was dead will come kicking back to life. My first illustrations in the gaming industry were for The Black Seal #1, a magazine focusing on Call of Cthulhu related material that came out Sixtystone Press back in 2003. I did more illustrations for the second and third issues. For the fourth issue I did the cover illustration.

Numbers 2 and 3 came out soon after the first, but number 4 … got lost. For almost 20 years.

This summer it finally found its way out of the crypt.

Have a look –

It’s currently available at DriveThruRPG.com.

Working Digitally

I find that having specific projects helps me to practice my art skills. The Vamp up above is the last of “Big Face” designs I did for my Redbubble store. Those were done to see how much I could improvise in ink. My recent process has been to do rough sketch with a non-photo blue pencil, do a tighter sketch over that in regular pencil, scan that into Photoshop, remove the blue lines, convert the remaining pencils into new non-photo blue lines, print that out, ink it, scan the inked version into Photoshop, drop out the blue lines, clean up the black lines and then color the image digitally either in Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint (sometimes both, depending on the techniques needed).

I’m used to that process and it hadn’t seemed that involved until –

We got this cat, Crunch by name, with the thought that he would give our older cat, Kemo, company and keep him from wanting my attention when I want to draw. Silly us. Whereas Kemo meows (and sometimes claws my leg) when he wants to be noticed, Crunch just flops down wherever I happen to be. This makes inking with a brush and an open container of ink kinda challenging. And not relaxing.

So I figure it’s time to improve my digital skills. My next project starts with these sketches –

These are the first four of about a dozen physical sketches that I’ll be turning into finished illustrations, mostly with Clip Studio. I’ll be inking them digitally. I’m concentrating on Clip Studio because
A) the program is specifically designed for doing comics
B) the program is much less expensive than Photoshop

All of the illustrations are going to be images from The Surrilana Depths. They’re not intended for the finished version. They’re to help me develop the world, the characters and the style I plan to use in the finished version. I’ll start showing the results next week.

I hope you the next seven days are good to you. If the universe insists on giving you nonsense, I hope that you are able to be good to yourself.

Thank you for reading. See you sooner!

 

Skook Words (and Pictures) #37

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No, you’re not hallucinating. It’s Friday again.

Seven days have staggered by. It only feels like yesterday.

Mother Shub-Niggarath

Cthulhu gets all the spotlights. August Derleth named H.P. Lovecraft’s story cycle “The Cthulhu Mythos” so that helped to put a stamp on things. Cthulhu itself also makes an appearance in one of the stories. That’s more than most of the rest of the Great Old Ones. Nyarlathotep has more in-story visitations but he’s just a guy who could be an indescribable eldritch horror if he wanted but, in the stories, he isn’t. No one is making plushies out of his bad self.

Of the Great Old Ones that aren’t Cthulhu my favorite is Shub-Niggarath. Who wouldn’t love The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young? No one the other GOO have such a distinct soubriquet.

I don’t remember if Lovecraft ever wrote a description of her. Most versions I’ve seen depict her as a sort of swirling cloud with teeth. Not very goatlike.

Being a GOO, I wouldn’t expect her to actually be a goat but, when I set out to do her portrait I thought I should give her some resemblance to the randy critters.
This design is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Ease On Down

My friend Rae Dinsmore passed away on July 3rd of this year. I was able to visit her in Fairbanks, Alaska for a few days at the end of March. I’d initially planned to help her and her family reorganize her mother’s home so that the mother and Rae could better manage it. Between the time I made reservations to fly up there and the time I actually arrived, Rae and her mother had moved into a retirement community and their former home had been sold. So I spent a few days helping Rae sort as many of her boxes of (very well packed) stuff as we could. Many of the boxes hadn’t been opened since her move up to Alaska from Texas a couple of years previous.

I did the black and white illustration above for the back cover of a reprint of the first issue of Steve Ahlquist’s Oz Squad back in 1992. These were my versions of the artist Andrew Murphy’s version’s of Ahlquist’s versions of the original Fabulous Foursome. Among Rae’s possessions we found a thirty year old photocopy of the original art. It was neatly rolled and the only obvious indication of its age was my signature. Rae and I had been a couple when I did the art. She’d kept the photocopy and decorated the walls of some of her apartments with it in the years since. She gave me the copy and I brought it home with me.

I had the idea of coloring it and sending her the new version as a poster. Things got in the way. Work. Other health crises. She went into hospice and passed away.

I’d done a little work on coloring it right after I got home. I started a written tribute to her right after she passed. It exists in bits and pieces on my hard drive. I haven’t been able to make any more progress. My grief gets in the way. But I’m better with images than words. A little at a time I worked on coloring this image. I finally finished it on Monday.

Rae brought color and life into the world. Those colors remain.

May the next seven days pass, for you, in glorious bliss.

Autumn is arriving. Ghost and goblins will soon be abroad.

Cheers!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Skook Words (and Pictures) #36

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Good morning! Or afternoon. Or evening.

Welcome to another edition of this newsletter.

I hope that your week has gone well and that you are in good spirits.

I’ve spent the last few days dealing with family medical issues. It’s nothing immediately life threatening but it is something that needs to be regularly addressed so it doesn’t become life threatening. In any case, I’m running late getting this edition out so I’m keeping it short.

Tails of Terror

Golden Goblin Press publishes both RPG manuals and fiction anthologies. A number of their Kickstarters have been built on putting out a manual and a companion anthology in the same campaign . Play the game. Read some stories. Tails of Valor, the RPG manual for playing cats in a Cthulhu Mythos world, was paired with Tails of Terror, an anthology of short horror stories told from the point of view of cats.

The stories were:
“Brown Jenkin’s Reckoning” by Edward M. Erdelac
“Derpyfoot” by Christine Morgan
“The Cat in the Pall” by Pete Rawlik
“Ghost Story” by Brian M. Sammons
“Palest of Humans” by Don Webb
“Bats in the Belfry” by William Meikle
“Satisfaction Brought Him Back” by Glynn Owen Barrass
“The Bastet Society” by Sam Stone
“The Veil of Dreams” by Stephen Mark Rainey
“The Quest of Pumpkin the Brave” by Oscar Rios
“The Cats of the Rue d’Auseil” by Neil Baker
“The Knowledge of the Lost Master” by Andi Newton
“The Ruins of an Endless City” by Lee Clark Zumpe
“A Glint in the Eyes” by D.A. Madigan
“A Field Guide to Wanderlust” Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
“In the End there is a Drain” by Tim Waggoner

I had the fun of providing a small illustration for each story. The following gallery features all my illustrations. If you want to know which picture goes with which story – you’ll need to get the book. Heh heh.

A Green Man

This week’s process GIF is of a Green Man portrait. I’ve written before of my love for swamp monsters. Green Men weren’t originally swamp monsters but, in modern times, especially in modern comics, they’ve become associated with them. I’ve drawn plenty of swamp monsters. This was my first Green Man.

You can find this fellow on all sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Thank you for reading. My apologies for the brevity of this week’s newsletter.

I hope that, in your coming week, you have a host of good things happen and plenty of people with whom to share those events.

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #35

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Hello, hello! Good to see you! You’re looking well. As always. You really must tell me your secret sometime. I’ve asked before. You keep avoiding the question.

Am I being rude?

Are you keeping busy? Is the world your oyster? Do you even like oysters? If so, do you prefer them raw or smoked?

These Days …

It’s been a lively week. As of last Saturday, all the Seattle carriers are starting work a half an hour later due to Seattle Postmaster mandate. I don’t like it but I’m been trying to use the extra time in the morning to my advantage and get some art done. So far, so good. The cats, that is, our real, physical cats, tend to leave me alone more in the morning than in the evening so, really, doing artwork first thing makes sense. Resisting the temptation of social media and youtube videos is a little difficult but I’m getting better at it.

On Sunday we had visitors drop by from out of town. They’re a couple I’ve known for more than thirty years. They were here for an Alaska cruise that departed on Monday. I offered to cook dinner. They offered to take us out. We settled on picking up dinner from a local Indian place and eating at our apartment. This was the best choice. In general I prefer hanging out with friends at home rather than at a restaurant. There are fewer time and noise constraints and you don’t have to worry about the subjects your conversation wanders into. We got loud. We reminisced about our misspent youths, complained about work and the current political situation. We used foul language and touched on subjects that tend to make other folks lose their appetites. It was lovely.

Monday was Labor Day. Chores were done. Plans were made. Sarah and I rested as much as possible.

Tuesday and Wednesday were long workdays. Tuesday because the day after a holiday always has a backup of mail and parcels to get out and Wednesday because we’re shorthanded. The weather is cooling down and it was only two days so I don’t have a lot of complaints. Sarah spent those days getting the house reorganized to give the new housemate more room and to catch up on chores that we’d slacked off on since she got back from Mississippi.

Thursday morning Sarah and I had a zoom meeting with the publisher who will be kickstarting the Billi 99 Special Edition. We’re moving the kickstarter from a planned October back to November so that he and his team can better prepare. They’ve run some very successful campaigns recently and that success is leading to more success and the resulting demands for time and attention. No complaints there.

Thursday afternoon we went on a date. We joke that most of our dates are going shopping or doctor visits. Yesterday we went to the movies for the first time since the Pandemic. Matinees midweek are perfect for avoiding crowds. There were maybe ten people in the theatre. We saw The Equalizer 3. If you liked the first two, you’ll probably like this one. We did.

And then we went to Costco. We had to make it a proper date, after all.

Councils of Cats

Golden Goblin Press pays for printing their books by running kickstarters. They focus on roleplaying game manuals. One of their reward levels is a chance for backers to get themselves or a loved one included as a character in the game. For Tails of Valor backers got a chance to include their beloved cats as characters and I did the cats’ portraits. Many cats, many portraits. Meow. Purrrrrrr.


Process GIF

Cats love boxes. This is an established fact. Boxes are gates to unknown realms and the cats are guarding those gates. It’s for our own good. The things on the other sides of those gates would drive us mad. So the next time your cat scrunches itself into that box you were planning to break down and toss away, say thank you. Madness has been pushed back for another day.

These intrepid guardians can be found on schtuff in my Redbubble store. Of course.

Thank you again for reading. I hope your week gives you all the fun and/or relaxation you need.

If you’ve never eaten an oyster, give it a try. Or have some pizza. Pizza is good for breakfast. Oysters … maybe not.

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #34

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Greetings and Salutations!

It’s good to see you! You’re looking well. Someday you must share the secrets of your success!

These Days …

Our new housemate is all moved in. He’s brought a cat with him. So far it spends most of its time in his room but it has begun venturing into the greater universe of the apartment. Its expeditions have been short. Our cats are getting used to the idea that there is another four legged being in their world. They are mostly respecting the threshold to our housemate’s room as border not to be crossed. No wars have broken out.

The weather is getting cooler. A little rain has fallen. We’ve managed to be a little bit social. On Wednesday we visited with friends who were in town from Taiwan. We’ve know them for years, having met them before their move to the Republic of China. We hadn’t seen them in about three and a half years so there was a lot of catching up to do.

The day job continues to be the day job. I’m continuing to carry a little extra. Lately I’ve been volunteering to deliver the express mail for the 98106 zip code. (We serve four zip codes in our station. Besides 98106 we carry for 98126, 98136 and 98146.) This has me travel more than if I’m delivering part of a specific route. Express mail usually arrives after I’m already out delivering my own route so I have to go back to the station to pick it up. I like the variety of the task. The number of expresses and the amount of driving required is different every day. One day I had only two parcels but they were miles apart. Another time I had five parcels to going to addresses in a four block area. Some days none of the packages require customer signatures before delivery. Some days all of them do.

Cathulhu

Last week I turned in what I thought was my last illustration for the updated edition of Cathulhu and was almost immediately commissioned for three more. Yay!

Tails of Valor from Golden Goblin Press was my first Cathulhu job. I illustrated that book back in 2019. I shared my illustrations for two scenarios last week (one set in ancient Rome) and the week before (one set in ancient Egypt). This week I’m sharing my illustrations for the final scenario.

The Undesirables (set in Dark Ages France) by Oscar Rios
The cats of Paris struggle to survive in a city driven mad with fear. The streets are filled with the dead, the dying, and the terrified as a deadly and mysterious plague runs rampant. The church places the blame on Satan, black magic, witches, and their familiars… namely cats. As a purge of such undesirables begins, will the cats put a stop to the actual witches spreading this vile pestilence, or seek to escape the city and reach the countryside?

I have two more posts worth of illustrations from the Tails of Valor project queued up, one next week and one the week after.

The Process GIF

Bzzzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Means “Glad to see you!”

This design can be found on all sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Thank you for reading. May the next seven days treat you kindly. May you have continued success in the endeavors that matter to you most. May you get the rest you need and may you, on occasion, be surprised by joy.

See you next Friday!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #33

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Give me a Y!
Give me an A!
Give me a D!
Give me an I!
Give me an R!
Give me an F!

What does that spell?

YADIRF!

What does that mean?

Time for another fabulous newsletter!

These Days …

Tomorrow the Seattle Post Office is moving the start time for all its carriers from 7 am to 7:30. The Union has filed a grievance and hopefully we’ll get our start times moved back again. We had that new Seattle Postmaster drop by our station on Wednesday to introduce himself and one of the questions a carrier asked was why he was moving the start times. His answer didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It seemed to be that, because we were handing less mail now than in previous years, we …

That’s where his explanation stopped making sense. He talked about route adjustments and how when he was a carrier he used to have so much mail he’d have to leave some of it undelivered on a regular basis. We have less mail but we’re allowed an hour in the office to set up our route and if it takes longer than an hour we’re supposed to use “street time” and …

If we have less mail it seems like we could actually start earlier? Like at 6:30? We started at 6:30 ten years ago when I started working for the Post Office.

The fellow emphasized that we carriers need to do our job safely so we can come home to our loved ones. Yet by moving our start times he’s making it more likely that, especially once Daylight Savings is inflicted on us, we’ll be delivering mail in the dark. Often on unfamiliar routes because we’re being mandated to work overtime.

Tellingly, during his speech, the Postmaster said something like, “We all love the Post Office, don’t we?” This was clearly a prompt for us to applaud, cheer and huzzah. He got resounding silence. I will give him credit. He didn’t pause his speech for us to react after that. He soldiered on, saying that we loved to be able to provide for our families and give service to our community.

I was neither impressed nor especially disappointed by him. He came across as a guy who thought that the current rules were good and that they should be followed. Questions weren’t encouraged. I have some sympathy for management at the PO. They’ve been tasked with making the USPS, an organization that is not and should never have been designed a business, into a profitable business without being given the resources and autonomy to do so. Those above them demand that they make the carriers and their stations hit a set of numbers that are based on a fantasy of an efficient organization that has all the resources it needs to do its job. We, the carriers and the clerks, have contempt for management because we know that the number they want us to hit are bullshit.

I’ll save further complaints for another day.

Cats!

I’ve just about finished my illustrations for the update of Cathulhu. Since I’m waiting to show those off until Sixtystone Press makes it available, this morning I’m showcasing some more of my illustrations from Tails of Valor, Golden Goblin Press’s scenario book follow up to Cathulhu. These are from the adventure –

Triumphus Felis Ferae (set in 41 C.E. Rome) by Jeffrey Moeller
First the vermin became scarce, and then kittens and cats began wandering off, never to be seen again. Later, people began acting strangely, disobeying the Praetorian Guards and attempting to enter the Imperial Palace. Then the Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (known to later history as Caligula) himself vanishes, leaving the city teetering on the edge of utter chaos. Can a band of brave and proud Roman street cats solve this mystery, and restore order to the Empire? Triumphus Felis Ferae is Latin for “the triumph (all march) of the wild cat” or more simply, Stray Cat Strut.


All of the illustrations in Tails of Valor were published in black and white. Oscar Rios, the publisher, commissioned me to color one of the illustrations as a present for Jeffrey Moeller.

It’s a Mad Mad Mouse (Process GIF)

The art I do is for amusement. My own. Hopefully yours. Hopefully people I’ve never met.

A lot of the art I’ve created in the last couple of years I did with a thought toward putting it on something – a mug, a t-shirt, a poster – and making it available for sale. The image below was made with that in mind. Sooner or later, when I have my own POD shop, I will put it on something, if only for a short time.

Until then, it’s only getting posted as fan art. Because one does not rattle the doors of the House of Mouse. Next year, in 2024, the version of Mickey Mouse as depicted in the silent cartoon “Steamboat Willie”, will enter public domain. Mickey Mouse will continue to be a character trademarked by the Disney Corporation. Copyright is limited. Trademark can be forever. I could argue that the design below is a parody and therefore this depiction is fair use. I could argue that, as long as I don’t market the thing as a version of Mickey, I’m not trying to infringe on Disney’s trademark.

But, honestly? I did this for the fun of it, not to throw rocks at the windows of the Mouse’s fortress.

M! I! C! K! E! Y!

M-O-U-S-E!

Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.

And that’s it for this week.

May the next seven days treat you well. May you get the rest you need and may you have some fun and experience some joy.

Cheers!

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