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Skook Words (and Pictures) #23

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Friday descends from the heavens like an wine glass pushed off the table by the family cat.

On a good Friday it hits a soft and cushy rug intact.

On a bad Friday it shatters into a thousand pieces and you have to sweep it all up and be careful walking around the table in your bare feet for the next few weeks.

Hello and welcome to the newsletter.

I love my cats but I had to put them in the bedroom and close the door this morning. They wanted attention. I wanted to write. I am a bad human. They will be plotting my demise. They are good cats. Good cats are always plotting someone’s demise.

These Days …

I’ve gotten in more personal art time this week. It’s been quite relaxing. I’ve made a little progress on Mighty Nizz and done a couple of designs for my Redbubble store. I’ll show off the designs (sketches and finals) here in the next few weeks.

My station has hired more carriers so I’ve not been asked to carry as much extra in the last few days. The weather has been varied. One day of rain. Sun and clouds and breezes otherwise.

We’ve been kept busy trying to provide assistance for friends dealing with medical problems in distant places. Mostly it’s been Sarah providing the support while I do my best to support her. Tonight I’ll be putting her on a plane heading southeast so she can help out a couple of those folks in person. I’ll be flying solo for a few weeks.

Well, not exactly solo. There are the cats. And I have friends coming through town. And there’s work. And art. But both our routines will not be routine for a while.

Process

This is the penultimate process post for coloring these sketches. I’m working on streamlining my coloring process. I’m trying to use colors for mood rather than simply coloring things “realistically”. I expect I’ll be working on both these skills until I drop dead.


Out of the Past

I did the illustration below for Worlds of Cthulhu magazine back in 2009. Last week, Adam Crossingham, the former editor, emailed me to ask if he could use the image as the cover for a Miskatonic Repository publication at DriveThruRPG.

I said yes. The current version of the supplement can be purchased here. Since I’m practicing coloring my art I thought I’d take a stab at coloring this image. The result is below. The Miskatonic Repository publications are all PDFs. The great thing about PDFs is that a color version is no more expensive than a black and white one. And you can update a PDF in ways that are impossible with a physical publication. So this will be the new cover for 100 Stat Blocks. I’ll post a link when Adam updates it.
Now I should let the cats out of the bedroom and make some breakfast. It’s going to be a busy day.

Thank you for reading. I hope your day, your week, your current life is giving you an optimal mix of excitement and rest. Remember to touch base with friends. Eat. Hydrate.

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #22

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Here we are. The latest Friday with the latest newsletter. I hope your week has gone well. I hope it’s been full of more good times than otherwise.

For me, the last week has felt busier. We’re waiting for the publisher to get back to us on Billi 99. Until that happens (and, hopefully, when it does) there’s nothing for me to do on the book. They sent us some examples of the books they’ve published in the past and, damn, they’re nice packages. So, while waiting is hard, the results will be better than what we would have come up with on our own.

Without Billi in the forefront of my brain I’ve got room again to think of my own art projects. That’s where the busier feeling come from. I’m managed to do a little inking on the next Mighty Nizz story. I posted the Nizz designs to which I’ve added words to my Redbubble shop. While I was there I did some searches of some of my other designs to see where they are showing up. It appears that Redbubble’s search function is broken. Every search I did gave me results that had nothing to do with the tag words I was using. That gives me even more incentive to set up my own dedicated shop.

Process

The next step in coloring these sketches was coloring the figures. Since I’m working monochrome my choices were pretty simple. I know, this doesn’t look much different than last week. Sorry about that.
Next week the complicated work begins.

If Company Should Come

I regularly go back through my computer to see if any of my older illustrations can find new life on schtuff. Back in 2011 I contributed a couple of illustrations to the AKLONOMICON, an anthology of Lovecraftian fiction. Apparently there was a bunch of drama between some of the folks putting the book together and only a few copies got printed. I didn’t get a physical contributor’s copy. I did recently get a new PDF of the book’s contents. I think I received one prior to publication but that copy was left behind two computers ago.

I like both the illustrations I did but, of the two, this one for “If Company Should Come” by Edward Morris works best as a stand alone image. It’s an enigma but it has focus.
Add some color …

And now the enigma can be found on shirts and posters and shower curtains and …

I’ve got other, original, designs on the drawing board. More next week.

Between now and then, live a good life. Be kind when you can. Show up. Brush your teeth. Ignore the internet.

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #21

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‘Tis the Day of Fri. Once again.

Did your week go well?

I certainly hope so. If not, please fill out a complaint form and send it to management. Operators are standing by. Standing by the water cooler that is. They’re nowhere near the phones and they wouldn’t answer if they were. It’s casual Friday. Management is drunk and the operators are halfway there.

(I can’t remember if I’ve ever worked in a place that had a water cooler. Coffee maker, yes. Water cooler … maybe? It’s too early to wrack my memory.)

These Days …

This week started out pretty well. My days off collaborated with the Memorial Day holiday so I ended up with three days off in a row – Sunday through Tuesday.

I did some late birthday celebrating on Sunday. And worked on art. Contracts have not yet been signed with the new publisher for Billi 99 but I’m letting myself work on short projects again. The publisher sent us copies of a few of the books that they’ve done in the past and they are lovely. Waiting for them to get back to us on some details is difficult but they already had projects on their schedule and adding in Billi requires moving things around.

Monday I went to a rally organized by my mail carriers’ union. City carriers are currently working without a contract. Our contract expired on May 20th. We’ll continue to get paid and have all the rights agreed on in the previous contract until the new one takes effect. The rally was to make a public statement that we wanted an end to mandatory overtime and better working conditions. The rally happened in a park in downtown Seattle. I don’t go downtown much. Parking is expensive. It’s full of people. But I went. Numbers matter. Showing up was the least I could do. I joined in chants when expected. I even had a conversation with one of the carriers from my station that I’d never spoke to before. Turns out he’d had two different smash and grabs happen on his route.

Tuesday I worked on art.

On Wednesday I found out that I’d been mandated to work on Tuesday. Apparently five regular carriers, including myself, had been mandated. Management forgot to tell any of us. They put it on the schedule but, as regulars, we already have an expected schedule, so none of us checked the weekly updating one. Ooops. The mail got delivered.

As it got delivered on Wednesday and Thursday. It will get delivered again today. Probably by me. It’s possible that aliens will take me for a joyride between now and clock in time but that’s unlikely. I’m certainly not counting on it.

The Progress

One of the things I worked on during my holiday was coloring this set of sketches. I finished the process on Tuesday. This week I’m posting my base color choices for each set of sketches. I’m coloring this art in monochrome. Ideally each base color suggests an emotion. Ideally. I’ll be posting different stages each week for the next month.

To Sail the Seas Unknown

A couple of years ago I did a couple of supplemental illustrations for Corsairs of Cthulhu, a Call of Cthulhu RPG set in the Golden Age of Piracy. One was a page border –
The other was a general use fill-in illustration. The page border is pretty specific to the book but this crossed swords image seems like it could live on its own on schtuff.

I haven’t added anything to my Redbubble shop in a while so, with time available, I set to work coloring this design.

Voilà!

Available on schtuff!

And that’s it for this week. I need to have some breakfast. And think about delivering mail.

Take care of yourself. Check in on the folks you care about. Make some art. Go for a walk. Pet a cat. Play with a dog. Take a nap.

The world is full of opportunities.

Thank you for reading. See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #20

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Welp, it’s Friday. Did it sneak up on you too? Such a tricky day. They ought to put a warning label on it.

I hope your week has gone well. Mine has been … busy. And I’ve been reminded how lucky I am to have my health by a number of folks around me having crashes in theirs.

Smash. Grab.

Last Friday, a little before noon, I returned to my postal truck and had to stare at the cab for a few seconds to register what I was seeing. Someone had smashed the cargo side window and stolen the mail (letters, magazines, small parcels) that were on the delivery tray. I was about halfway through my route at the time so half my mail was ripped off. I wish I could say I was shocked and surprised but West Seattle has been having a run of smash and grabs on mail trucks in the last few months. Unless we’re delivering on a mounted section of our route we’re now required to keep the mail locked up in the back of the truck. This slows down my delivery process.

I had been keeping the mail in the back and had just brought it forward because I was about to begin delivering to series of CBUs (cluster box units). The section I was delivering was a very short walk – less than five minutes from the truck and back. I didn’t see or hear anything. Whoever did it had to have been in a car – you can’t carry that much mail on foot.

Mail theft on this scale is new at our station. In previous years we’d hear about occasional robberies in other parts of the city but, for the most part, thefts were minor, the perpetrators were just stealing from mailboxes. I’m not worried about my safety. I am sad that my customers aren’t getting their mail and, especially their parcels. Mail these days tends to be impersonal bills and marketing. Parcels though, that’s stuff people want and, if it’s medicine, need.

I’m having to drive another truck until the window of my truck gets fixed. This is a pain because there were already five trucks out of commission with broken windows. We’re told that the windows won’t be able to be replaced until July. Bleah.

These Days …

On Sunday, we had friends over to our place for breakfast. Spanakopita. Scrambled eggs. Croissants and fresh fruit. It was kinda sorta a birthday party for me. Just the sort of party I like these days. Small so it’s easy to carry on conversations.

Monday – With a publisher looking at (mostly) taking over the Billi 99 project I’m letting myself give a little attention to other creative endeavors. We don’t yet have a schedule and a definite contract so I’m still keeping my main attention on Billi. I did portraits of the main cast for our Billi99.com site. I’m posting a gallery of those images below. To find out who these characters are, please go to the site.

My actual birthday was on Tuesday. I delivered my route as usual.

Wednesday. Workday.

Thursday – the big news was that an arrest was made of a(n alleged) mail thief. There’s no mention of this year’s smash and grabs in West Seattle so I’m not going to assume that he was the only guy doing this. I’m planning to continue to work out of the back of my truck for the rest of the summer. Once the rain comes back I’ll re-evaluate. Having to sort out of the back takes longer. The cargo sections of our trucks aren’t really set up for carrying trays of mail, trays of flats and a lot of parcels. Yeah, I know that doesn’t make sense.

Friday – today. Yep. More work. More work tomorrow. Then I have Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off. Yay!

The Practice

Last week I posted the raw scans of six pages of sketches that I’ll be coloring as practice. This week I’m posting more cleaned up versions. I’ve removed the blue lines and fixed a few things that didn’t look right to me in the original drawings.


Next week I’ll start coloring.

Thank you!

A big shout out and thank you to Fred Burke and John Bell, my Ko-Fi supporters! You signed on at the beginning of 2023 and, as of next week, you will have stuck around for six months! I really appreciate it. Especially after my original plans got sidetracked by working on Billi. As promised, next week I’ll send you photos of a selection of 8.5×11 sketches and drawings. After you’ve picked your favorite I’ll mail it to you!

Thank you to all y’all who read my ramblings every week. I hope the days are being gentle to you.

See you in seven!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Skook Words (and Pictures) #19

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Friday arrives like a flock of migrating geese!
Friday is the dream that you forget upon waking!
Friday is the fifth dwarf, Snow White’s favorite!
Friday is the moment when you see your lost love again!
Friday lurks in the darkness and springs upon the unwary!
Friday is a cat on a windowsill soaking in sunlight!
Friday is … here.
(Unless you’re reading this on some other day of the week. Those days are cool too. Mostly.)

These Days …

The process of getting Billi 99 back in print in a new snazzy edition has reminded me how much I’ve been relying on annual projects to get things done. For the past few years I’ve had some regular thing, a large project planned, that got me to produce some art. One year it was to do a daily half hour sketch. One year it was Daughter of Spiders. One year it was to produce a coffee mug design on a weekly basis. This year I’d planned to create Mighty Nizz comics and write/illustrate The Surrilana Depths. Billi 99 was only vaguely on the table.

When it started to look like there would be a reprint, it looked like it would be a simple thing – a hardcover edition in black and white. My participation was expected to be limited to some touch up on pages that had problems in the original scans. We had a publisher. Someone else had volunteered to do the book design.

And then …

The designer quit.

Sarah has been trying to get a new edition of Billi out for a few years now. With a publisher being ready to print a new edition, I stepped in to do the production work and book design. Then we got more ambitious. We’d previously considered doing a Kickstarter to fund a deluxe hardback printing but neither I nor Sarah had felt like we had the focus to manage it. I had my postal job and Mighty Nizz and Surrilana filling my time. But once I was doing production work we started reconsidering the idea. And once a Kickstarter was an option we figured – why not go full color? Sarah and Tim Sale, the artist, had discussed doing a color version in years previous. Sarah researched costs. She contacted José Villarrubia about coloring the book.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks. José has created beautiful colors on a few pages that can be used on the Kickstarter campaign. I’d love to show them but we want to keep them under wraps until closer to launch.

The project has grown. More folks than Sarah and I are working on it. If all goes well someone else, with far more experience, will be stepping in to design the book. Among other things.

That’s a relief. That’s exciting. I wish I could write all about it but negotiations are still happening.

So I should be able to pick up with Mighty Nizz and Surrilana soon. It’s tricky. I don’t shift gears well. I figured I could manage two projects this year, if I was both the boss and the worker bee. Three projects (especially when the third project has deadlines and big time publishers and stuff I’m figuring out how to do on the fly) is more than I could manage and still be pleasant company. Add in concerns and attention to/about friends and family with life threatening medical issues …. Bleah. I haven’t been willing to work on anything but Billi because I haven’t wanted to get too attached to any other project. So instead of spending a few minutes here and there on Nizz and Surrilana I’ve spent my unstructured time surfing the web.

That’s been fun. But not terribly productive.

Billi is still a project that requires my attention. Assuming that negotiations work out, I’ll still need to be involved. It will just require a different sort of attention. I should have the mental energy to focus on Nizz and Surrilana again.

Whew.

In the Meantime

While we’re working out the details on Billi I’m doing a miniproject just for this newsletter. I need practice doing digital coloring. (Yes, I’ve been doing digital coloring for years now. I still need practice.) I did these six pages of sketches. This week I’m posting scans of the physical art. Next week I’ll post the (mostly) cleaned up black and white versions. The week after that I’ll start adding color. Every week I’ll do another stage in the coloring process. Hopefully y’all will find it amusing.

And that’s it for this week. Thank you for being patient with my rambling.

I hope the last seven days have been good to you. I hope the next seven are even better.

See you on May 26th!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #18

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Today is Friday the 12th. A day of good luck. Jason Voorhees is off in the woods knitting sweaters for his mother’s corpse. All the black cats are taking naps somewhere quiet and cozy. Ladders have been left on the ground so they can only be walked over, not under. Mirrors only bend today.

So live it up!

These Days …

It’s been a sunny week. It’s amazing how much sunshine affects my mood. I do the same work as usual but I do it more easily and cheerfully.

Today is the first day of my Long Weekend – the time when my days off line up and I get three in a row. This will be followed by my Long Week – the time when I work six days in a row. I will not think about the Long Week today. I will relax and enjoy myself.

Tomorrow is the annual Letter Carriers Food Drive. If you can spare some, please put a bag of non-perishable food by your mail box for your carrier to pick up. Volunteers will collect the bags at the station and distribute the food to local food banks. Thank you!

This is the first time since I joined the Post Office that I will not work a Food Drive. I feel a little lame for having the day off. The Food Drive is one of the days I most feel like I’m doing something useful as a letter carrier. I’m considering dropping in at the station to help unload trucks. Or maybe run my route and collect bags to lighten the loads of working carriers. No promises.

The End of the War

Below are the last of the illustrations I did for that never to see print Call of Cthulhu RPG World War One scenario collection. These are actually the first illustrations I did. They were intended for a preview PDF. The book itself was to be printed in black and white. I did simple color versions of each illustration in case the publisher wanted to put out the PDF in color. Color costs more to print. Color costs no more in a PDF. This scenario featured aerial encounters with Byahkee who woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Thank you for visiting. And reading. And looking at stuff. I hope your week was a good one. I hope the coming week is filled with good luck and sunny days. With comfortable breezes. Can’t forget that.

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #17

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Hello and greetings from the Pacific Northwest! We have rain and snow and warm sunshine. Occasionally on the same day.

Weather. What would we discuss with strangers without it?

I suppose we could talk about our health but usually one discusses that with acquaintances and friends.

These Days …

My health is fine. My computer’s health might be fine but it’s hard for me to check right now. My monitor and my computer don’t seem to want to speak to each other. I’ve checked the cords. I’ve changed monitors. The computer is working. The monitor seems to start but won’t connect to either of my computer or Sarah’s.

When the problem first occurred on Tuesday morning I was cranky about it. By Wednesday morning I was still a little cranky about it but I’d also come to realize that I was mostly using my computer to scroll social media. Again. Not writing. Not doing art. I have read some online articles and essays but in that distracted way that happens when I have a hard time concentrating on anything specific.

So, on Wednesday morning I read a library book as I drank my coffee to wake up. I own a ridiculous number of books but I borrow more from the library. On Wednesday evening, after getting home from work (and having dinner and chatting with Sarah) I sketched.

Thursday was a scheduled day off. I was a cranky person. There are a lot of things that are out of my control right now. Friends and family are ill. We’re waiting on others to finish some tasks so we can move forward on the Billi 99 Kickstarter. New rules have been handed down at the Post Office on how we’re supposed to do our jobs. Sarah, kind soul that she is, put up with me. I did a little sketching.

I finally ran errands for a family member who has been stuck in the hospital. The hospital is, like so many other places these days, very short staffed so everything is taking longer than expected. We’d thought I’d be able to taxi her home yesterday but the hospital hasn’t been able to process some of the tests they run and they don’t want to let her go home until they get the results. Liability issues.

I’m going to try to refuse overtime  today so I can get my family member home. Ideally I’ll be able to work a short shift.

I’m putting off dealing with my monitor until Sunday. I’m writing this newsletter on Sarah’s computer. I do need a working monitor to be able to use my computer and I need my computer as part of my creative work process. But I’ve lived without it for a few days and can live without it for a few more.

More From the War

This week’s gallery features more illustrations from that Call of Cthulhu WW1 set RPG book that will never see print. The first two images are from a scenario involving an Elder Thing on a refugee ship. The other images are solo illustrations set in different theatres of the Great War. The book’s author asked me to do ‘flavor” illustrations that showed the variety and scope of the conflict – especially places and peoples that weren’t featured in any of the actual scenarios.

If you’re reading this newsletter in your email and the images look weird try checking them out on the Skookworks website. I’ve been told that some email programs are having problems displaying the jpegs.

I hope your week has gone well. That your weather has been good and that your health is giving you nothing but joy. See you in seven!

 

Skook Words (and Pictures) #16

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It’s time to Friday like you’ve never Fridayed before!

These Days …


I made one of my customers’ HOA newsletters! Specifically, one of the residents took a photo of me as I put mail into one of their new CBUs (Cluster Box Units). For more than a year a big condo development on my route has been undergoing renovation. The buildings were constructed in the 70s and, almost 50 years later, needed some serious work. Construction crews have been tearing off the sidings, the roofs and pretty much everything else – replacing the old rotting materials with new shiny ones. As part of the renovation they installed new CBUs for the mail.

The CBUs come without master postal locks. Those locks have to installed by an official USPS locksmith using locks and keys specific to the zip code where the CBUs are located. In Seattle, I’m told, there is only one guy who installs those official locks. None of our stations get to keep locks on hand. In Seattle there’s a construction boom. New buildings are going up everywhere. New buildings mean new mailboxes.

Those new CBUs were installed on my route at the end of 2022. The locks for the CBUs were installed in April, 2023. But only for the boxes on 25th. The boxes on 26th are still waiting for their locks. Hopefully they won’t have to waiting until 2024. The old CBUs on 26th are a mess. I’m really looking forward to seeing them go away.

The Unpublished

For this week’s pictures I’m presenting galleries of illustrations from a couple of the adventures from that never to see print book of WW1 Call of Cthulhu scenarios. These two had nautical settings.

Medusa’s Garden

These illustrations were for a scenario in which American sailors discover the weirdly mummified bodies of a troop of Japanese sailors. The goal of the adventure was to figure out what had happened to the Japanese while avoiding the same fate.

In Which German U-boat Sailors are the Good Guys

During WW1 the Germans got painted with a lot of negative propaganda. In this scenario, the German characters got to be heroes, facing down halfbreed Deep Ones, a corrupt bishop, a cadre of worm sorcerers, and rescuing some orphan kids from sacrifice – twice. This is assuming the players succeed. In Call of Cthulhu roleplaying, success is not guaranteed.

And that’s it for this week. May the next week treat you well. May you treat yourself and others well.

See you in seven!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Skook Words (and Pictures) #15

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Friday comes but once a week yet the dream of Friday lives in us every day.

These Days …

Hospitals. I’m glad they exist. I haven’t been sick but I’ve had multiple family members spending time in them in the last week. More visits are expected. Bleah.

Cancer. Heart failure. Asthma. Infections. Everyone is still alive. Some of them are feeling much better now. So far, so good.

Terror in the Alps

Enough words. This week’s pictures are illustrations from a Call of Cthulhu RPG scenario set during WW1. Some unlucky Italian soldiers encounter Chaugnar Faugn related shenanigans while checking an observation post in the Alps. I did these for a book that will likely never see print.

I thought the image of the Brother  would look good on … something … so I colored it and  it’s available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Death of a Sorcerer

These images are from the same unpublished book of WW1 era Call of Cthulhu scenarios. This one involved the mystery of a dead sorcerer and the horror that his passing unleashed.

I liked the image of the dueling sorcerers so much I colored it and made it available on schtuff.


I hope the last seven days have been good to you and the next seven are even better. I will keep a Friday in my thoughts for you until I see again.

Cheers!
Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Skook Words (and Pictures) #14

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Good morning!

I hope your week has gone well. You deserve a good week. Heck, you deserve a good and happy life. I hope you’ve been having that.

Boosting the Signal

Speaking of things we deserve –

Back in 2020 I did the cover illustration for Spinning Karma, humorous novel by Joshua Samuel Brown. It’s a funny, well written book. You don’t have to believe me, here’s a review.


Joshua is not only an amusing writer, he’s also a friend. I got an email from him yesterday with his publisher’s sales figures for the book in 2020. According to them, no copies had been sold, period, last year. I understand that sales of novels by anyone who isn’t a brand name are way down but, dang, that’s worse than I thought. The book deserves more attention than that!

So, here’s a link to purchase the book via its publisher and another to purchase it via Amazon. It’s a good way to spend a few hours.

While you’re at it –


How Not to Avoid Jet Lag is Joshua’s collection of mostly true short stories. Each story features an illustration by moi. It’s currently only available as an ebook through Amazon. I like physical books so I’m going to have to convince him to put out a print on demand version. But, until then, the ebook version is light and easily carried.

Joshua started his writing career doing travel books. These are worth checking out whether or not you plan to visit the destinations described.

These Days …

I’m back at work delivering mail. Not much changed on my route while I was gone. One customer put a fence around her house so I no longer can walk across her tiny front yard to get to the next delivery.

We continue to be short handed. Yesterday we “rolled” three routes – that is, we only delivered the parcels for those routes. The mail stayed at the station to be delivered today. Next week, when more carriers have vacations scheduled, we’re expecting things to be worse. Our lack of staff has had one possible benefit: upper management called off the route adjustments that were scheduled to begin at our station this month. Upper management didn’t actually give a reason for calling off the route adjustments but trying to get an accurate count of how long it takes to deliver a route is hard to achieve when so many routes are getting split up and delivered by different people every day.

If you know anyone who is physically fit and ready to work 14 hour days (time and a half after eight hours, double time after ten), send them our way!

War and Recovery

I failed to scan the small amount of sketching I managed to get done this week. In lieu of new art, here is a gallery of illustrations from one of the scenarios from an unlikely to ever to be published Call of Cthulhu manual set during World War One. This adventure was set at a hospital for the recovering wounded. The poor bastards have gotten the attentions of both Nodens and Nyarlathotep focused on them. Things won’t go well.

And that’s it for this week. Take care of yourself. Spend some time with friends. Pet a squirrel and chat with a raven.

See you in seven!