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Skook Words (and Pictures) #4

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Greetings, salutations, hello and how are you?

I hope your world is treating you well. I hope you are treating your world well.

This week’s process GIF is for one of the illustrations I did for my Ko-Fi account. I’m using it as part of the icons for the Pulp and Circuses and the All the Works membership levels. The hammer wielding woman is Briar Rose Taylor – protagonist of Daughter of Spiders. The big guy behind her is Morgo – one of the main characters of The Surrilana Depths.
The Surrilana Depths is my rewrite/revision/reimagining of Morgo the Mighty, a novel serialized in four parts in the Popular Magazine in 1930. I discovered the story back in 2012. It’s an adventure with a combined helping of two of my favorites settings – a Lost World and an Underground Realm. Surrilana is a Lost World in a giant series of caverns under the Himalayas. I found a facsimile reprint of the story, retyped it and serialized the original novel here at Skookworks. I had a collected version available for download but I took that offline when I started streamlining my website. The original posts (and a lot of related posts with various illustrations) are still up if you’d like to read them.

I will make a new PDF of the original novel available to my Pulp and Circuses Ko-Fi subscribers. The current version needs an embarrassing amount of copy editing. I want to fix that first. If you’d like to read a physical reprint of the novel now, there’s a good looking version available here.

I’ll be serializing The Surrilana Depths in 26 episodes, one every two weeks, starting in July. I’m currently planning to include 2 original illustrations with each episode. Surrilana will differ from Morgo. I’m keeping a lot of the florid prose. I’m sticking to the plot as much as possible. I’m changing … I’ll go into what I’m changing in future newsletters.

I’m working on Surrilana in the mornings before I go to deliver mail. I took a break today to say hello to y’all. Now I’m heading back underground.

See you in seven!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Skook Words (and Pictures) #3

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TGIF! Rearrange those letters slightly and you get GIFT! Loose the T and you get GIF! Clearly that’s a sign that I need to gift y’all with more GIFs!

So this week we have a process GIF of the Mighty Nizz!

Combine this kid with last week’s logo for:


This illustration/design isn’t available on anything yet.

I know. Not very capitalist of me.

I’m working to get ahead on the Mighty Nizz comic and other sundries. The Post Office continues to expect me to deliver mail. My cat thinks my drawing board is his playground (so many pencils, pens, markers and other tools to bat onto the floor!). Life is a struggle! To keep track of that I’m going old school and putting up to-do lists. These are pages from an 18×24 newsprint sketch pad taped to the wall behind my desk. They’re a much better reminder of where I’m at than anything I could put on my computer or my phone.

For Nizz –
For The Surrilana Depths (aka the Morgo the Mighty reboot/revision/remake – more on that next week) –


For the Newsletters both here and at Ko-Fi –

I’ve made progress on these lists since I photographed them. More lists are undoubtedly needed. Showing off the progress will be a regular part of this newsletter.

My first Ko-Fi newsletter should post simultaneously to this one. Check it out!

Time is short. Y’all are beautiful and talented and I appreciate you taking the time to read my ramblings.

I hope your week has been a good one. The days are getting longer. May you have more joy as well.

See you in seven!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Skook Words (and Pictures) #2

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Good Morning! Welcome to the second Friday of 2023!

Thank you for your votes on the Skookworks banners. I’ve tallied the votes and the winners are:

My big illustration project this year is the Mighty Nizz comic. I got stalled in inking at the end of last year because of the extra hours I needed to work at USPS. With package volumes back to “normal” levels I’m able to go back to “normal” work hours. Y’know, ten hours or less instead of 12 hours and more. Less time delivering mail means more time writing and doing art. My goal is to have the second Nizz story inked and toned and being colored by the end of the month. Fingers crossed.

I was intending to do all the coloring using Clip Studio Paint but there’s enough of a learning curve that I’ll probably only do the lettering there. I’m moving toward a more digital work process. Partly that’s to make it possible for me to produce work more quickly. Partly that’s to eventually have less physical art to store. We’re expecting to move out of Seattle in a few years and the less we have to move, the easier it will be.

And partly … it’s to make it more difficult to spill ink all over my art. I’ve done it a few times on my own. I’ve moved my grip wrong and dropped my brush on the page. Mostly I’ve been able to clean that up digitally. A few times I’ve needed to print out new bluelines and start over. Most recently the cat knocked over my ink cup and got spatters on my thumbnails and the page I was inking. Fortunately, that time, the ink hit the part of the page that I was going to fill with black anyway.

I’m moving from Photoshop to CSP for two reasons.
Number One – screw Adobe and their rental model. I own my copy of CSP.
Number Two – Photoshop is a massive program and I only use a small part of it. CSP was designed for Japanese manga artists. Mangaka are expected to produce as many (or more) as twenty pages a week. CSP is designed to make that workload easier.

My first finished image done with CSP is the Mighty Nizz logo.

My other big projects are auxiliary to the Mighty Nizz comic – my Ko-Fi page and the Skookworks store.

I’ve set up three support tiers at Ko-Fi.

Nothing but the Nizz
Level One. For folks who are most interested in the Mighty Nizz. Weekly newsletter. Sketches. Process GIFs. And more!

Pulp and Circuses
Level Two. For folks who like pulp fiction and weird illustration. And the Mighty Nizz. This tier includes all the Mighty Nizz content. Regular chapters (with illustrations) of a scifi/fantasy/magic realismish serial. Plus schtuff!

All the Works
Level Three. All the Nizz. All the Pulp. Plus new short comics. Revised classic comix. Downloadable PDFs. Plus schtuff!

The Skookworks store will be similar to my current Zazzle and Redbubble stores but you should be able to make purchases directly from one of my sites – Mighty Nizz stuff from the Mighty Nizz site, Oz Squad stuff from the Oz Squad site and everything else from the Skookworks site. If there’s a design you’d like to see on a specific product please let me know.

Today is the fifth day of my six day USPS work week. I’ll get to rest on Sunday and Monday.

I hope your New Year is treating you well. Look out for yourself. Be as kind as you can. Take joy where you find it. Don’t listen to crazy people on the internet.

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #1

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Good morning!

It’s a New Year and I’m making some changes. If you have a moment, I’d like your opinion. I’ll be asking for it wwwaaaayyyy down the page after the images.

Out with the old.

In with the new.

The first set of banners (the old) have been on my website since January 1st, 2020. I posted the second set of banners (the new) to Skookworks.com on Sunday, the 1st of this year. Here’s where I’d like your opinion – I’m going to be streamlining and simplifying the website over next few months. I made 12 banners this year because I made 12 banners in 2020. The banners show up randomly when someone looks at the site. Five banners would be more streamlined than twelve banners. Which five banners are your favorites?
1. Flying Turtles
2. Dragons
3. All Better Now
4. Black Cats and Jack O’Lanterns
5. Yellow Alien
6. Nizz out standing in her field
7. Yellow Brick Road
8. The Face
9. Stardust the Super Wizard
10. Octobriana
11. Fantomah
12. The Heap

Please choose the five banners you like best and reply to this email with the numbers of those banners. (For example 4, 7, 9, 11, 12 or maybe 1, 3,4, 6, 7.) If you’re reading this post on the website you can either post a reply or use the “Contact Me” button at the top right of the page. Thank you!

If you’ve made New Year’s resolutions (or set New Year’s goals) I’d love to hear what they are. For myself, I make New Year’s plans. I give myself annual projects.

For the last couple of years I’ve been posting the Skook Works in Progress newsletter. Every Friday I would post a process GIF of a design I was selling in my Zazzle and Redbubble online stores. For 2022 I’d given myself the specific project of doing 52 designs, one for each week. I’m happy to say that I exceeded that goal. I’ve currently got 230 designs available in Redbubble and more than 300 in Zazzle. (Zazzle doesn’t give me a count.)

This year my main big art project is drawing Mighty Nizz comics. I’m sure I’ll add more designs to my online stores but my focus will be the girl in the wolfskin hoodie. I considered taking a break from writing a newsletter. I’m not expecting to make process GIFs of the Nizz strips so …

So I’m changing the title of the newsletter. Writing to you each week is a habit that I will be maintaining. Once I start posting the finished pages for the next Nizz story I’ll post the scans of the physical pages here. That should start happening on February 1st over at the Mighty Nizz website and here (or in your email if you’re a subscriber) on February 3rd.

Some of my other projects –
I’ve set up a Ko-Fi account. Ko-Fi is a crowdfunding site similar to Patreon. Ko-Fi has options for payment and services that I think will work better for me than Patreon. Please come visit. I’m still figuring things out so any suggestions you have will be welcomed.

I’m working on creating a store here at Skookworks, similar to what I’ve got going at Zazzle and Redbubble but without the noise that is endemic to those platforms.

As I mentioned, I’m streamlining and simplifying Skookworks.com. I started posting a blog at skook.blogspot.com on January 8th, 2003. That eventually grew into this website. I’ve published over 3400 posts. Some years I’ve posted daily. You can find over 2400 images in the posts or in galleries here. I’ve been a packrat most of my life. In the last couple of years I’m been working to become a different sort of rodent, one who can fit all his possessions into a small van. I’m a long way from being that. Skookworks.com doesn’t weigh anything but it’s a huge site. A huge site that, according to my analytics, no one visits deeper than the front pages. I understand. I rarely go deep into the sites I visit.

Over the next few months I’ll be going deep. I’ve already archived the Archives – my older art (portfolios, minicomics, Misspent Youths, Morgo the Mighty). Those pages have only been visited by spambots in recent years. I’ll be deleting most of the old posts. (I’m still a packrat. Anything I delete will get archived somewhere.) If you ever planned to read my ramblings from 2005 or 2010, now is the time to do it.

I hope 2023 looks like a good year for you.

Thank you for reading this newsletter! Remember to send me your banner selections.

See you in seven!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Skook WiP #105

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Happy Last Days of 2022!

I used to spend the first few weeks of each year forgetting that the year had changed. I’d write the previous year in all the places I should be writing the current year. For a minute I was going to congratulate myself on training myself to remember the change better. Then I looked at the corner of my screen. There is today’s date. If I looked at my phone it would show me today’s date. Drat. I haven’t gotten better at the remembering that the year has changed, computers just tell me, repeatedly, what day it is.

These Days

I have gotten very little drawing done in the last week. I mucked up my fingertips last Friday pealing ice off my car. “Freezing rain” had been predicted for Friday. Never having experienced freezing rain I didn’t know what to expect. What we got was ice on everything. Our driveway was a sheet of ice. The lawn was a sheet of ice. Our car was shrinkwrapped in ice. I always park the car on the side of the street when I know we’ll have cold weather. I’d intended to go to work. Getting into the car was pretty easy. The doors weren’t so frozen that I couldn’t open them. But the ice on the car, and especially on the windows, was determined to stay in play. I spent 45 minutes running the engine and the defrost, alternately sitting in the car and getting out to pull off sheets of ice. While I was doing it I was having fun. It was a new experience and I do enjoy unwrapping things.

The road by our house seemed drivable. I made it two blocks, almost to the main intersection before I decided that going farther was a bad idea. Someone’s car was stuck at the intersection. A woman had tried to make it somewhere, realized that it was a bad idea and parked in the road with her hazard lights on. I parked on the side of the road, under a tree where the ice hadn’t collected. After checking to make sure the woman was okay (she was waiting on her husband to come help) I walked back home. Very carefully. I had slip on cleats over my boots but those aren’t meant for walking on thick hard ice. I walked most of the way in the road. No cars were on it so it was safer than the sidewalks and lawns.

I didn’t try to walk down our drive. I sat down and slid. I got a cold wet butt. Better that than bruises or worse from falling. Warmer rain was predicted for the afternoon. I thought I might be able to go to work later. Rain did come, but not until dark and by then I’d changed out of my uniform and settled in.

Out in the cold my fingers had gotten numb. I was wearing fingerless gloves so my palms were comfortable. It was only as my fingers warmed up that I realized how raw the tips had gotten from picking at and pulling off the ice on the car. A lot of regular actions became painful. Buttoning my shirts. Opening pill bottles. Unwrapping bandaids. Anything that involved using the tips of my fingers in a sustained effort was painful. I could type. The contact between fingertip and key was brief enough that the pain was minimal. Holding a pencil, pen or brush – nope.

So I’ve spent time thinking, getting ahead on newsletters and planning for next year. And, oh, right, having Christmas (the day itself and the day after, a federal holiday) to eat and celebrate and hang out with friends, family and Sarah.

I did deliver mail on Christmas Eve. In pouring rain. Safer than ice but … yuck. Only about a third of our stations carriers made it in so a lot of routes didn’t get delivered. We focused on getting parcels out and it looked like most of those that had been sorted actually made it to their destinations. There were still palettes of parcels that needed to be distributed. Some of that got handled by folks on the Overtime Desired List on the 26th. The rest of it was waiting for us when most of us came back on the 27th.

I worked 15 hours on the 27th.

I worked 13.5 hours on the 28th.

I had the day off on the 29th. I spent that running errands and making lasagna.

Today? I have no idea how long I will work today. I’m guessing it will be more than 8 hours.

Mugshots

For the last mug design of 2022 I visited with the Misspent Youths gang. I always have fun hanging with them. I did the main illustration so it fit on a mug. I added the logo for t-shirts and other products that allow for more design space.

Mugs can be found in my Zazzle store.

This design is on a variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. Sunday will be the first day of 2023. This is my last newsletter of 2022. Next year I’m changing the title and adjusting the format. I’ll get into the reasons why and what to expect in the first issue.

I hope that your year is ending on good notes. May next year be bright and warm!

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #104

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Merry Merry!

Christmas Eve is tomorrow. I’ll be out in the cold and rain (we got snow earlier in the week but none is predicted for this weekend) delivering mail. And presents! Even if the boxes in my truck clearly cat litter and dog food I’m going to assume that they are gifts for someone.

Postal carriers get Christmas Day off. We’ll open presents in the morning and then I’ll be helping Sarah cook and clean in preparation for guests.

Monday I’ll be back at work. I’m expecting the 26th to be as busy as any day before Christmas. I expect we’ll be continuing to start at 6 am until the New Year.

I’ve been getting up at my usual time to write. It’s a habit I want to maintain. I’ve gotten less actual writing done than I’d like but something is better than nothing.

I’ve gotten even less artwork done. The cat has decided that I need to play with him after work and he’s happy to walk on my drawing table until I do so. It’s hard to ink and shoo away a demanding feline at the same time.

I’m making plans for 2023. I’ll write about those next week. If my brain lets me.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF harkens back to a simpler holiday – Halloween. Or perhaps just the general fall season. Whatever the case, these ladies know how to get around.

This design is available on:
A mug in my Zazzle store.
All sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

That’s it for this week. If you celebrate Christmas, I hope yours is as merry and joyous as you need it to be. If you just have the day off, celebrate something!

Thank you for reading. See you in seven!

Skook WiP #103

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Feliz Navidad!
Nollaig Shona Dhuit!
Joyeux Noël!
Zalig Kerstfeest!
Fröhliche Weihnachten!
Buon Natale!
Milad Mubarak!
Mo’adim Lesimkha!
Gëzuar Krishlindjet!
Eftihismena Christougenna!
Sretan Bozic!
Merii Kurisumasu!
Sing dan fiy loc!
Sung Tan Chuk Ha!
Kung His Hsin Nien Bing Chu Shen Tan!
Chuc Mung Giang Sinh!
Sawasdee Pee Mai!
Merry Christmas!
in ten days anyway. Until then … I was going to write “Bah Humbug!” but I’m too tired to feel that strongly. Neither am I interested in dumping snow on someone else’s good time. I’ve spent a good chunk of my working life in retail or customer service jobs and this is a busy, busy time of year. At my station, we carriers are starting work at six am (start time is normally seven), grabbing all the large packages that the clerks have sorted and taking them out for delivery in the dark and rain.

It’s actually kind of fun. Just delivering parcels is simpler than the usual combo of mail, parcels, magazines, flyers and everything else. I’m working my own route so I know all the addresses, have keys to all the buildings and know how to arrange delivery order for highest efficiency. There are usually a few large packages that didn’t get sorted before I left that still need delivery with the mail, small parcels, magazines, flyers and everything else but only a few. Regular delivery goes much faster when I can sort, carry and deliver the small parcels with the rest of the mail into the mailboxes and not have to also schlep the larger parcels to someone’s porch, or worse, up three flights of stairs and down a long hallway. I’d be happy if we continued this arrangement after the holidays.

More parcels means longer hours. I’m continuing the habit of writing when I first awake but I’ve got less time to do it before I have to uniform up. And I’ve got less energy to draw after work.

Sooooo … I really do hope y’all are enjoying yourselves. The great thing about delivering packages is that my customers actually want them. The rest of the mail – the bills, the ads, the catalogs and Red Plums? They’re usually less excited about that. Parcels though, that’s stuff they asked for or that someone they like has sent them. At least at this time of year I feel like I’m presenting folks with things they welcome rather than more paper for them to recycle.

Mugshots

Today’s process GIF – Princess Ozma is a cat person. A big cat person. Or person who likes really big cats. Here she’s flanked by the so-called Cowardly Lion and the always Hungry Tiger.

This design can be found:
On a mug in my Zazzle store.
On a bunch of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for enduring my complaints. Feel free to send me yours.

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #102

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Greetings from the Pacific Northwest!

I’ve been feeling kinda brain dead the last few mornings. I get up, pour myself a mug of coffee and stagger down the hall to my studio. I sit at my computer and stare at the screen for a bit. Spending November writing on Daughter of Spiders was great for building the habit of writing each day. Writing instead of scrolling my social media feeds. A bunch of bad writing at least feels like I’ve made an effort. Social media scrolling can be fun and I enjoy snarking with folks but I rarely feel like I’ve accomplished anything.

I’ve gotten a bit stalled on the actual story of Daughter so I’ve been spending some time writing background i.e. world building. How much of it will end up in the story? I’ll know when I write more of the story I guess.

This morning I’m writing to y’all.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features a meeting on the road, travelers exchanging stories and giving directions.

This design can be found:
On a mug in my Zazzle store
On a variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store

Mighty Nizz

The last page of the first Mighty Nizz comic posted on Wednesday. Below is what the art looked like when I scanned it into Photoshop. Go here to see what the final art looks like.

I’m currently inking the next Nizz story. It’s eighteen pages. I work on art in the evenings after work and as I have time on the days that the post office isn’t using my body to shlep around mail. I’m expecting to be able to post the first page on February 1st. I prefer to have the whole story finished before I show off any of it.

Thank you for reading. The nights are getting longer. Stay warm. Have some hot chocolate. Or eggnog. Toast to the good days and laugh at the bad.

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #101

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Welcome back!

These Days

It’s dark. Dark when I’m writing this. Dark when I go to work at USPS. Getting dark again when I finish my deliveries. We even had some dustings of snow. I suspect that it’s winter.

It’s the 2nd of December. I kinda sorta participated in National Novel Writing Month in November by expanding Daughter of Spiders. When I first thought of adding to Daughter  I’d planned to just be making the original 2013 posts a bit longer and more detailed. They were all very short – hints at stories rather than stories themselves. Once I started writing? I found myself turning those short memoir excerpts into complete chapters. No, I didn’t write 50,000 words. I didn’t expect to. I haven’t added up what I did write. I’d rather not know just yet. I did find that, if I continue expanding each post in the same way, I’ll probably write at least 400,00 words. That likely means that my intention of posting a new version of Daughter, complete with new illustrations, in 2025 is probably optimistic.

In order to make time to write I took myself off all my social media. I’m only on a few platforms – Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. Staying off Twitter was easy. I haven’t posted anything myself in years. I get links to tweets emailed to me by Twitter in hopes of getting me to come to the site. Last month I just deleted the emails without opening them. Tumblr and Facebook took a little more effort to ignore. I see a lot of artwork that I like and am inspired by on Tumblr. I like wishing people happy birthday and snarking on folks’ posts on Facebook. I used to wake up by drinking coffee and scrolling my feeds. In November I drank coffee and wrote. By the time I had to make breakfast and get in my uniform I … had feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment from … well … accomplishing something. Having accomplished something at day’s beginning makes spending 9+ hours delivering marketing and propaganda (and parcels) a lot easier. So, while I’m not committing to a strict fast of social media, I am going to maintain the habit of just writing in the mornings.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features Medusa tending to some of her permanent guests. I like Medusa. She’s a sympathetic monster, one of many of the victims of the Greek gods.

This design can be found –
On a mug in my Zazzle store
On a variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store

Mighty Nizz

Below is the scan of the physical art for the 9th page of the first Mighty Nizz comic. The final version of the page can be read at the site.

I’ve finished the pencils for the next Mighty Nizz story. Inking, shading and coloring will take a while but they are in progress. I prefer to have a whole story finished before posting the first page. That’s likely to be sometime in January or February. I’ll keep you updated.

‘Tis the Season

Christmas is coming up. If you know someone that you think would like my illustrations on schtuff, now is the time to order that schtuff. Heck, if you’d like a present for yourself, go for it! The sooner the better. Give the folks at Zazzle or Redbubble time to make it and send it.

I’ll see you next week.

Take care. Take flight!

Skook WiP #100

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Greetings!

It’s the day after Thanksgiving. Hopefully you celebrated like a human instead of a Puritan. Those guys were jerks.

I am celebrating the 100th issue of the Skook Works in Progress Newsletter by mentioning that this is the 100th issue of the newsletter and otherwise moving on. Yay!

For NaNoWriMo I am expanding the text of Daughter of Spiders. New illustrations will get done as time permits. (The first time took almost two years.)

Otherwise –

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features a collection of dangerous women. Dangerous women are good. Don’t let sad men tell you otherwise.

This design can be found on:
A mug in my Zazzle store
A variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Also –

This second process GIF is of another dangerous woman. I’d originally planned this image as another mug design but once I started rendering her a full body portrayal seemed like a better direction.

You can find her on schtuff in the Redbubble store.

Mighty Nizz

Page eight of the first Mighty Nizz story can be seen at MightyNizz.com. This is a scan of the physical art. The final (cleaned up) color version is at the site.
Until next time
Jump
Climb
and ambush the creatures who threaten to do you harm.
Hug and cuddle those who just want to be good company.

See you in seven!