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Skook WiP #79

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Good morning! It’s great to see you again. Without glasses! I hope the week has been treating you well. I hope you’ve been treating yourself well when the week has been poorly behaved.

These Days …

I’ve had the last week off from the USPS to let my right eye recover from cataract surgery. The surgery was on the 24th and I was not supposed to bend over or lift heavy things for at least seven days afterward. My eyesight is greatly improved. Having both eyes done feels less dramatic than when I’d first had the left eye done. I had a few weeks to get used to better eyesight with one eye before I got better better eyesight overall. My brain has just shrugged and accepted the new normal and is quickly forgetting how blurry and dull things looked just back in May. I’m finding myself a little disappointed in my own shortage of wonder. This is modern medicine! This is great!

I’m expecting to get new glasses so I can see better at distances but I’m not yet feeling a rush to get them. I’ve been getting used to reading and drawing with the new peepers. Reading is pretty easy. Drawing requires a little more work. Things line up, the images are clear but something still feels a little off. The more I practice the more I train my brain to understand the new now. Practice, practice.

My jaw is still recovering from last week’s dental surgery. Less pain over all but the right side, where I had two molars removed, is still protesting.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF is for an abstract design. I mostly do illustrations of specific events, critters or places but I’ve been challenging myself to do create designs that … are different? I’m not sure how to put it. All art appeals to emotions. Abstract art does that differently than representational art. It also looks good on products in ways that illustrations can’t.

This design is available on a mug in my Zazzle store
and all sorts of other schtuff in my Redbubble store.

The Weather Report

Another concept/promo illustration for Kaiju Weather my in-development graphic novel featuring giant monsters. I’ll be doing (and publishing) comics that feature the Mighty Nizz before much of this one sees light but progress is being made. This design can be purchased on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

May your next week be better than this one. (Even if this one was already greater. There are no limits on good.)

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #78

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Greetings and salutations! It’s great to see you again! Is that a new hat? I love it. It goes well with your eyes!

These Days …

Supposedly there’s a Chinese curse that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” A quick googling (actually Duck Duck Go but “Duck2Going” doesn’t verb as well) reveals that the phrase is another one of those fortune cookiesque statements of Western origin that gets attributed to the Wise and Mysterious East. I don’t remember anyone tossing the curse my way but this week was far more interesting than I like.

On Monday I had dental surgery. The Pandemic and the retirement of my previous dentist had me putting off an appointment for awhile. One errant tooth on the lower jaw started encouraging its companions to join it in being loose and groovy and I couldn’t put things off any longer. Not being able to take bites of ones food does give one focus. I had an emergency exam last month and scheduled an appointment for this week. Now I have spaces in my mouth and my tongue has stitches to poke at. When this heals (and the upper jaw has been worked on) I’ll be getting some plastic substitute ivories. Until then pandemic health cautions (wearing a damned mask) hide the gaps in my grimace.

The dental stuff was more or less expected. X-rays from my previous dentist had told me that my jaw was losing its love for some of my teeth. Wednesday’s emergency room visit was more of a surprise.

I started having … brain fog … in the late morning. I was at work, delivering my route. Some of the addresses on some of the mail started looking unfamiliar. As the day went on the distance between my physical memory and my mental memory got wider. My body knew where to go and where to deliver. My brain was having trouble recognizing names and addresses. I managed to finish my route. I think I delivered everything correctly.

I had a follow up dental appointment scheduled for a half an hour after work. I remember sitting my car trying to remember where my dentist’s office was located. I knew it was somewhere in the same mall as the Post Office that I work at. That’s part of why I chose that dentist in the first place. I kept thinking it was in one building but every time I looked at the building I couldn’t see any signs for my dentist. I finally had to google the location on my phone. I had been looking at the wrong building.

I vaguely remember going to the dentist. I don’t remember going home afterward. Sarah tells me I had enchiladas for dinner. That I kept asking her the same questions over and over. That I couldn’t remember why I was missing teeth. That I couldn’t remember names of former roommates or birthdays of old friends. That I had forgotten that I’m officiating a wedding in October. We got a ride to the emergency room. I had a CAT scan and, when that didn’t show any obvious problems, I had an MRI. While going through the ER process my memory started knitting itself together. I remember the MRI. I remember that the doctors didn’t find any clear cause for my memory problems. I remember that they sent me home with a referral for a neurologist.

I took Thursday off from work. I felt mostly fine. I had pain in my jaw from the tooth extractions but I could think clearly and remember what was happening as it happened.

Yesterday I had my second cataract surgery. My memories of the first surgery had been vague and surreal. The anesthesiologist told me I was more likely to remember this second surgery. I don’t remember it at all. I remember asking a nurse when the surgery was going to happen and being told it was already done. I’m okay not remembering that. I’m not supposed to remember much about the surgery.

I have the next week off from work to let my eye heal. I’m not supposed to lean over or lift anything heavier than five pounds for the next few days. Right now I’m wearing a plastic eye shield and my right eye sees halos around all the lights. I’ve got an appointment with my eye doctor later today to evaluate how the eye is healing.

Mugshots

This week’s design is of strange worshippers of odd gods. Or maybe they’re alien treasure hunters who have located their prize. Or maybe they’re extradimensional beings playing a game. Or maybe … That final image in the process GIF didn’t come out well. Below is what the gradients look like in the actual art.

The above design is available:
On a mug in my Zazzle store.
On a variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

The Weather Report

Below is another of my concept/promo illustrations for Kaiju Weather, my in-process graphic novel featuring giant monsters.

This image is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

My apologies for posting late this week. Hopefully I’ll be on time next time. Hopefully the next few days will not be interesting.

I hope that, if the next week is interesting for you, it’s because you’ve it sought out and are enjoying it. Take care and take care of those you care about. See you again soon.

Skook WiP #77

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I am currently badly sketching random things. It seems to be part of the creative process. It happens every time I finish a large progect. I rest a bit. Do things other than draw. Then I have to learn to draw something I like again.

This means I have to sketch a bunch of random things until I feel comfortable sketching again. The sketches look bad to me because they don’t look like what I’m seeing in my head. They’re probably fine. They’re just not what I want.

Once I’m comfortable sketching again I start sketching specific things. I usually have a number of projects planned (if not simultaneously in process) so it’s easy to pick one. After I’ve chosen a project I start sketching specific characters, scenes and objects that will appear in that project. When I have enough base and concept sketches/ideas worked out, I start sketching the illustrations/designs/pages that will be the physical versions of the final images.

I usually try to do a small stack of sketches before I start turning them into the final art. Each project is different but, these days, for each image, I usually do:
1) a rough sketch with a nonphoto blue pencil
2) a tight graphite (B) pencil sketch over the original blue pencil sketch
3) scan the graphic sketch into the computer. In Photoshop, increase the size and convert it to a blueline image. Print it out.
4) If the image is mostly what I intended I start inking. If a little work is needed I add changes/details to the printout with my nonphoto blue pencil and then ink. If the image needs a lot more work I go over it with my graphic pencil and then repeat step 3 (without needing to blow up the image again).
5) When the inking is done I scan the image. I will use this scan to create the tight black lines of the final image.
6) I then add shading and tones to the original inks. I might use pencils. I might use markers. It depends on the effect I’m trying to acchieve.
7) I scan in the toned version and get to work in Photoshop. Colors. Layers. Electric voodoo.

I’ve been making process GIFs of the stages of my individual designs and posting them in this newsletter.

For instance:

Mugshots

This is a design that got away from me. It’s my version of Glinda from Steve Ahlquist’s Oz Squad. I’d originally intended to just depict the upper body of the character. I did the first sketch so that she would fit on a coffee mug. As I went from step 1 to step 7 I thought it would be fun to expand the design to a full body image that would better work on a t-shirt or as a poster. 

Because the image no longer fit well on a mug it’s not available in my Zazzle store. Other Oz Squad related designs are. At some point I should probably create a t-shirt version for that store.
It is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

The Weather Report

Here’s another concept/promo image for my Kaiju Weather project. Since it’s planned as a graphic novel the process of creating it is a bit more complex than just making a series of images. I’m past the point of having ideas but still working on creating a story that works with those ideas.

This image is available in my Redbubble store.

Time to go back to sketching. My next big project is a series of comics featuring the Mighty Nizz. It’s going to be a lot of fun once I get through making bad drawings.

Thank you for reading. I hope life is treating you well. Be as good as you can to your friends and loved ones. And yourself. Remember to treat yourself as well as your friends and loved ones.

See you next week!

Skook WiP #76

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Friday. The sixth day of the week. The last day before the weekend. Assuming that you’re one of those folks who somehow has a Monday to Friday work week. Thank you for reading. Feel free to share/forward this newsletter to anyone you think would enjoy it.

These Days …

There is a moment in every workday when I have the thought – This is weird. How did I get here?

I mean, I know how I got the job as a mail carrier. I applied. There was a procedure to follow and I followed it and got hired.

It’s just … weird. I put on a uniform. I sort mail and organize mail and parcels at a station with a few dozen other folks who wear similar uniforms. I drive a truck with the controls on the right side of the vehicle. I deliver propaganda and advertising and magazines and catalogs and personal notes and other printed materials to a series of metal boxes. I deliver parcels into those metal boxes if the parcels are small. If the parcels are large I deliver them to the front door of the address on the label. I pick up outgoing mail and parcels and carry them back to my station for distribution and delivery elsewhere. I do this five days a week.

In 21st Century America this isn’t really that odd. I’ve had jobs that required wearing a uniform. Lots of folks have such jobs. And delivering stuff is a booming industry these days.

As a kid I thought being a mail carrier would be a cool job. I just didn’t aspire to work as a mail carrier. There were times in the past when I might have applied for the job but USPS wasn’t hiring.

I think the reason this feels weird is that having the job seems like a random event. Nine years ago I applied for a lot of different jobs. This is the one that had a process that kept me engaged. None of the other businesses had a process. None of them responded. All of those businesses are now hiring. As is the Post Office. If I were looking for work today would the results be the same?

The thought only lasts a few moments and then I go back to thinking of what I want to draw next or trying not to think about the lastest earworm that’s dancing in my head. I know I will have the thought tomorrow.

Mugshots

Today’s process GIF is of fish. None of the fish depicted here are actual species. At least as far as I know.  I might have accidentally drawn a real fish. Or maybe one or two will be inspired to evolve based on this illustration.

This design is available:
On mugs in my Zazzle store.
On schtuff in my Redbubble store.

The Weather Report

Below is another concept/promo image for Kaiju Weather, my (still gestating) graphic novel featuring giant monsters. It’s available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Today is the first day of my Long Weekend when my rotating days off synergize to give me three days off in a row. I plan to celebrate by taking a nap.

May you be getting all the rest you need and all the joy you want.

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #75

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Friday, June 3rd.

You’ve made it through another week! Congratulations! While we were going about our days, the planet upon which we live traveled about 11.2 million miles.

Think about that.

These Days …

I’m going back to work this morning. I’ve taken a week off to make sure my left eye has fully healed from last week’s surgery. It feels like it has. I saw the doctor on Wednesday and he thought it was in good shape. So … back to carrying mail.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF is of a gathering of robots. These are not our robot overlords. These are the working class types who either befriend us or act as henchfolk to the ambitious mechs. You could have beer with these chaps and most of them wouldn’t try to disassemble you.

As usual, this design is available as a mug in my Zazzle store and on all sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

A Weather Report

In the far too distant future I will start drawing the Kaiju Weather graphic novel. I’ve been thinking about it for years. I own the URL. I’ve done character designs and concept sketches. Below is one of the promo pieces I did for practice a couple of years ago. Because … capitalism … it’s available on schtuff in my Redbubble store. One of these days I’ll need to put it on the actual Kaiju Weather website.

And that’s it for today. Good luck today. And tomorrow and every day after. Wish me luck at work!

May the next 11.2 million miles go by gently!

Skook WiP #74

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Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the seventy-fourth edition of the Skook Works-in-Progress newsletter.

I hope your week has been a good one. There is a tendency to emphasize the scary and dangerous when we as humans communicate. There’s some value in that (warning signs should have attention paid to them) but it can make us feel anxious and despondant. Hopefully you’ve been getting some uplifting and friendly inputs as well.

These Days …

This week my left eye has started providing me with clearer and more colorful input. On Tuesday I finally had my first cataract surgery. The hardest part of the process was not drinking coffee first thing in the morning. It was the first time in years that I haven’t had caffeine kickstarting my brain and leveling my mood. No fun. The actual surgery went smoothly – at least from my perspective. I was awake but drugged so that I really don’t have a clear memory of the process.

I’m off work this week to let the eye heal. I’m not supposed to do any heavy lifting or much bending over and I do a lot of that as a mail carrier. I wore an eyeshield over the left eye after the operation until the follow up doctor’s appointment on Wednesday so I wasn’t seeing much change in my eyesight. I’ve had the shield off since the appointment and … things are different. In my left eye. Colors are brighter. I can see things more clearly in the near range. Things are still blurry in the distance and, unfortunately, my glasses don’t improve things. I’m going to need a new prescription.

I’ll have to wait on that until the end of June. Surgery on my right eye is scheduled for June 24th. Until then my brain is going to be toggling between two differently abled eyes and trying to send me useful information. It’s going to be interesting.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features cute monsters. All monsters are cute but not all monsters are cute to humans.

As usual, this design is available on a mug in my Zazzle store and all sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Sketching Ahead

Below are the base sketches for the last eleven upcoming mugshots. Many of these are already finished and available in my stores. I’ll be posting the process GIFs of each in future newsletters.

That’s it for this issue.

Thank you for reading. May the next few days be good to you. May you spend time with friends and laugh enough to make the world bright.

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #73

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Good morning! Good afternoon! Good evening! Good whatevertimeyouhappentoread this!

Welcome to the seventy-third issue of the Skook Works-in-Progress Newsletter.

These Days …

It looks like we’ve got a new housemate. He’ll mostly be using the rooms as a place to sleep during the week. He has a house and wife out of state. He’ll fly in at the beginning of the week and fly out at the end. He’s seen photos of the room. We did a zoom call with him last Sunday and liked him. I used my phone to give him a walk through of our place. We’re going to try to meet and have him see the place in person next week.

I’ll be looking at him with one eye. My cataract surgery is scheduled for Tuesday. No cookies for me!

Mugshots

Happy Monsters! This week’s process gif is of a gaggle of dancing goons.

This design is available on a mug in my Zazzle store and all sorts of other schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Coming Attractions

The best way to stay on schedule is to be ahead of schedule. I’m working as far ahead on designs as I can. I show a single process gif and provide links to my stores here on weekly basis but I’m trying to have all the Mugshot designs finished by the end of June. Below are preliminary design sketches. If you’ve spent much time looking at my stores you’ll notice finished versions of a lot of these images. This is how they all start. Graphite lines over non-photo blue sketches.

Thank you for letting me into your in-box. I hope your weekend is as restful or as lively as you need it to be.

See you next Friday!

Skook WiP #72

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Good Morning! Good Afternoon! Good Evening! (Have I covered all the possibilities?)

It’s Friday the 13th! Aren’t we lucky?

These Days …

Oh bleah. My cataract surgery has been delayed again. My fault. My sister came by to pick me up and take me to surgery. She brought cookies that she baked in her new oven. I ate two bites before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to eat for at least 7 hours prior to surgery. We went to the surgery center. We waited. I was called in an hour late. They asked if I had anything to eat in the 7 hours. I told the truth. I got rescheduled until the 24th. We came home and had the lasagna that I had made for dinner. We had cookies and ice cream for dessert.

We helped our housemate move at the beginning of the month and we’ve been rearranging the apartment to make it available and welcoming for another, as yet unfound, housemate. This dovetails well with my book reduction project. We’re working to get all of our stuff into specific rooms and I’m working to get my book collection consolidated to three large bookshelves.

In addition to the book collection I’ve got a comic collection. I reduced it once when my mother came up from Californina to live with us in her later years. My brother kindly shipped up the boxes of Chosen Comics. I need to go through those boxes and decide what to continue to horde.

That’s actually kind of easy. There are places where I might rehome the comics I’m not keeping. More problematic – what do I do with Misspent Youths? When Brave New Words shut down the publisher sent me all the copies of the comic that he had in storage. Issue #1 had sold out so the stacks consist of issues #2-5. I don’t need to sell them. I’d be happy to give them away to anyone who wanted them but the audience is kind of limited. It’s not a book for kids. It’s black and white, the art is crude and some of it is (purposely) offensive. I could recycle them. But …

That’s a decision to put off for another day. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF is of teddy bears. Happy multicolored teddy bears who want to hug and squeeze you!

These folks are, as usual, available on a mug in my Zazzle store and all sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Also

This second design happened mostly by accident. I needed to go into work early one day – not for work but because I’d needed to do something else earlier in the neighborhood. I wanted to do something more useful than scrolling on my phone so I sat in the breakroom and sketched out the pattern above. After work that afternoon I scanned it into Photoshop and turned it into the design below.

I like the results. It fits nicely on schtuff that my illustrations usually don’t.

TGIF, happy Saturday and a good rest of the week.

Cheers!

Skook WiP #71

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Greetings and salutations! It’s wonderful to see you here again. And wonderful to be seen.

These Days …

Speaking of seeing, I’d planned to have my first cataract surgery on Tuesday. I scheduled a week off from work for recovery. We put in a lot of work last week moving our previous housemate to her new apartment and rearranging our apartment to be available for a new housemate so that I wouldn’t be tempted to do anything physical this week. I had the date for the surgery but not the time. I was tol that the surgery center would call me with the time. At first I wasn’t told when they might call so I called a couple of times in previous weeks to get that time. I was told I needed to wait. They are short staffed and the surgery calender hadn’t been worked out for May yet. I was told that someone would call me two business days before the appointment.

Two business days was April 29th. Halfway through the day I got tired of waiting and called them. I was told by the doctor’s office that they would send a message to the surgery center to have someone call me. And no one did.

On Monday morning Sarah tried calling but couldn’t get through. I called during work breaks and got shuffled around but finally spoke to the surgery center. My name wasn’t on their list of patient scheduled for Tuesday. I called the doctor’s office, again, and was sent to the scheduler She checked. Yup. I hadn’t actually been scheduled.

The scheduler was apologetic. I sighed and got new dates from her. I think she was surprised that I didn’t rage at her. I didn’t see the point. Yelling at her wouldn’t have gotten me an appointment.

One of my frustrations here is that I don’t have a way to check their surgery schedule and no one I talked to checked for me. They made the assumption that I was scheduled and the surgery center would call me when they had a time. I sent the doctor’s office an email expressing my frustration with this situation and got another apology from the scheduler along with assurances that she would personally call me when my surgery time was determined.

Hopefully that will happen.

In the meantime this is my Long Week, the six day work week that occurs every six weeks because of our rotating days off. So I’m tired.

Mugshots

This weeks process gif is of a bookshelf of Cthulhu Mythos tomes. I think of this as the metal version of the books. I suspect that the books, if they actually existed would be more sedate looking. But what would be the fun in that?

As usual, this design is available on a mug in my Zazzle store and on all sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Here’s Licking at You!

I get a lot of ideas for designs while I am delivering mail. Most of them fade away after a few minutes. This one stuck with me until I had a chance to draw it.

This one is only on schtuff in my Redbubble store. It didn’t fit well on a mug.

That’s it for this week. I hope you are well and living your best life.

See you in seven!