Hello beautiful people! It’s so good to see you again! Thank you for gracing me with your presence. I have less words for you this week. I love you just as much as ever!

These Days …

I went to Analy High School in Sebastopol, California. I moved to Seattle in the early 90s and I’ve only sporadically been back. Through the magic of the internet and social media I’ve learned that Analy has been renamed West County High School. There’s a Facebook group dedicated to reversing that. I’m part of the group. I don’t participate much. I don’t pay property taxes in Sebastopol so I don’t feel I have much say in the decisions about the school. Apparently enrollment both there and the “rival” high school, El Molino, has dropped so much that changes needed to be made. El Molino has been shut down and the student there are to finish their high school years at Analy. The school board decided, apparently without consulting the general population, to rename to school. This will require new signs, uniforms and other things that will cost money. Which is weird to me since I thought the whole point of consolidating the schools was to save money.

Most of what I know comes in dribs and drabs from the FB group. There are a lot of people passionately opposed to the changes. A very 21st Century part of the fight has happened at Wikipedia. Analy’s entry has been subsumed into the West County High School entry. Not so odd. The ridiculous bit is that, for a few days, many notable alumni had their entries changed to say that they had graduated from West County. That name is only a month old. No one has gradutated from it yet. No one can graduate from it retroactively.

I’m tempted to add “graduated from Analy High School” to my Wikipedia entry but not enough to actually do it. I’m just not that nostalgic for my high school years.

While I don’t have much attachment to the school, I do have bonds and love for friends I made while attending  the place. Early tomorrow morning Sarah and I will take a road trip down to Northern California. Last September my friend, Andy Syversen, passed away. Andy and I were in the same graduating class at Analy. We remained friends. His family is finally able have his memorial. Flying had already become an unpleasant experience before covid. Adding in the possibility of having to deal with idiots and uncomfortable seating while flying and then figuring out rental cars and places to sleep at the other end and we decided we’d rather just drive. It should only take twice as long and we’ll both be happier. We’ll drive down Saturday, attend the memorial on Sunday and then drive back Monday.

On Tuesday I’ve got plans to meet up with another former alumni who will be passing through Seattle. Hopefully I’ll have recovered enough to be good company.

The Mighty Nizz

This kid. This kid, the Mighty Nizz, has her own collections in both my Zazzle and my Redbubble stores. Clearly she’s one of my favorite subjects. I did a lot of illustrations of her before I opened the stores. I’ve done more since. As I’ve gotten more experienced designing for physical objects I’ve been editing and/or expanding some of the early illustrations. Here are a few of the before and afters –

This kid leads a busy life.

As do we all.

May you find some joy in all the activity. And some peace.

See you next week!

Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the latest issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter in which I show images and ramble on, sometimes about the images, sometimes about life, sometimes about completely unrelated things. Thank you for visiting.

These Days …

This is one of my Long Weeks. Because of rotating days off every six weeks postal carriers have a week where we work six days in a row. Monday I worked 13 hours. Tuesday and Wednesday I worked about ten houes each day. Yesterday I did a little over nine hours. We’re supposed to get an eight hour day at least once during any five day week so today I should be scheduled for it. Whether or not that happens will depend on how many carriers call in sick. We’re already down a lot of folks due to vacation time. If I work more than eight today I will get paid double time.

I am hoping for eight. A friend of mine had surgery yesterday and I’d like to have the energy to visit her in the hospital. I’ve heard things went well and we’d planned to visit her on Sunday but if we can see her sooner that’s better.

Found Objects

The Salesman and the Cartoonist walk into the Studio. The Cartoonist is drinking a large mug of cold coffee. The Salesman is drinking water. The Cartoonist sits at the drawing table. The Salesman turns on the computer and settles down in front of it..

Salesman: You’re finally going to do a new version of The Desktop?

Cartoonist: Sure. It’s a good image and I think I could design a version that looks good on a coffee mug.

Salesman: You can’t just color the original?

Cartoonist: I’d have to make a new scan. The only version I’ve got saved is a low rez jpeg. I can’t do anything good with that. The original art is in one of my flat files but it would take less time to draw a new version than to try to find it.

Salesman: The original is the wrong layout to work on a mug.

Cartoonist. That too.

Salesman: You are going to make it so it works on t-shirts and things, right? We want to maximize the potential of all the art.

Cartoonist: You want to maximize the potential. I want to design a cool coffee mug. If the image fits on a t-shirt as well, all the better. But first I want it to fit on a mug. T-shirts get worn one day and then washed. A coffee mug is an every day companion.

Salesman: You’ve changed the design.

Cartoonist: I did the original almost 20 years ago. It got published in the first issue of The Black Seal but I drew it before I’d started contributing. I submitted it along with a bunch of spot illustrations I did specifically for the magazine. I draw differently now. And I want the image to work on a coffee mug.

Salesman: What is the significance of all these things? Do they all have stories?

Cartoonist: Sure. But I’d rather not say anything. I’d rather the viewer made up their own stories.

Salesman: It’s easier to sell something if it’s accompanied by a story. Human beings think in narrative. Images without context are less likely to generate interest in the observer.

Cartoonist: Is there a story we can tell about a mutant baby in a jar that will appeal to a broad audience?

Salesman: Probably?

Cartoonist: It’s a collection of weird objects acquired by an investigator into the paranormal and occult. It’s samples from a cabinet of curiousities.

Salesman: What’s with all the pills and medicine bottles?

Cartoonist: Some of the objects have properties that can only be observed while under the influence of psychedelics. The investigator is also self medicating to manage the trauma and PTSD they acquired in the process of acquiring their collection.

Salesman: Is there a happy, Disneyesque version to this story?

Cartoonist: With songs and dances and helpful animal companions?

Salesman: Yeah!
. 

Cartoonist: Ask me after I’ve had more coffee. Preferably in one of these mugs.

Salesman: You still haven’t explained the mutant baby in the jar.

Cartoonist: It will tell its own story in a song. Go get us a movie contract.

Shop Talk 

So this happened –

That’s my design in someone’s else shop on Redbubble.I found this on Sunday morning. The pirate was nice enough to copy my tags when they copied my design so it showed up when I did a tag search for “skookworks”. Their entire shop was filled with designs stolen from other folks. I reported them but I expect that this is only my first experience of being pirated.

This does seem like a good time to talk about tags. Again.

I belong to a Facebook group for people who are selling designs on Redbubble. After I’d contributed a few comments about what I’d learned about using tags on Redbubble, one of the moderators asked if I’d be willing to write a post about them. I said I’d think about. I didn’t and don’t feel like an expert. I’ve got a lot to learn. I do find learning fun so I’ve been doing research to see if I can use tags to help folks find my store and therefore purchase my stuff.

First off, for those who don’t spend a lot of time social mediaing, a tag is word or phrase that can be used to help search engines locate stuff (information, posts, articles, photos, videos) online. I’m going to use the Found Objects design above as my example for using tags on Redbubble. I used my greatest variety of tags on this design so it gives me the best example of how a diversity of tags can call up a diversity of results.

At this writing I’ve attached 25 tags to this design. Redbubble recommends that you use up to twenty but allows as many as 50. As far as I can tell Redbubble puts no restrictions on the words or phrases you can use for tags. When I was first doing test searches on tags I checked to see if there were any forbidden words. I started with the standard “four letter” words. Thousands of results. Then I searched using derogatory and offensive terms. More thousands. Everything I searched for turned up multiple designs using that tag.

This is a little deceiving. Yes, every word I could think of has been used as a tag. However, not every phrase has been specifically used as a tag on the design found. Consider “monster porn”. That phrase turned up 223 results. Yes, quite a few results featured suggestive images. A significant number of the results were innocuous – images of cookies or flowers or sushi. I checked the tags on some of those. None of them had “monster porn” as a tag. One, a image of chocolate chip cookies, had the tags “cookie monster” and “food porn”. Other designs had similar combined results. “Monster” in one tag got linked in “porn” (food porn, flower porn, luxury porn, etc) in another tag.

You can edit your designs at any time to add or remove tags. I might do that down the line if I learn new ways of using tags.

Using my current tags, these are the number of results I got when I searched each tag:
cthulhu – 13075
cthulhu mythos – 1729
h p lovecraft – 1837
lovecraftian – 3677
green – 2,027,540
necronomicon – 2184
skulls – 447,049
fetish – 22,634
idol – 29.593
sorcery – 10,574
madness – 17,291
insanity – 3877
great old ones – 1553
fetus – 2500
drugs – 72,319
hallucinations – 6978
crystals – 102,087
potions – 21,696
skookworks – 123
david lee ingersoll – 124
old gods – 11,298
occult – 88,005
occultist- 786
cultist – 449

Hmmm. My first thought is personal and practical. I’ve got over 125 designs posted. All of them should have “skookworks” and “david lee ingersoll” as tags. There should be the same number for each tag. Clearly I’ve missed some.

In one of the discussions in the FB group someone asked why they should include their name in the tags. They expected that customers would search based on descriptors for a design. I said that having the designer’s name helped fans of the designer find that designer’s work. This is probably more useful for designers who are producing original cartoons or illustrations. Current cartoonists and illustrators are probably more likely to have fans than folks who are producing more anonymous designs – funny sayings and quotes or repurposed public domain art. And, as I mentioned at the beginning of this section, pirates will copy your tags when they copy your product. If your name/store name is one of your tags you’ll be able to find stolen designs easily.

My second thought is that some of these tags are only tangentially helpful. “Skulls” has too many results for my design to show up sooner than the 100th result page. Searching “fetish” would also not be much of use. “Skull fetish” on the other hand – 142 results. Is anyone going to search for “skull fetish”? Maybe?

“Cthulhu idol” – 43
“green fetus” – 53
“Cthulhu cultist” – 132
“Lovecraftian madness” – 122
“occult drugs” – 195
“skull sorcery” – 835

It appears that having a variety of terms for Redbubble’s search engine to combine can narrow the results. But again, will anyone search for these terms in these combinations?

This is the tricky thing. Tags only help people find the designs they are looking for. They don’t inspire anyone to look for your designs specifically. That’s what marketing is for. That’s what social media is for. I’ve posted both versions of this design to my tumblr, deviantart, Facebook and artstation accounts with links to the designs in my store. I’m writing about it here.

Redesigning

One of the things I like about print on demand is the ability to update (or remove) a design at anytime. As I’ve gotten used to designing for the various merchandise available on Zazzle and Redbubble I’ve rethought a number of my older uploads. I really liked the circular designs I came up with for the repurposed Unspeakable and Inhuman illustrations so I’ve been applying that idea to other images.

Frankenstein’s Monster –
Before –

After –

A Portrait of H.P. Lovecraft –
Before –

After –

Helen Vaughan from The Great God Pan –
Before –

After –

And that’s it for this week. I hope life is being good to you. If not, I hope you’re at least able to be good to yourself. Thank you again for reading!

Welcome to another issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter. Thank you for stopping by!

Personal news will be up front. Art and discussions thereof will follow.

These Days …

Cooler weather. Large parcels. My computer thinks that ten minutes in plenty of time to spend in Photoshop and makes my screen go to sleep if I spend more than that on an image.

Sigh. That’s a pain. This is a new bug and I’m trying to figure out a fix. Until then I have to remember to save far more often than I’m used to. Constant saving is a good habit to have but I’m not going to thank the computer for helping me to develop it.

My knee has improved. Now it mostly just complains when I make the transistion between sitting and standing. It lets me know that it’s not happy when I go up or down slopes and stairs but its complaints are less strident than they were last week.

We’ve eaten out a lot more. My friend who is in town for cancer treatment is taking advantage of the greater variety of choices of cuisine here than in Fairbanks and we’ve joined her for a number of meals.

Upper management at USPS is threatening to move our start time from the currently 7:30 to 8 am. They seem to believe if we start later we will get out of the station sooner. Idiots.

Yellow Brick Road

Open on: the Studio, early morning. Not that the hour can be determined. The Studio is in a basement with no windows. The Cartoonist works at his drawing table. The Salesman enters. He pauses to study what the Cartoonist is drawing and then sprawls on one of the couches.

Salesman: Oz? POD stores are full of Oz merch.

The Cartoonist makes a scrunched expression.

Cartoonist: Most of that stuff is either unauthorized fan takes on the MGM movie, on the Wicked musical or swiped Denslow and Neill illustrations. This is the Oz Squad.

Salesman: For the general public that’s not a big distinction. Does Oz Squad have enough fans to make making merchandise worthwhile?

Cartoonist: We’re making merchandise featuring The Face. That’s a silly question. Oz is a cornerstone of the American imagination. Everyone recognizes Dorothy and the gang.

Salesman: The 1939 Wizard of Oz movie is a cornerstone. You’re doing your version of Steve Ahlquist’s version of L. Frank Baum’s characters. Baum may have written fourteen Oz books but most people don’t know that. Most people see Dorothy as a brunette and the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman as Ray Bolger and Bert Lahr.

Cartoonist: Most people are ignorant and need to read more.

Salesman: You’re insulting our potential customers.

Cartoonist: You just told me that we had no potential customers.

Salesman: Minimal customers. We’d have more if you drew more mainstream stuff.

Cartoonist: The world is full of mainstream, appeal-to-everyone stuff. Why compete with that? Why not stake out a niche and grow it? Like Disney. Like Dr. Suess. Like Terry Pratchett. Like L. Frank Baum.

The Salesman sighs.

Salesman: Point taken. But why Oz Squad? Why not your own update of Oz?

Cartoonist: Partly for nostalgia. Partly as apology. Steve and I worked on a revival of the series and I dropped the ball. Partly because Steve’s update is more interesting that any of the updates I thought of on my own. His version is more clever than any of my own Oz ideas so when I try to imagine illustrations in that context I have to work harder. And partly to stake a claim on the IP.

Salesman: You’re trying to co-opt Oz Squad from Ahlquist?

Cartoonist: No, no! It’s his IP. If he told me to leave it alone, shut down the website and never draw any of versions of his versions of the characters again I would. I’m making the merch to keep the IP in existence. As long as something new comes out we can say that Oz Squad is a going concern.

Salesman: We?

Cartoonist: He. If anyone tries to use the name in a media property he can point to the website and online shops as evidence that the copyright and trademark hasn’t been abandoned.

Salesman: Is he paying you for this? Are you paying him? Do you have contracts? Or are you just narcissistically assuming you’re being helpful?

The Cartoonist laughs.

Salesman: Right. Narcissism and ego.

Cartoonist: Duh. Someone is always going to be doing Oz sequels and updates. I like Steve’s version the best. If my keeping the series alive, just a little bit, leads to it being revived or adapted into other media, then, yay!

Salesman: So why update the characters? Why not just duplicate the original artist’s designs?

Cartoonist: Why are you asking so many damned questions? Can’t you just look at what I’m drawing and figure out how to sell it?

Salesman: It’s easier to sell things that are already massively popular.

Cartoonist: So, you’re lazy.

Salesman: I’m a capitalist. The most successful capitalists co-opt something, rebrand it and saturate the market with it. Ideally they create monopolies and prevent competition.

The Cartoonist stares at the Salesman.

Cartoonist: We’ve wandered a bit off topic, eh?

Salesman: We always do that.

The Unspeakable and the Inhuman

Early in this 21st Century my friend Derek Fetters produced a comedic take on the Cthulhu Mythos with the podcast The Unspeakable and the Inhuman. While he was working on the project, a mutual friend asked me to provide illustrations for the podcast’s website. He was designing it as a class project. I don’t think it ever went live.

Last month I was reviewing archived images to see if any of them would make good designs for my shops.The following three images looked like good starts. I’ve added color and expanded on (and reoriented) a couple of the images to fit the new composition. As I’ve been designing specifically for my stores I’ve been trying to come up with more images that fit a t-shirt. I’ve got a lot of rectangular images. I think they look good but neither the human body nor your average t-shirt is stricly rectangular. Curvey designs look good on t-shirts. Circular designs make great clocks and buttons and magnets and stickers. You’d think I’d have thought of this before!

Ah well.

These illustrations aren’t of any specific incidents from the podcast. They were intended as flavor for the website. Now you can use them to decorate your chest. Or other schtuff. They can be found in this collection in my Redbubble store or this collection in my Zazzle store.

Of course you can just look at them here and never look at any my stores. I’m happy with that. Part of he fun of running print on demand stores is that none of it exists until someone completes an order.

Thank you again for dropping by. The weekend is coming up. If you’re one of those folks whose work week goes Monday to Friday, please enjoy the next two days. If you’re working, please enjoy the next two days anyway. See you in seven!

Here we are, the 2nd day of July, in the year of our lord 2021.

Thank you again for dropping by. Last week’s short email was planned. This week’s short email was not. I’ve had a variety of distractions – my sore leg, visiting friends, very hot weather, long hours at the post office with the afforementioned sore leg, a computer that has decided that “Power Save Mode” is its preferred mode. I’ve actually managed to get some art done but I haven’t been able write about it coherently.

Thank you to those of you who sent me your mailing addresses so I could send you a copy of Transmissions. I’d started the project in 2017 when I wanted to produce something physical after years of my work either going to PDF or posting online. Thirty plus years ago I drew a bunch of minicomics and printed them out at Kinkos. I’ve got a print in house now so I thought it would be fun to make another minicomic. I got most of it done before I started getting commissions for RPG illustrations again and I set it aside. I finally finished it when we had to quarantine this April. I printed enough copies to send to all of you who subscribe to this newsletter. If you forgot to respond last week, just reply to this email with your mailing address and I’ll send you one.

I’ll be back next week, hopefully with more art and more words. Until then, take care of yourself. Stay safe. Stay cool. Don’t blow off any limbs playing with fireworks.

Cheers!
David

Welcome to the 26th issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter.This will be a short edition.We’ve made it through the first half of 2021!  I made a minicomic of sorts and I would like to send one to each of you who read this. To get your copy please reply to this email with your mailing address. Yes, even if you know I have your mailing address. Yes, even if you’re living somewhere other than the US.

Thank you for dropping by. If you’re one of the folks currently living a in hot zone, I hope you’re managing to stay comfortable. If you’re currently comfortable, I’m jealous. I’m also glad you’re comfortable. It’s not a toxic jealousy.

I’ll be back next week with more art and rambling!

Another Friday, another newsletter. It’s great to see you. You are beautiful and talented and you deserve to be rich! Or be served breakfast in bed.

As is now the pattern, personal news is upfront, followed by art and rambling about such. Read on!

These Days …

Fuck cancer.

I write this newsletter over the course of the week. Different sections therefore end up with different moods. This section is angry and tired and sad. Maybe a little hopeful. On Sunday I got a call from an old friend. We hadn’t talked in years. We’d been in touch by occasional (very occasional) texts but not voice. I was out a restaurant with Sarah and the housemate. When I saw the number on my cell phone I was expecting bad news. Who uses the phone to talk any more? A phone call from Alaska means something happened.

My friend has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Hell. Just. Hell.

Since Sunday, there’s been a lot of up and down. There’s a lot I don’t know about her situation. After the initial call our communications have been texts again. The diagnosis was just the first step. She had a CAT scan on Monday. A biopsy was to follow but gall bladder problems were requiring immediate attention. That surgery couldn’t be done in Fairbanks so she was trying to get it scheduled in Anchorage.

And apparently it couldn’t be done in Anchorage so she got flown here to Seattle Wednesday night.

She quickly discovered that communication between Fairbanks and Seattle … sucked. No one in Seattle was expecting her. So she spent Thursday getting the necessary information and paperwork communicated and now, supposedly, she has her first operations scheduled for Monday.

She’s staying with a friend in Shoreline. Sarah and I will be going to visit her after work tonight. We’re picking up Ethiopian food on our way. There’s apparently no good Ethiopian food in Fairbanks. We’ll be up past our bedtime. We do what we need to do.

Face the Face

Who wears the Face?

Is he an urban legend? A guilty conscience incarnate? A hoax? A conspiracy?

That Face has been seen staring accusingly across a crowded room.

That Face has been heard whispering accusations from the corners of rooms that should have been empty.

That Face has grinned before the punch landed.

That Face was worn by the man who charged into the burning building and pulled people to safety.

That Face spoke from his Youtube channel, recounting the sins of the rich and powerful.

That Face was worn by the man who caught the tear gas cannisters and threw them back at the riot cops.

That Face snarled and did not back down.
.

The Face is watching. The Face knows what’s been done. The Face will drag the secrets into light.

Finishing Up

The next two images have been years in the making. I started them in 2017. I finished them in May. This last May. I’d been trying to do more of my finished art digitally. A lot of younger artists do all their work digitally. I really like working with pencil and brush and marker on paper but I think it’s a good idea to learn new media. I was using these two images to practice.

This was the pencil sketch for the first one. It features my crime fighting clown and her living ventriloquist dummy partner. They had names when I first drew them but I didn’t write those names down so I’m going to have to invent new ones.

This is about where I gave up four years ago. I wanted the image to be mostly areas of color with minimal lines. I use a wacom tablet from digital drawing. I’d been using it for a few years already but it was still an awkward tool.

This is the version I finished this month. It’s a reminder that practicing with a tool increases ones skill and comfort with said tool. I know both the tablet and photoshop better now.

This second piece is a portrait of Aunt Hortense, doing what she does best – smoking and drinking. She also overthrows civilizations, teases children and does bad things to narcissists but she does that while smoking and drinking. She is not a good example for young people.

Above is the pencil sketch that I started with. Below is what the digitally colored version looked like when I stepped away from it.

And this the version I completed last month. Care for a drink?

The above two images are available on a bunch of schtuff at my Redbubble store.

I also run an online store at Zazzle. Different images, different schtuff.

That’s it for this week. Thank you for spending some time with me. I hope that things are good in your part of the universe. If not, I hope you have friends and family (chosen or otherwise) to help you manage the rough spots.

Cheers!

Friday again? How quickly it sneaks up.

Welcome to the latest Skook Works in Progress newsletter. I run two online stores – one at Zazzle and one at Redbubble. This newsletter is my cracked idea of marketing for those stores. Personal news upfront, art and stories about said below that. Read on!

These Days …

I had one of my scheduled vacations last week. I spent as much of it as I could working on art.

I went back to work at USPS on Tuesday. My body, particularly my legs, has been unhappy with me since then. Doing art requires very little physical exercise. Delivering mail requires quite a bit of exercise. Bodies don’t like going from little exercise to lots of exercise. Ouch.

My station got a new stationmaster last week. This makes the fifth or sixth stationmaster our station has had since I started working at the post office seven years ago. I haven’t interacted with this one yet. At this point I’m pretty settled in to my position. A new boss isn’t likely to affect my job much. I do expect there to be more emphasis on hitting the numbers and avoiding overtime. That’s happened every time we’ve gotten new management. It does’t change how I do my work.

I suppose I ought to say hello to the guy, recognize him as a human being and such. Probably not this week. Between the heat and my body’s protests I’m not feeling too social.

Prayers from Ancient Ghosts

She is the last god of a dead pantheon worshipped by a lost civilization. There is no one human left who remembers her true name.

The trees remember. The stones remember. The rivers and the rain remember. The birds in the sky and the beasts who prowl the forest, they remember. She hears their prayers.

Sometimes she walks through the streets of a city. The people rarely see her. Their minds have been seduced by the empty, hungry gods of the modern world – gods that do not exist yet demand unyielding fielty. She watches. She listens. She hears the prayers the people offer to their selfish gods.Those prayers she does not answer.

She sees the world as it is – a planet that has become overrun by a single species. That species is clever and resourceful and lost. She is patient. The world will not end. The world and life is resilient. The civilization that is eating the world will eventually choke on its on filth and fall. Life will go on. New gods will be born.

Until then, she amuses herself by answering small prayers.

In this world she is called Fantomah. That is not the name to use if you wish her to answer your prayers. To learn that name you will need to ask the wind or the soil or the serpent in the grass. Then, once you have learned that name, be very careful what you pray for. Real gods are not servants. They answer prayers according to their own whims and sense of humor.

.

Shop Talk

“How do I get sales?”

That’s a question that keeps coming up in the Redbubble Facebook group to which I belong. People post links to their latest designs and their stores and ask how to improve them. When I have advice or suggestions I offer them. But I’m not an expert.

I’ve listened to a lot of youtube videos about running Redbubble stores. I will play the videos while I’m working on art. Sometimes I hear useful advice and get a handy tip.

There are quite a few energetic tubers who claim to be making big bucks running POD shops. Those folks are usuallly offering paid classes and course on how you or I can also make big buck running POD shops. I haven’t taken any of their classes. Their advice in their free videos is often about following trends and kinda sorta stealing the work and ideas of the designers whose work is selling well. Bleah.

The folks I resonate with are the ones who are having fun running their stores.

I am having fun. My stores are performance art and summoning spells. Art really only exists between the work and the audience. When you see it here in this newsletter you’re making it more real. Thank you! When you go to the stores and browse the designs you’re calling up stories. Thank you! And all y’all who have bought merchandise. We are partners in sorcery. You’ve taken a image that only exists as data and pixels and made it into something real and tangible. That is so very very cool! Thank you so much!

On my end I’m continuing to update my older designs so they fit and print better.

This pair of monster hunters looked ready to fight before –

Now they’ve got room to really rumble!

This wizard’s spell stirred things up …

Now it ties them all together!

This PI gave a good portrait …

Now he’s got more room to investigate the crime!

And then there’s this –  V for Vaccination Victory.!

I haven’t been taking requests for new designs or images. I’ve got so many of my own ideas to execute that taking on another person’s suggestion isn’t practical. Last Friday night, however, one of my former high school classmates messaged me on Facebook with this – “Hey man, I need a t-shirt with a symbol that assimilates a V for victory and one for vaccinated.”

I wrote back saying I’d think about it but my brain had already started generating ideas.

Saturday morning I worked up the design above. These last few years practicing with Photoshop have paid off.

My zazzle store now has a collection of merch featuring the design and my Redbubble store has the design on another variety of desirable oblects. Hopefully this design will only have meaning for a few months.

This is an example of magic. My former classmate gave me a spark. I hammered it into a design.

I’ve got another friend who has asked to have some of the images he sees adjusted so they better fit on the product he wants to buy. Or he’s asked me make a design I’d posted only in my Redbubble store available on a product in my zazzle store. I’m happy to oblige.

I have another friend who keeps asking me to do designs featuring Aunt Hortense and the rest of the lizards. I love those guys and plan to work up some illustrations

These exchanges have me considering actually asking for requests. I still have way more of my own ideas to every execute in my lifetime but, heck, why not add more?

Are there images in my Redbubble store that you’d like to see on different products than what Redbubble offers? Let me know. Zazzle has huge variety of different objects just waiting to be used. If I can make the illustration work on one of your preferred objects I will do so.

What new illustration would you like to see? What new design?

Reply to this newsletter and let me know.

Maybe your spark will fire up my creative forges. Maybe you will summon up a new story.

Thank you for reading. I hope your part of the world is safe and warm and has plenty of cats and cookies.

See you next week!

Welcome to the Skook Works in Progress newsletter issue number 22. I’ll be chatting about personal events upfront with pictures and discussion thereof to follow.

Thank you for dropping by!

These Days …

This week has been my scheduled vacation. At the USPS we put in for vacation time during the first weeks of January. Whether or not we get it depends on the seniority of the people vying for each available week. I’ve generally avoided bidding on weeks in “prime time” – June, July, August and December – so I’ve always gotten the time I’ve asked for.

Saturday was my last day at work. I did my best to clean up the route for whoever fills in during my absence. I pulled the mail from a couple of boxes of customers that I’m pretty sure have moved. They didn’t put in change of address notices but, given that they hadn’t collected their mail in at least six weeks, it seemed safe to remove it. The general procedure for pulling mail is to leave a note saying that we’ll be holding it at the post office for ten days. I don’t do this. I figure that if someone hasn’t picked up their mail in 45 days keeping it around for another ten is just cluttering things up in an already cramped space. I forward all the first class mail and periodicals and send the rest for processing.

Other than that bit of tidying the day was same-old, same-old. Overcast but not cold. Lots of large parcels that I couldn’t carry in my satchel so I had to park at the actual delivery address and lug them to the door individually. There are all sorts of conspiracy theories about the pandemic. The one I invented says that Jeff Bezos spread covid to create lockdowns so people had to shop online. Mail volumes may have dropped in the last year but the parcel volumes (and sizes) continue to be high. Now that a lot of folks have gotten used to shopping for things online I don’t expect the volumes to go down. Why spend an hour going to store when you can order something in five minutes and then do something fun?

Sunday was my birthday. I would honestly forget that it was my birthday if my friends and family didn’t remind me. I stopped giving the date attention after I turned 25. I prefer to just be over 25. My exact age is always nebulous to me. I have to do math every time someone requires me to tell them my age. In the morning Sarah and I went out for coffee and breakfast sandwiches at Starbucks. The drive-thru was backed up into the street. Sarah checked her phone and discovered that one of our old regular breakfast places was open. We had our first in-restaurant meal in over a year. The food was as good as ever. The staff remembered us and asked after the friends who had regularly joined us before the plague descended.

Once we got back home I spent most of the day working on art.

Monday – more art with breaks to cook meals and a long phone conversation with my brother.

Tuesday – art and errands. The new housemate had a load of her stuff brought in from her old apartment. Sarah and one of our neighbors have been working to rearrange our stuff to get rid of that which does not spark joy and make room for … more sfuff.

Wednesday – art and making meals for me. More organizing for Sarah.

Thursday – the new housemate and I went down to her old place in Tacoma so she could do a walk-through with her property managers. I emptied her fridge, tossed out some trash and packed up the last of her stuff that’s coming north.

Today – more art for me, hopefully.

Indistinguishable from Magic

Stardust the Superwizard is, ultimately, a librarian. He lives in a technological/informational archive located on Venus’ moon.

The archive is one of many scattered across the universe. They are all connected via multi/interdimensional gateways and platforms in such a way that, to the casual visitor, they appear to be one vast, nearly infinite collection. The archives were established by an intelligent species that has mastered time. They are intensely curious and are continually adding to the archives.

Stardust himself is the enhanced clone of the Soviet cosmonaut Major Tomas Zhigalev. Zhigalev and his ship disappeared soon after escaping the Earth’s orbit in 1962. Zhigalev was intercepted by the archive and his mind was transfered to the Stardust clone. His original body is stored in the archive.  The USSR covered up all record of Zhigalev’s mission.

Stardust is just one of many beings who maintain and protect the archive. Because it exist outside of consensus space and time he is able to travel through the universe to any point he finds interesting. He has a fierce sense of justice and uses the archives’ resources to twart and punish evil doers.

As a human Zhigalev was reserved, stoic and asocial. As Stardust his personality is much the same. Yet he still feels attachment to the Earth and its inhabitants. He views protecting the solar system as one of his duties.

When he isn’t adventuring, he is investigating the archive, learning, learning, learning.

Shop Talk

As I work on new images I’m continuing to edit and expand the designs I’ve already posted to my Redbubble store. I’ve made more changes to some of the illustrations than I originally intended. This image of the fellow contemplating the stars, for instance …

I like the original but when I tried expand the white starfield along with the rest of the illustration it kept looking wrong. I couldn’t seem to find the right photoshop brush. The white in original is lively. To me, it gives the image the feel of watching fireworks. The revised version is relaxing.

The mutants below went from posing menacingly in a desert landscape …

To posing menacingly in a bigger desert landscape. Not a lot of changes needed to expand this one.

I’d already revised “Red Right Hand”  (inspired by the Nick Cave song) before I posted it to Redbubble. My big sister had ordered a greeting card printing of it and showed me the result. The result was dark. Too many details got lost.

I lightened the color palette when I expanded the image. The current version feels drier, more weather beaten.

Until … 

I hope that your life is only as chaotic as you can enjoy. I hope you have time to chill out when things get too wild. I appreciate you taking the time to stop by.

​See you next week!

Friday. Friday. Friday.

It arrives once a week. Millions of people anticipate it because Saturday follows after. I work most Saturdays so Friday has an appeal for other reasons.

YOU!

Welcome back!

Read on!
(Or scroll down the page and look at the pictures. I don’t mind.)

These Days …

We’ve been having a lot of sunny weather here in Seattle. It’s warm enough for short sleeves to be comfortable while cool enough to make being outside pleasant. Since most of my USPS job requires me to be outside I’m happy with that situation. The station has been requiring mandatory overtime on most days. We’re short carriers and clerks at my station and looking to hire.

Beyond that I don’t have much to say about the day job that I haven’t said before. Maybe next week.

Promises to Keep

The Heap was germinated in 1918. Baron Eric Von Emmelmann, a German fighter pilot, was shot down over a Polish swamp. He didn’t exactly die. What exactly happened to him is open to conjecture. He loved his wife. He had a new born son that he had not yet held. He was very stubborn man. Perhaps that stubbornness, that will to live kept a spark in his body as it was subsumed by the swamp. Perhaps the occult activities in which his ancestors were rumored to engage made his reformed body a revenant. Faerie beings in the swamp and/or the goddes Ceres have also gotten credit. Whatever the cause, flesh was replaced by mulch and moss and fungus, bones by roots and stems and vines. It took a decade but the spark held and grew and, in 1928, the Heap pulled itself from the muck and headed home.

The way was fraught with danger and horrors. The Heap seemed to be a magnet for evils both human and supernatural. He battled vampires and werewolves and more mundane evils.

Not surprisingly, the Von Emmelmann family reunion was strained. His former wife had married his former best friend. His son was now a ten year old boy. His estates were in ruin. He was no longer human and, having no vocal cords, could not speak. But they were all practical, rational people even when faced with the impossibility of the Heap. They reconciled. The former Baron let go of his former life and his spirit left the Heap.

The Heap remained. It wandered the world, a mostly mindless creature. It continued to encounter and defeat all manner of menaces.

From 1951 until 1963 the Heap housed the mind and spirit of Jeremiah Cartier, an African spiritualist and adventurer. He and his family defended the world from secret occult conspiracies and supernatural dangers.

In the mid-1970s the Heap bore the mind of Jesus Robertson, a former crop duster pilot. His human body died in a plane crash and his mind transferred to the Heap when it pulled him from the wreckage. He had a variety of adventures before he settled down on his parents’ farm to help them through their remaining years. When they passed away his spirit left the Heap.

These days the Heap is inhabited by the spirit of Isabeau Bienvenu, a former Air Force pilot, bartender and DJ. She lives in Mississippi with her young niece and two adopted orphan girls. Of course they fight monsters and menaces from beyond on a regular basis. That’s part of the package of being the Heap.

Shop Talk

I’d thought that, when I reached 100 designs, I would start replacing some to keep to a nice even 100 but, after updating a few older designs, I’ve changed my mind. There are a few images that I plan to replace with completely new versions. But the more I work on this project the less I want to limit it. I’m having fun. The “Explore Designs” pages give me a more expansive and easily updatable portfolio than I’ve currently got on my own website. So, on beyond one hundred.

This forest god illustration is a bit cramped.

So I’ve given the old creature more room to move …

The next piece is a bit different. I did the original back in 2015. I had finally gotten settled enough in my USPS carrier job that I could make time to do art again. I’d started posting new illustrations to my website. I was just working in black and white at the time. I didn’t yet have the energy to work in color.

When I was going through my desktop to find the original photoshop files of images I was planning to update for the shop I was reminded of this piece. I liked it when I did it. I still like it.

Between 2015 and now I’ve had a lot of practice drawing digitally so expanding the original image was easy. And fun. Adding color was even more satisfying.

This is currently design #98 in the Redbubble store.

And that’s it for this week. Take care of yourself and those you love. Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll. You know the drill.

See you next week!

Hello!

You’re looking awfully handsome today! Have you done something new with your hair? Is that a new shirt/dress/pair of socks? Whatever it is, keep doing it!

(Unless I’m just delusional. In which case I’ll hang on to my delusions and continue passing them on to you.)

These Days …

Hmmm.

So this is the part of the newsletter where I get personal. As personal as I’m going to get in medium that can be read by anybody.

Caveats, caveats.

No covid. My second vaccine should be fully functional today. I expect to continue wearing a mask in public for a while. I haven’t had a cold in year so, personally, I find them effective. I also like the idea that wearing a mask screws up Big Brother’s facial recognition software. Not that Big Brother couldn’t find me if it wanted to. My scanner at USPS has GPS tracking and I carry a cell phone whenever I leave the house so I’m hardly doing a good job of being anonymous.

The new housemate is basically moved in. Her cat and ours are still a little touchy with each other but mostly they are getting along.

Little news otherwise. So let’s get to the artstuff!

Fighting the Powers

Open on:
The Skookworks studio. Early morning. Not that it matters. There are no windows in this room, only bookshelves. The Cartoonist sits at the drawing table. He is sketching. The Salesman sits next to him at the computer desk. He is staring at the screen. He types a few words and then deletes them. He sighs. He looks at what the Cartoonist is drawing.

Salesman: Octobriana and the Face?

Cartoonist: Yup. I’ve done the other Weird Heroes. Time to team up the last two.

Salesman: Are you sure you want to use that composition?

The Cartoonist lifts up the page. He stares at the drawing. He drops it to the floor.

Cartoonist: You’re right. That one didn’t work. No action. No tension.

He puts a new piece of cardstock on the drawing table and starts sketching again. The Salesman types a few words. He deletes them. He looks at what is being sketched.

Salesman: Much better.

Cartoonist: Much livelier.

Salesman: What’s with the dog?

Cartoonist: These guys seem more like dog people than cat people.

Salesman: That is a happy looking dog.

Cartoonist: Happy dogs are great. The Mail Carrier likes the happy dogs on his route.

Salesman: I’m trying to write something insightful about these characters, about why we’re using them. We like the Heap because we like swamp monsters. We’ve adopted Stardust (the Superwizard) and Fantomah because they require us to think in new ways. What is the appeal of these two?

Cartoonist: They hate rich people?

Salesman: Everybody hates rich people.

Cartoonist: Not really. If everybody actually hated rich people there wouldn’t be any rich people. And these guys hate rich people for different reasons. The Face is a guy who puts on a mask to fight crime and corruption. He’s not trying to completely change society. Octobriana is a revolutionary. She’s fighting for a different, better, egalitarian world. The Face is an American. Octobriana is international. And she has a pterodactyl.

Salesman: She has a pterodactyl? Why didn’t you draw the pterodactyl?

Cartoonist: That’s in Octobriana’s solo illustration. This is the team up illustration.

Salesman: What are they teaming up to do?

Cartoonist: Something that will probably involve punching cops.

Salesman: They punch cops? A lot of people like cops. A lot more people like cops than hate rich people.

Cartoonist: The original Face became a crime fighter because he saw corrupt cops murder someone. Our version probably has a similiar origin story. I’m still working it out. He is an American though so he’s not opposed to the police in principle. He just wants them to act in favor of justice rather than as selfish asshats. Octobriana is opposed to the police in general. The police are tools of the state. The state uses them to oppress people. To her, there are no good cops.

Salesman: I’m on deadline here. I’m not sure that’s got mass appeal.

Cartoonist: Smash the state! Eat the rich!

Salesman: You’re not helping.

Cartoonist: You’re a stooge for the capitalist oligarchy.

Salesman: Sigh. Artists. This design is available on all kinds of stuff on Redbubble. Buy now and keep the wheels of the marketplace spinning!

Shop Talk

Last week I had a conversation with someone who has purchased some of my designs on products through Redbubble. She’s been happy with her purchases so far but she found the search process frustrating. She didn’t find it easy to find my shop using either “skookworks” or “david lee ingersoll” in the search field. What’s frustrating to her is frustrating to me. I like to be easy to find. I’ve also had difficulty finding other artists’ shops on Redbubble. I was sure the shops existed but putting in the artists’s names yielded no results.

My customer does her online shopping on her phone so I used my phone to search Redbubble for my products. Less than ten showed up for “David Lee Ingersoll”. Less than ten for “Skookworks”. I had randomly added tags for “David Lee Ingersoll” and “skookworks” to some designs when I was having trouble thinking of a variety of tag words and phrases to use. The designs that showed up in the searches had those tags. Bleah. This means I’ll need to be adding those tags to the rest of my designs now. People can’t buy what they can’t find.

Interestingly Zazzle pulls up my shop when I search for “skookworks”. Searching for “David Lee Ingersoll” only pulls up products that I’ve tagged with my name. I guess I’ll need to make some updates there as well.

While I was doing these searches I started thinking about edits I want to make to some of the earlier posted designs. I’d planned to wait until I had 100 images posted but … what the heck, if I have to add in tags I might as well do some edits at the same time.

I’m not making major changes. At this time I’m just expanding some of the illustrations so the images fit better on the merchandise that Redbubble offers. For instance, this guy punching a robot …

Becomes this guy punching a robot. More space around the figures means it can fit more comfortably on a  greater variety of products.

This sad monster at the abandoned drive-in …

Becomes this sad monster at the abandoned drive-in. It now has more space in which to be
sad. (I love this sad monster.)

Finally, this image of the Mighty Nizz being cheerful to a doubtful bear …

Becomes this expanded version.

I won’t be able to do this with all my older designs. These were layered Photoshop documents and the colors are simple. Expanding designs that were originally done in pencil or markers or used specialized digital brushes is a challenge that I’m not planning to take on. I’d rather redo the illustration.

I’ve joined a Redbubble Facebook group. I’ve been watching videos on “how to get rich on Redbubble” on Youtube. Hearing other folks experiences with and reasons for being on Redbubble is/are interesting, in part because so much of the focus is on sales. I get it. I guess. I’m delighted when I get a notice saying I’ve sold something. I’m especially delighted when the sale is for some odd illustration that I really didn’t expect anyone else to like. I long ago learned that my taste is not general taste. But I’m on Zazzle and Redbubble because having those stores as destinations gives me a focus for composing my illustrations.

The three original images above were originally done because:
a) I thought the subject (and the implied story) would be fun to depict
and/or
b) I wanted to practice some new rendering techniques.

With the stores as endpoints I’m still inspired by a) and b) but now I’m also thinking about:
c) composing an image so the important aspects of the design will look good on a variety of different products.

Eventually I may add:
d) follow pop trends for big sales
to my thinking but that will mean I’ll have to pay more attention to pop trends. And draw fast enough to take advantage of them.

We’ll see.

That’s it for this week. Thank you for reading.

May your life be only as exciting as it is satisfying. See you next time!