You’re back! Seven days have passed and you have opened another missive. Huzzah!

These Days … 

Lots of overtime at USPS this last week. Bleah. More time handling mail (mostly Amazon parcels) means less time having a life and therefore less time to write about having less time to have a life. You’re probably getting used to, and perhaps tired of, this complaint.

Moving on …

Transmission 03 

Wilhelmina Grace almost laughed. The transmitter had found her a safe location. She stood on solid ground. It appeared to be the only solid ground for thousands, if not millions, of miles. It seemed to hold a much stronger force of gravity than she would have expected in so small an object. Nonelheless she stayed still. She didn’t want to make any sudden moves that might launch her into the void.

At first she took the glowing objects that drifted past as comets but then she heard faint music. Music, coming from glowing objects, in airless space? Wilhelmina checked her thoughts. This destination only appeared to be airless space. This was not her home dimension. There could be an atmosphere outside her suit. The music from the not-comets was atonal, staticky and vaguely electronic. She thought it sounded like Chinese opera as played on a Theramin.

Super Portraits

I’ve done team up shots of my “Weird Heroes”. I’ve done solo images. I figured it was time to do portraits of each character. My standard work flow is to start by sketching with nonphoto blue pencil.

There are five “Weird Heroes”. I hate leaving empty space so I drew a cat.

Once I was basically satisfied with the blueline sketches I went over them a “B” lead pencil. Once I’ve scanned in these drawings I will drop out the blue using a function in Photoshop. I’ve made process gifs of each portrait and I’ll be sharing those in my next few newsletters.

I went ahead and inked the cat.

The final version of this critter is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store. If you’d like to see it on Zazzle merch just let me know.

Once again, thank you for opening this email. Life is full of distractions. I’m honored that you let me be one of them.

I hope you are well and sane. Remember to get some exercise. See you in seven days!

Good morning fabulous reader! Thank you opening this email. The only viruses it contains are love and appreciation.

These Days …

Cleviosity is not a recognized word. Not yet. It’s a term invented by Patrick McLean. He says, “Cleviosity (or Cleviousness) is my term for when you are trying so hard to do something smart that you wind up doing something stupid”. He has an essay about his own Cleviosness here.

I’ve been using the word frequently since I read it. There’s a lot I do that’s intended to have one result but ends up producing different ones, ones that could have been predicted if I had thought three or four times instead of just twice. This newsletter is a good example. I started it because I’d been reading a lot of other email newsletters and I found a lot of them inspirational. I’ve been writing it in part so I get practice writing. Writing and producing writing to deadline. And I’m getting that – the experience of writing and producing a newsletter to a weekly deadline.

The thing is … I want more practice writing and drawing comics. Writing a newsletter gives me practice stringing words together. Comics are not words. Yes, most comics have words in them. Yes, most comics start with a written script. But a comic story is not a newsletter. I can ramble on here for a few hundred words and get a satisfying product. I don’t have to plan much.

A comic story requires more planning. Whether the story is five pages or five hundred, each page needs to be composed so that the images can be read clearly. If there’s dialogue it needs to be considered while planning the page so it can be read cleanly. Too many words can overwhelm the images. If the story requires a page count it must be planned so that the action is presented well.

A newsletter is not a comic book. Also, the audience for a newsletter might not be the same audience for a comic story. Not everyone who reads this newsletter will want to read my comics. Heck, not everyone who subscribes to this newsletter opens it. Not everyone who opens it reads it, I know some folks just look at the pictures.

That’s fine. Really. I long ago stopped worrying (much) about the results of my creative endeavors. I do notice the results and, when the results aren’t what I was hoping/planning on, I make adjustments.

Putting out this newsletter on a weekly basis is useful. I do get practice hitting deadlines and writing prose. I made a commitment to put out this version of the newsletter for a year and I will. We’re now far enough past the half way point of 2021 that I’m thinking of how I want the newsletter fo function in 2022. I have some ideas. If you’re one of the folks who reads each issue, I’d love to hear your feedback.

In the meantime I need to figure out how to add “write and draw comics” into my schedule.  Hopefully I’ll manage it with less cleviousness this time.

Transmission 02

Wilhelmina Grace arrived gently. The transimission process was supposed to work that way. The machines were supposed to calculate a stable arrival point for the subject and desposit it there precisely. Theory and application were not always the same. Grace was relieved that this arrival had actually gone as designed.

She was disconcerted that the transmitter had placed her on top of some sort of stalk. She wondered it was a plant or a fungus and recognized that she was attempting to apply Terran biological classifications to organisms existing in otherdimensional realms. She also recognized that she would need to maintain her balance on this stalk for the ten minutes until the transmitter forwarded her to the next destination. The transmitter would find her if she moved but she realized that she could see the ground from where she was balanced. All she saw were waving stalks and floating creatures.

She was beginning to think that the ten minute destination visit idea might have been poorly thought out. 

Expansions

I’ve been continuing to update older images to better fit on merchandise in my Redbubble store. I’ve realized that most of my earlier images were composed as if they were comic book panels. I tried to fill all the available space as if I only had so much space available. That meant, when I tried placing the images on a variety of different products I’d often either have to crop out cool parts of the image or just not place the image on some products. Fortunately most of the work I’ve done in the last five years exists as large, layered photoshop files. I can make adjustments to sizes and lines and colors pretty easily.

Singing for Shub Niggurath 

The original –

The updated version. More space at the top and bottom of the image, more flesh on the singer, and simplified colors.

It Came From the Landfill

The original – inspired by creature in the movie The Milpitas Monster.

The updated version – more room at the top of the image, more vibrant (lurid?) colors.

Three Girls and the Heap

The original –

THe updated version – more room at the top and left side. Highlights on the figures.

And that’s it for this week. I appreciate you spending some of your no doubt limited attention here.

Get some rest. Say hi to friends. Give your work the love it deserves.

See you on the 27th!

Please leave a message at the tone.

If there is no tone, please whisper your message into the nearest sanitary ear.

These Days ..

The weather is hot. We’re short on carriers. Amazon continues to send us big heavy parcels that require extra time for delivery. Rinse. Repeat. .

Transmission 001

Wilhelmina Grace ceased to exist. She felt it happen. She expected it. It was part of the transmission process. But expectation and experience can be very different things. One can imagine not existing. Feeling nonexistence was something she hadn’t anticipated. The moment was brief but palpable. She felt, knew, a moment of complete discontinuity.

And then she was in a space that was not a place. It was a betweenness. There was no ground. No sky. Colors that she could not name. She felt like she was falling but couldn’t orient herself to up or to down. She felt relieved that she would transmit again in ten minutes. She knew she could deal with this experience for ten minutes.

Unless there was a down, a ground, a place where gravity mattered, somewhere in those ten minutes.

Unless minutes meant nothing in this no place. 

Back in the Light

I’ve done a lot of illustrations for role playing games. Most of them were for some version of The Call of Cthulhu. One of my favorite companies to work for was the one I started with – Sixtystone Press. I’ve looked through my archive of illustrations to see which ones could be converted to merch. Not a lot, I think. I could be wrong but most of the pictures seem too specific to the scenarios which they are illustrating to work as stand alone images.

Most but not all. I found three images in the scenario book Lost in the Lights that I think can be appreciated without context. All I needed to do was edit them so they worked better on t-shirts and such.

Above is the original front cover illustration of Lost in the Lights. The scenario takes place in Las Vegas during a convention of celebrity impersonators. One of the most prominant celebrities to impersonate, especially in Vegas, is Elvis. Below is recontextualized version of the image.

Most of the book’s interior illustrations are scenario specific but I found a couple that I lked just by themselves.

Skulls! Who doesn’t love skulls? People who don’t have skulls perhaps?

Above is the black and white version that appeared in the book. Below is the colorized version.

Creepy masks! Who doesn’t love creepy masks? People without faces maybe?

Above is the black and white version that appeared in the book. Below is the colored and colorized and edited version.

Shop Talk

Hahahahahahaha!

I wrote that the above section on Sunday morning. The featured images have been in my stores for a few weeks now. On Monday I got this email from Redbubble –

Hi David Lee ,We’re sorry, but we had to remove your artwork from the Redbubble marketplace, because it may contain material that violates someone’s rights. The owner of these rights has provided us with guidance describing the type of content they consider infringing that should be removed from the marketplace. In most cases, this means that the rights holder did not specifically identify your work for removal, but that Redbubble has detected potential similarity between your removed work and one or more words, phrases or images included in the rights holder’s removal guidance. More information: Rights holder: Sony Music Entertainment Subject matter: Elvis Presley Affected Artwork: Cosmic Horror and the King of Rock and Roll https://www.redbubble.com/people/skookworks/works/81545321-cosmic-horror-and-the-king-of-rock-and-roll What you can do next: Do nothing Your artwork will not be reinstated, and you should not upload it again. This usually brings the matter to a close. Contest the removal This is only appropriate if you believe that removal of your work is a mistake or that your work is parody, satire, critical commentary or other fair use. More information on the counter notice process can be found here. Important: Re-uploading the same content without going through this counter notice process may result in penalties being applied to your user account, including account suspension.

I like specifics. I wanted to know how I specifically violated Sony’s rights. I know they control the rights to most if not all Elvis’s music but I wasn’t aware that they also controlled rights to any depiction of him as well. So I asked for a copy of the guidelines that RB used to decide to take down the image.

I got this instead –

Dear David,

Regards,

The links in that bullet list are broken. I’ve interacted with RB over copyright before, weeks ago, and gotten the same broken list. That tells me that RB isn’t paying much attention to my response. I’ve pointed out those links are broken before yet they haven’t been fixed. I’m not taking it personally. The complany claims “Redbubble is a community of independent artists and designers who take sole responsibility for the content of their work. We value originality and creativity and strongly oppose infringement of copyright, trademarks, intellectual property rights and publicity rights.” It’s a nice sounding slogan but a hollow one.

The takedown of the my Elvis art isn’t the issue. There’s enough wobble around who can profit from depictions of the man that, if I were RB, I’d find it easier to remove the design too.

My issue is that RB hosts dozens, if not hundreds, of stores that sell stolen designs. Those stores are pretty obvious but reporting them doesn’t get much action from RB. They hide behind their rule that only the rights holders of a design can report a stolen design. It’s a rule that is no doubt intended to prevent malicious takedown requests but mostly just lets RB avoid responsibility for enabling thieves.

Ah well.

And that’s it for this week! Thank you again for visiting. Stay safe! Stay sane! Don’t eat your roommates if they die. Let your cats do that.

See you next Friday!

And so we come lurching to the end of another week – according to the USPS HR department. My payweek runs from Saturday to Friday so today is considered the finale of my toil. Since I still have to work tomorrow I’m not going to feel like I’ve finished my week until I clock out tomorrow evening. Thank you for allowing me to toss this missive into your mailbox. I hope you are doing well!

These Days …

As of August 12th, I will have been working for USPS for 8 years. I’ve had my own route for about six and a half years but I’ve continured to carry off other routes in that time. I’ve delivered to almost every mailbox in the four zip codes that our station services. Yay me!

We’re doing a lot of mandatory overtime at my station. Between being short on carriers and having carriers on vacation those of us who show up for work are often “asked” to carry part of another route regardless of whether we are on the Overtime Desired List. My body isn’t happy with me because of this.

Well, not just this. On Saturday, July 24th, Sarah and I loaded up the car and drove from Seattle to Santa Rosa. The distance is a little over 800 miles. It took us about 16 hours.

On Sunday the 24th we attended the memorial of our friend Andy Syversen. Andy had passed away last September but his family had held off having an event until some covid restrictions had been lifted.

On Monday the 26th Sarah and I did another 16 hour drive back to Seattle.

When we woke up on the 27th we both hurt. Apparently sitting in one place with minimal breaks for exercising isn’t good for you. I had taken the 24th and the 26th off from work (thereby sticking my coworkers with filling in for me on my route – sorry folks!) but that Tuesday was a scheduled day off. From the post office. We still went to visit one friend who is in town for medical care and then had dinner with one of my high school classmates who was passing through town.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday I limped through delivering mail. My supervisors held off scheduling me to carry extra the first three days because of that limping but I still did overtime. There was an election here in Seattle on August 3rd and the candidates had to get their mailers out. Many many mailers. For some reason political marketers have decided that oversized cardstock mailers are the way to push their clients. Those things are a nuisance to case and often don’t fit in the mailboxes easily.

On Sunday, August 1st, we had breakfast with a couple of passing-through-town friends and then an early dinner with our in-town-for-medical-treatment friend.

Monday and Tuesday I worked overtime. I’d recovered enough that my limping was minimal so I got to deliver parts of other routes.

Wednesday was this week’s scheduled day off. I spent it doing catching up on chores.

Thursday – overtime.

I’m expecting more overtime today. We’re supposed to be scheduled for one eight hour day each work week and, if that doesn’t happen, any overtime we work on the day that’s not an eight is paid double. So today I’ll either go home at 3:30 or make a little extra cash. I’ll be happier to go home early but the cash wouldn’t hurt.

Revisions and Edits

It should have been obvious to me. Circular designs look good on t-shirts. They make good magnets and buttons and stickers. But it still took me a few months before I grokked that. Once I did, I looked through my older images to see which ones would look good in a circle.

I did this King in Yellow illustration back when I was relearning how to color on the computer. I was posting a black and white image and then the colored version to my website.

I liked the black and white version but the original colors needed some work. More contrast. More luridness.

Much better!

The next image was an even earlier one, done when I was finally having time to draw again after my first year of a heavy, time devouring postal work. These first drawings were only done and posted to my website in black and white. This is one of my various interpretations of the atomic zombie fishmen from The Horror of Party Beach. 

I made some edits to the lead fishman before I started coloring. I’ve had enough practice recently that digitally adding to the drawing is easy. I couldn’t have done when I originally drew it. I still can’t draw an image from scratch digitally but perhaps if I keep practicing ..
.

The next illustration was done for an RPG supplement that will probably never see print. The featured elephantine critter is one of the “brothers” of Chaugnar Faugn, a Great Old One invented by Frank Belknap Long. The original version was/is in black and white. I’ve put some of my black and white illustrations into my shops but I thought this one would look good with some color.

Lurid color of course. I hear some folks aren’t into lurid color. Silly people.

These designs can be found on various schtuff in both my Redbubble and Zazzle stores.

And that’s it for this week.

Be good to yourself. Be kind to others. Say hello to passing dogs. Rest when you can.

Cheers!

Hello wonderful people. It has been a long week for me. It was a good week but a busy one, much of it spent away from my computer. I will try to tell you about it next week. I hope you are doing well and getting the rest you need. Here’s a process gif of the Mighty Nizz.kicking leaves.

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