Skook WIP #14

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It’s Friday. You’re where you are. I’m where I am. This newsletter connects us for a moment. Thank you for stopping by!

Greeting Card Conversions

As usual, we start with before and after versions of some greeting card designs. The after versions will be available in my Zazzle shop. Normally they are already uploaded by the time I send out this newsletter but … squirrel!

Speaking of Squirrels

Joy + Noise = Music.

Truth.

A little extra color just makes it shine.

Hip to be Square

Good god, I’m dating myself by quoting that song.

It wasn’t true then. It’s not true now. It’s hip to be hip. Being square puts you in a corner.

Dress for success. Dress for excess. Dress to impress. But, please, dress!

And the Award for Best Best Goes to …

Sometimes you just need a prize, an award, an acknowledgement that you did it, you made it, you’re still here. And if you’re fine today, then someone else can use it. Share the love and the kudos and the huzzahs and the cake!

Especially share the cake!

A Relaxing Cup of Tea

I like the idea of sitting down and drinking a nice warm cup of tea. Of just letting the world take a pause.

I really should try it sometime.

Joyful Noise

This is the first design created specifically for my online shops. Because I have this newsletter I thought to scan each step in the process.

Most of my design start with a sketch. I use a non-photo blue pencil to do the rough sketching.

Once I’ve figured out the basic design I use an HB lead pencil to finish the sketch. I scan it into Photoshop and use a filter to remove the blue lines.

I then convert the pencil drawing into a blueline drawing and print it out at a larger size. The original was done on 8.5×11 cardstock. The second version is on 11×17 bristol board.

I ink over the blueline and then add shading. Sometimes I shade with greytone markers. Sometimes, as in this case, I just use an HB pencil. I scan this version into Photoshop, remove the blueline and start coloring.

Voila!

Here’s a process gif. It’s not real without a process gif.


This design is available on a beer stein in my zazzle store and on many, many other things in my redbubble store.

These Days …

Each week is a juggling act of attention and action. The day job and the Sarah get my attention first. Then it’s chores and art and writing and marketing and goofing off. This week I was having so much fun working on art projects that writing and marketing got mostly ignored. As did some chores.

I will show off the art in weeks to come. The chores you can imagine for yourself. I will have more to say next week.

Thank you for visiting. Stay well. Get your shots. Pet a cat. Give a compliment. Look out for each other.

See you next week!

Skook WIP #13

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Thirteen weeks into 2021. Sixth day of the week. Pictures to look at! Words to read! Yay!

Greeting Card Conversions

In which I present a scan of an original hand drawn, hand colored image and then the digitally cleaned up and edited version of the image that is available as a print on demand greeting card in my Zazzle shop.

Better Than Impossible

“When pigs fly” is an expression to indicate an event that will never occur. Silly cynical people. We live in the future now. Flying pigs and talking cats and vacations on Venus are right around the corner!


Once pigs get off the ground, other gravity challenged species will demand equal time. All sorts of critters will fill the skies. Birds will complain. Strict demarcations will be made in our airspaces to prevent collisions. This is not an anarchist future. It’s a future with rules!

Or maybe it’s just a fun greeting card design.

The Fast and the Really Slow

Sloths spend so much time hanging upside down that their fur grows in downward pattern from their bellies. They spend so much time being still that there are species of algae that have evolved to grow in their fur. Sloths are not speedy creatures. Not in modern times.

In the past there were giant sloths that lumbered on the ground and tore up termite mounds without seeking permission from the builders. There were sloths that lived in the ocean. Sloths can adapt. Sloths can dream of speed.

“When sloths caballerial” may describe an impossible event today but tomorrow? The possible lives in tomorrow.

Spring is Sprung

The seasons have changed. There’s less cold. More sun. More color. More bunnies. All you have to do is look.

You will need to be very patient if you want to see them in their spring fashions. They don’t get dressed up for just anyone.

Squeezebox in the Night

What is that music? It’s 2 am. I want to sleep not dance. I don’t need infectious rhythms pulling me to feet inspiring me to boogie. Go to bed you annoying noturnal critter!

In the future the raccoons will wander through our ruins and give thanks to the ancients who left them such fascinating trash. Then they will dance and sing and give thanks for their clever thumbs that have allowed them to rule the world.


Designing Fantomah

I thought that coming up with “my” version of Fantomah would be easy. She’s a blue nature goddess with a skull face. It’s pretty simple design. I’ve drawn her a few time before and had fun. I assumed the main challenge would be adapting Fletcher Hanks’ original design into a version that was comfortable for me to draw on a regular basis.


Her skull face is fun to draw. As with all his characters Hanks gave her a limited set of expressions. I like sketching a range of emotions. Her hair in the original comics is long with a series of tight curls. She does have awesome magic powers so maybe she uses them to style her hair. I tried doing curls the first times I drew her. This time I tried drawing her hair as if it were always floating, constantly twisting and turning.


I ran into problems when I started thinking about her dress. She’s wears a black cocktail dress. Why does she wear a black cocktail dress? Why does she, a jungle goddess, wear a black cocktail dress in the frickin’ jungle?

I know, I know, a blonde, caucasian jungle goddess is already a problematic figure, why do I care about her outfit? I’ll get back to that blonde, caucasian part in a minute.

I like the main design in the above sketch but it’s a very different look for Fantomah. It’s more goth superhero. I think that if I’m going to take an existing character I should at least start with a version that’s close to the original. It also looks … warm. Aren’t jungles hot?

The two smaller sketches are inspired by ancient Egyptian fashion. I wasn’t satisfied with them either. Egypt is located in Africa but it’s more desert than jungle and I don’t know enough about ancient Egyptian culture to appropriate it for an imaginary vengence goddess.


I settled on a black dress with simple straps. Is it still a cocktail dress?  Probably. It somehow seems different to me than the original version but I can’t tell you why.

The unskulled faces are possible versions of Fantomah’s human alter ego. I working from the idea that the version in the original comics is a sop to its white American readership, that Fantomah is herself African. As yet I don’t have an origin story for her. It will come. My brain seems to think up ideas without me having to work at it much. They aren’t always good ideas of course. And ideas by themselves are just seeds. There are great stories and fun characters who were born from bad ideas.


These Days …


I did not wake up at 1:30 am this morning with a cat pawing at my face to tell me that it was time to feed him.

There is currently no cat at my feet staring up at me in order to get me to check that the food dish has fresh food in it.

For the last seven years we’ve shared our apartment with two cats, Chemo and Sabe. Sarah picked them up at an animal shelter in 2014. Chemo was a kitten. Sabe was a full grown cat that, supposedly, had lived with an elderly woman who had passed away. Supposedly he was not a friendly cat. Sarah put the kitten in the same room with him. He didn’t exactly play with the kitten but he wasn’t upset either. Sarah thought he just seemed tired and needed a home.

Chemo and Sabe got along fine.

Chemo grew into a big cat, bigger than Sabe, but Sabe was always his boss.

We shared our place with a housemate and her cat, Toulouse, for a few years. The cats all got along. As you can see.

Sabe died on Wednesday. We’d taken him to the emergency vet on Tuesday night. He’d had a massive seizure. They had kept him overnight in hopes that they could get help him. I called in the morning to check on him and they reported that he was doing well, considering. I went to work. We’ve been short carriers a lot recently and I didn’t want to stick anyone with carrying my route if I didn’t need to. I’m an optimist. I thought Sabe would hang on and I’d be able to bring him home in the evening.

No.

He had a heart attack about mid day.

We knew his time was short. He had kidney problems. We’d treated him with subcutaneous fluids for a few months but he got tired of the process and refused to participate. He got thinner. He seemed to have a harder time getting comfortable.

He was a good cat. He spent a lot of time in the window watching the world. I was the one he expected to fill the food dish. Sarah was the provider of laps for his naps. We had to be careful not to leave the front door open because he’d try to get out. When he did he never went far. He just seemed like he wanted to feel the world that he saw from the window.

There’s a ravine behind our house. It’s full of all sorts of wild things. I tucked his body in a sheltered spot a short distance down the incline. Nature will claim it.

His spirit goes where it wishes now. We miss him. I’m glad for the time we had.

Skook WIP #12

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Is it Friday again? Time flies! And occasionally stumbles. I’m still adjusting to, and complaining about, the time change. I do like that my phone and my desktop don’t require me to update their clocks. It would be handy if the rest of my timepieces adjusted themselves on their own but I really don’t need more objects connected to the web.

Thank you for joining me again. I hope you are well and happy.

Greeting Card Conversions

We start, as usual, with the before (scans of the original hand drawn art) and after (digitally corrected and edited for print) versions of the greeting card designs I’m posting in my Zazzle store.

Hil(arity)raiser

You’ve solved the puzzle and summoned the tormenter. Your giggles will be legendary even in Heck.

Keep your shoes on! Wear a heavy sweater! Stomp your feet and protest. He can only tickle you if you let him. Bunny cenobites require consent to torture you. They’re polite that way.

Out for a Stroll

Spring is on its way. So I’m told. It’s a mix of rain and sun and warm and cold here in Seattle. Dressing for the weather means taking a gamble at being too hot or too cold, often on the same day. But, heck, you might as well dress to show off and take your chances. You’ll look good for a few minutes at least.

Every season has its moments. Enjoy them as they come.

Fancy a Game of Catch?

After spring comes summer and with summer comes baseball! Teamwork! Batting! Throwing! Catching! Running! Yelling at the umpire! Nothing more American than yelling at some guy for having the wrong opinion.

Make sure to pick that frog kid for your team. He’ll never let a fly get past him.


A Dragon Indeed

This critter doesn’t hoard gold or diamonds. His favorite treasure is cookies. He doesn’t eat them. He takes them back to his cave and stacks them in neat piles. Then he sighs with satisfaction.

Chocolate chips. Oatmeal raisin. Peanut butter. Coconut maroons. He loves them all. They may get stale but they stay free of ants. When they show up the dragon eats them. He likes their spiciness.


The Panel Jumper Does Octobriana and the Heap

I got an email on Sunday from Cole Hornaday reminding me about his Panel Jumper series of videos. The main videos are neat little documentaries about various aspects of comic book history. In particular he has episodes focusing on two of the weird heroes I’ve appropriated for … whatever …
Click these links for histories of:
Muck Men (including the Heap)
Octobriana

After you’ve checked out those videos spend some time listening to the Perfect Bound podcast. It’s an entertaining and informative way to spend your quarantine!

Face the Face

The Face had a simple premise: radio announcer Tony Trent puts on a scary mask to fight crime. I like the basicness of the concept. Trent had no supernatural powers and his adversaries were primarily just ordinary crooks. The Face was featured in the anthology Big Shot Comics, appearing in 62 stories. In issue 63 Tony Trent stopped wearing the mask and went on to have another 40 adventures until the Big Shot was cancelled with issue 104.

This is the third time I’ve spent time (re)designing the Face. I did one version here and a second here.

I started with the idea that I was going to just update that second version but it wasn’t clicking. It didn’t look scary. So I went back to the original Big Shot design – short hair, no eyebrows – and played around with different variations..

I do like the horrifying version with all the exposed teeth but I ultimately decided on a look that wouldn’t require a lot of prosthetics (or magic) to pull off.

The original Face fought crime while wearing a blue tuxedo. It’s not a bad style. I went with a brown suit that, I think, more emphasizes the weird green and red mask. In the 1940s wearing a tuxedo made the Face stand out. Suits were the standard uniform of even the lower classes. These days suits are less common so fighting crime in one would be unusual. And, to me, more comfortable than the spandex and leather that most superheroes put on. I also think that, these days, a plain brown suit makes the Face look more like a middle class crime fighter. I get that the “hero with a secret identity” originated with rich guys (The Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, Batman) but I’m not a rich guy and, the older I get, the less sympathy I have for rich guys.

I honestly don’t know what, if anything, I’ll do with the Face but now I have a standard version to use.

News from the Night Forest

A couple of updates on the Mighty Nizz project –
Sarah wrote a vignette and it’s live on the site.
Unless something goes wrong, Nizz will be the star of my 2022 calendar. Zazzle has a calendar template that I should be able to make work for my preferences. I’m hoping I can customize the template to include people’s birthdays but I haven’t really looked at that yet. I will update you as I figure it out.

These Days …

Last week I forgot to do an “Influences” section. This week I’m sort of putting that section and this one together. After I’d written about Bill Peet I thought about other chlidren’s book authors I might want to feature and, of course, Dr. Suess came up. His books were ubiquitous for kids who grew up when I did. Obviously his work had some influence on me.

Right?

At first my answer was, “Kinda. Sorta.”

I don’t remember wanting to draw like Suess. I couldn’t remember any specific Suess story that had an impact on me. I remember How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who from the cartoon specials rather than the books from which they were adapted. I’m sure the absurdity in his stories and art had an impact but I couldn’t come up with anything specific.

And then it was announced that some Dr. Suess books are no longer going to be printed. My first thought was, “Which books?” because the first few memes I saw didn’t say. Being a someone who prefers to know what he’s getting upset about I did some research and found the list –
1. And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street
Marco watches the sight and sounds of people and vehicles traveling along Mulberry Street and dreams up an elaborate story to tell to his father at the end of his walk.
2. If I Ran the Zoo
Gerald McGrew visits a zoo and finds that the animals are “not good enough” and describes how he would run the zoo. He would let all of the current animals free and find new, more bizarre and exotic ones.
3. McElligot’s Pool
A boy named Marco is ridiculed for fishing in a small, polluted pool, and tries to justify himself by imagining the fish he might catch
4. On Beyond Zebra
The young narrator, not content with the confines of the ordinary alphabet, invents additional letters beyond Z, with a fantastic creature corresponding to each new letter.
5. Scrambled Eggs Super
A young boy named Peter T. Hooper spins a tale of an incredible meal he created by harvesting the eggs of fantastically exotic birds.
6. The Cat’s Quizzer
The Cat in the Hat asks many, sometimes ridiculous, questions of the reader.

Of the six on the list I remember having read the first four. I don’t remember much about them. The summaries I’ve included came from the Suess Bibliograpy wikipeda page. I don’t remember racist imagery in the illustrations but when I was a kid I wouldn’t have noticed much. There was enough racist imagery all around me that such illustrations probably seemed normal. I was a white kid growing up in a mostly white community. I didn’t see a lot of examples of other races and cultures. The human beings in the good doctor’s illustrations were all pretty cartoonish. I didn’t have the awareness to know the difference between generally cartoonish and offensively cartoonish.

I did feel disappointment in hearing that some of the Suess catalog would go out of print. I especially felt a twinge over the loss of Mulberry Street. That was Suess’ first published kids book and had been rejected by multiple publishers before it debuted in 1937. It had been an example for me of success through determinated effort. I’m also attached to the idea that a book I liked once would be available for me to read again someday. But books go out of print all the time. Most of the books on my shelves right now are out of print. Before print on demand, most books got one, maybe two print runs and that was it. Mulberry Street was in print for EIGHTY-FOUR years. The Cat’s Quizzer, the most recent of the books, first saw print in 1976. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to buy a copy of it or any of those other Suess books.

Theodore Guiesel aka Dr. Suess passed away in 1991. His widow, Audrey Guiesel, passed away in 2018. His books and the licensing of his characters is now managed by Dr. Suess Enterprises. It’s a nonprofit company but it exists in a capitalist world. It’s a property management company. They could have had the books edited to change or remove offensive content. Suess himself did it slightly once with Mulberry Street. I’m sure there would have been outrage at that. But the money to made with Suess’ work isn’t in publishing books. It’s in licensing. Licensing for toys, film and television adaptations, games. It’s in recognizable characters like the Cat in the Hat, Horton the Elephant, the Lorax and other non-human creations. Those characters can be sold to any parent of any race and ethnic background. Those characters can be marketed internationally.

It’s been over a week since the announcement and the internet has moved on to other outrages. I have a lot of time to think while I deliver mail and I’ve devoted more time to thinking about Suess in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last twenty years. I realized that, yes, I did have some favorite Suess stories. The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Green Eggs and Ham. The Pants with Nobody in Them. Horror stories for children. 

Most folks probably wouldn’t consider them such. They all have happy endings. I don’t remember if any of those stories gave me nightmares but they are fuel for such. Pants, in particular, has haunted me through the years. I’d forgotten about Bartholomews adventures until I read the Suess bibliography. Pants was a story that I’d use as an example of a really creepy children’s story. I was disappointed to discover that it’s not actually titled The Pants with Nobody in Them. The proper title is What Was I Scared Of? That telegraphs the pleasant resolution. I did remember that the pants and the narrator became friends. But I remember more the disturbing idea of being stalked by a piece of empty clothing.

I don’t need to own those books. I need to let go of a lot of the books I own now. I love having a big library but eventually we’ll have to move and it will be a lot easier to do that with a lot less books. Those Suess books that are no longer being published will, sooner or later, enter the public domain. Mulberry Street will do so in twelve years, in 2033. At that time anyone will be able to publish the story. They can publish the original version. Or they can redo it to fit their own taste. It will be interesting to see the variations we get.

In the meantime, I hope you own the books you love and you have time to read them. See you next week!

Skook WIP #11

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Today is March the 12th, 2021. Friday the 12th. One day away from being a Friday the 13th. Supposedly the 13th is a day for bad luck. I’ve only experienced one bad luck Friday the Thirteenth. That was back when I was 16 on a bicycle tour of Europe. I got lost. I got into an accident that required replacing my back wheel. I was grumpy and frustrated. I was also in Europe with friends so, in retrospect, it wasn’t that bad a day. Perspective is everything.

Today is also the fifth day of my Long Week. Because of rotating days off mail carriers have a six day work week once every five weeks. That week is bookended by a three day weekend at the beginning of the week and a two day weekend at the end. After seven years at USPS I’ve gotten used to it. Of course I complain about it. I am human. Humans complain. It’s in the handbook.

Tomorrow is Saturday the 13th. Since it’s the last day of my Long Week it seems like a lucky day to me.

Shall we get started?

Greeting Card Conversions

Once again – before (scans of the original hand drawn and colored illustrations) and after (digitally cleaned up, edited and ready to print) versions of greeting card designs. The after versions are available in my Zazzle shop.

Let it Snow!

I love the idea of snow. Here in Seattle it only takes a little snow to shut the city down. But I still have to go work. So I don’t love the reality of snow.

That’s okay. This mouse isn’t me. He’s enjoying himself!

Forget the cold. Forget the wet. Enjoy the miracle of fluffy frozen water drifting down from the sky!

A Master of the Feather Duster

Armed with a feather duster, Jeeves attacked the disorder and entropy of the house. Armed with dry wit and keen observation Jeeves deflated the egos of his “masters”.

Jeeves is unflappable. Mess not with the Jeeves.

A Room with a View

Available soon: one room, great views, very cozy, perfect for writer or monk or other single hermit. Current occupant is a working mother who is looking forward to stretching her wings and getting away from it all.

The mother will be taking her children with her. Some redecorating may be necessary.

Eight Arms to Hug You 

Love is whatever you make with whoever will make it with you. Love can happen at the beach or the bottom of the sea. Love is a word. A gesture. A look. Love is vast and may have suckers.

Love is where you look for it. Love is where it looks back. Love is love is love.

Bigfoot Boogie

Sasquatch are generally solitary creatures. Mostly quiet. Mostly keeping to themselves. Once in a while they feel a need to be social and loud. You won’t hear them. They know how to be loud a long way from human ears.

Most human ears anyway. They consider the Mighty Nizz to be, if not exactly a Sasquatch, different from those critters that only see a forest for the number of trees they can slaughter.

The above is a process gif of one my Mighty Nizz illustrations. The final illustration is available on all kinds of stuff in my Redbubble store. Plug. Plug.

Defining Octobriana 

Octobriana is 50 years old this year. I first met her as supporting character in The Adventures of Luther Arkwright back in the early Nineties. Her first published appearance was in 1971 in Octobriana and the Russian Underground. Her original adventures can be read here. Supposedly she was the creation of a group of Soviet artists and writers in the 1960s. She wasn’t. That’s a hoax. But it’s a story that gives the character an attractive background and it inspired quite a few comic book artists to use her in new stories in the following decades.

I’ve drawn her in my sketchbooks a few times over the years. I included a couple of illustrations of her in my 2019 daily drawing project. One of those is now gracing a coffee mug in my Zazzle store. She seems like she’d be fun to use for other merchandise so I set about doing development sketches.


My version of Octobriana is more conservatively dressed than most other depictions. I’m a fan of dressing comfortably. That boob bandana she is usually shown wearing just doesn’t seem practical, especially in a fight. Octobriana has magic powers and deadly combat skills. Maybe she also has superior sartorial sorcery?

That’s a question I didn’t try to address in these sketches.


Part of the fun of drawing Octobriana is that she’s angry almost all the time. Well, maybe not angry, maybe passionate is a better term. She’s a revolutionary. Revolutionaries have got to have strong emotions to keep going. Octobriana stares into the abyss and laughs.


What will I be doing with Octobriana?

Eh. I don’t know. Part of my creative process is to (re)invent a character first and then find a place for them. In the process of trying to write this part of the newsletter I came up with a new backstory for Octobriana that ties into a few of my other imaginary mythologies. Once she was Nurri Kala, child of the caverns, daughter of Surrilana, Blessed of the Blue Flame, priest of Shub Niggurath, citizen of Carcosa, Devil Woman of the Endless Revolution. All that is a bit too complicated to fit on a coffee mug.

These Days …

The house is quiet. It’s been quiet for a week. Thing One and Thing Two have moved on to better places.

No, they aren’t dead! They’ve literally moved somewhere else.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent and to laugh at search engines. The Thing One and Thing Two designations come from Dr. Suess’s The Cat in the Hat. I’m sure you know the story.

Thing One came to us a year and a half ago. “Came to us” sounds effortless. It wasn’t. Thing One is one of Sarah’s young cousins – 22 at the time of acquistion. Sarah had been in contact with some of her cousins in Texas. A group of them was homeless and she had been trying to help them out, not an easy thing to do given the distance and our minimal resources. He and Sarah had struck up a friendship via text and messenger. He was living in and around Spring, Texas. He was friendly and had spent some time caring for elderly relatives when he was younger. Sarah has medical issues that have made her eligible for in home caregiving. The agencies in charge of supporting caregivers advocate making family members caregivers whenever possible. Sarah had had one caregiver that she’d really liked and a number that hadn’t been good fits. Her favorite caregiver was needing to return to her home country for a while so Sarah got approval and offered the job to Thing One.

That was the easy part. One had lost his ID. He had no bank account. He had a cellphone for communication and not much else. You can’t get on a plane without an ID. You can’t get an ID without a mailing address. It took months of wrangling to get him an ID and onto a plane. It was his first plane ride. He’d never been out of Texas before. He arrived in Seattle in September, 2019.

He spent the first year sleeping on a couch in our library/studio. He got certified as a caregiver in Washington and got a regular salary. He cleaned and cooked and helped Sarah with physical therapy.

In August, 2020 our housemate moved out and we rearranged things so One got his own room. Less than a month later we acquired Thing Two.

Thing Two came to us from Spokane in Eastern Washington. She was 20 years old and she says she’d never been out of Spokane. She was part of group of friends that Thing One had bonded with online. One of her parents had just been arrested for assaulting her and Thing One thought she needed rescue. He convinced a neighbor friend to give him a ride to Spokane and bring her back. Yeah, we agreed to it. We believe in helping people when we can. She and Thing One shared his room.

There was drama. Drama with exes. Drama within their online groups. We didn’t see most of it. It happened online and over the phone with people in other states. They mostly kept to their room. Eventually things got heated enough that the Things needed to go. Thing Two went to Pennsylvania to live with friends on February 25th. Thing One went to live with loved ones in Texas on March 5th.

I had hoped that, in living with us, they would have the chances to build up their resources (mental and economic) so that when they moved on they would be better off than when they arrived. And they were better off. They went to places that are a better fit for them. We’re told to live by the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you would have them do to you”. That’s a good start, but one that doesn’t take the other into account. A more compassionate rule is: “Do to others how they would want done to them”. That one is harder because it requires communication and observation. It requires that I am able have honest, revealing conversations with the other person and that I am able to observe their actions and way of being in the world enough to be able antipicate their needs and wants. It requires time and patience. It requires communication skills that I’m still trying to develop.

The world that existed for me in my twenties doesn’t exist for the Things. Their home lives were very different  from mine. They have a neurodivergencies that I hadn’t really heard of at their age. It’s common to complain that “kids these days” spend too much time on their phones but cell phones didn’t exist when I was their age. Neither did the internet. I’d keep thinking about what I would be doing at their age in their situation and I’d have to keep reminding myself that my experiences couldn’t be used to fit their situation. Economics were different. I didn’t live through a pandemic.

So we gave them a place to stay and regroup. We made sure they got fed. We tried to pass on the knowledge and wisdom that we thought would help. The Things are intelligent. They are generally kind and honest. Thing One is creating a family with people his own age. Thing Two is living with people who were expecting her. I’ve lived long enough to guess the problems that they will face. I wanted them to be better prepared for the world before they left. But they are not me and they have their own experiences and mistakes to learn from. I wish them well.

I wish y’all well as well. I hope that your loved ones treat you as you wish to be treated and you can talk about it when they don’t. I hope you are able to do the reverse with them. See you next week!

Skook WIP #10

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Well hello! It’s a delight to see you again! The constant insanity of the modern civilization doesn’t seem to be infecting you at all!

Me? I’m okay. There are been some bumps in the road but whether those bumps are problems or high points is something I’m still figuring out. I’ll talk about those next week when they are more sorted out. This week, let’s just talk about some art. We’ll start, as usual, with some greeting card conversions, before (scans of ink, colored pencil and marker drawings) and after (digitally cleaned up and edited) versions. (The final designs are available in my Zazzle shop.)

Carving Your Face

In America, Halloween is the season for giving faces to oversized, hollowed out squashes. This is, apparently, an evolution of an old European traditon of carving faces into hollowed out turnips. A long series of films to the contrary, it is not a season for killing teenagers. Killing teenagers is frowned upon by all right thinking people. If you’ve been thinking about killing teenagers, please consider carving pumpkins instead.

Admittedly, killing teenagers will give you more cardiovascular exercise. However, most teenagers are actually more entertaining when they are alive than otherwise. Pumpkins are much more entertaining as objects to carve than teenagers. Plus, you can roast the seeds for a tasty snack!

There are No Weak Kittens

One day Sarah, my fabulous wife, described herself as feeling “weak as a kitten”. That comment inspired this card design. She has the original.

That original was done on a sheet of 8.5×11 folded in thirds. For the version that’s in my shop I had a lot of fun moving and reorienting the elements to fit a standard 5×7 greeting card design. Climb those curtains baby!

A Bit of a Breeze

There you are, walking with your umbrella, staring at your feet, thinking out what you’re going to have for lunch, trying to keep dry and suddenly …

The wind gives you a new perspective!

The world is suddenly a much bigger place. So many colors! So many birds! So much moss on people’s roofs!

Love Is …

Time is short. Spend as much of it on the things that bring you joy in the company of those you love.

A little peace and some cuddling makes the chaos of the rest of the day so much more bearable.

Hail to the King!

Photoshop is a massive program and my knowledge of it is actually pretty minimal. I know how to do a few things fairly well but the program can do so much more than I use it for. Lately I’ve been practicing making gifs of my illustration processes. I save my work in layers so making gifs is fairly easy. This process gif is of one of my King in Yellow portraits.

Influences – Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones is the one of the first film directors I remember identifying. I didn’t really know what he did, I just knew I liked his cartoons more than most of the other cartoons I saw on television. The short cartoons were funny. The smart characters outwitted the buffoons. The drawings were attractive.
As an adult I can identify why I liked Jones’ work more than other cartoon short directors. His character designs are a mix of angles and long curves. His heroes were the smart guys. They succeeded by being more clever than their adversaries. When the clever ones crashed it was usually from failing to think out the ramifications of their latest plan. (Hello Wile E. Coyote!)

I saw most of his work on television. There was the regular Bugs Bunny show on Saturday morning and during the week there were blocks of cartoons that played on a local station in the afternoons. There was The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Horton Hears a Who. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. He drew a comic strip that ran in our local paper for awhile. I loved the art but it didn’t really stand out from the other strips. Jones was a master at motion and timing in film. His strip looked good but didn’t have the space to play to his strengths.


My Moe and Detritus/Misspent Youths comics owe a lot to Jones. The heroes (mostly) succeeded by being smarter than the bad guys, by being (mostly) calm in the face of chaos. Hell, I owe a lot of my personality to Jones. I got bullied and picked on as a kid. He gave me examples of characters who faced bullies and survived (and thrived) by being more rational and much weirder than their foes.

Model Sheeting the Super-Wizard

Last week I posted concept sketches and a model sheet process gif of the Heap. This week I’m posting concept sketches and a process gif of Stardust the Super-Wizard. (Superwizard? Super Wizard?)

The first thing I realized as I started sketching Stardust is that, in the original comics, his expressions were pretty much the same from panel to panel. They ran the gamut from stern to slightly more stern. I spent all of two seconds considering making my version of Stardust just as stoic and blank faced as the original before deciding, “Nah. That’s no fun!”


The original Stardust seems to be a giant – taller than regular humans. I made him about ten feet tall, lanky and stretched out. He’s a space wizard. Maybe he grew up in zero gravity. Maybe he grew up on a planet with lighter gravity than Earth. Maybe his practice of superscience has transformed his body. I’ll figure it out later.

Expressions!

I updated Stardust’s outfit slightly, more for the fun of it than because there was anything wrong with the original. I don’t question the fashion choices of technosorcerors.

That guy in brown standing behind Stardust? His name is Bill. He’ll be in most of the model sheets for size comparison. He claims he’s 5’10” but, you know guys, he may be exaggerating somewhat. He is on the taller side of average. The average height for men in the USA is 5’9″. Since I’m an American that’s the height I’m conditioned to think of when I have to think “taller than” or “shorter than” average when designing characters.

What do I plan to do with Stardust? When I know I’ll tell you!

These Days …

“Bad art is forever.”

I have a friend who likes to quote that when talking about why he noodles on all his projects and has abandoned many altogether. I get that. I want to be proud of the work I produce. I want it to be the best it can be. I’m also plagued with more ideas and images and thoughts than I will ever get down on paper. I plan the work. I do the work. I fix glaring mistakes. I resist noodling. I put it out in the world and leave it to the world to judge whether it is good or bad.

I will always see the faults in my work. Most creative folks can tell you everything that sucks about their work before they can point out what’s good. But art, good and bad, exists in interaction between the work and the audience. Once I put art into the world it’s no longer completely mine. I retain the copyright and the trademark but the interpretation? The judgment of goodness, badness, coolness, greatness? That belongs to the audience. And that’s great! Not because the creator is a bad judge of their own work (although they often are, both rightly and wrongly) but because humans are social animals and art is part of the conversation we have with each other.

I got an email recently about Misspent Youths, a comic book series I created back in 1991.

Hi, there! I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been a fan of Misspent Youths for a while now–since they came out, actually, when I was a disgruntled and disaffected teenager working in a comic shop. The shop I worked at brought them in and I snatched them off the shelf eagerly whenever they arrived, but for whatever reason (it might have involved the store eventually going under; it’s kind of hard to remember) I never got to read Issue #5. Flash forward three decades and my original copies have long since vanished into the aether and I’m in lockdown halfway across the continent from my hometown. Regardless, I got a hankering to read Misspent Youths again and found a set on eBay for a reasonable amount, so I ponied up my money and waited. Well, they arrived today and I couldn’t be more pleased. I’ve read the first issue again so far and it’s just as great as I’d remembered it (and captured much of the flavour from my hometown’s punk scene in the ’90s (minus the Pile and the cop homicide (though we sometimes wished it were otherwise)). Interesting characters, fun dialogue, compelling story–just great  all around. In any case, I just wanted to shoot you a quick line to let you know that those comics you put out all that time ago imprinted on and have stuck with someone since they came out, and I’m thrilled to finally be able to read the entire series through for the first time. Thank you very much for the quality read.

I thanked the author, Chris Eng, for writing, saying –

Your email made my day. I’m delighted that, thirty years later, someone would track down issues of Misspent Youths. I hope issue five was a good read!

He replied:
Issue five was, weirdly, really touching. I mean, it did bring back the shitty kitchen job I had in my teens (where I put up with the first of many exploitative managers but thankfully not a hostage situation), but the issue in general was a nice coda on the (too) brief tales of Detritus and Moe (and all of the other assorted and endearing members of the cast of characters). The series in general summed up my time in my hometown’s punk scene: all of us living as best as we could and looking out for each other while scraping bottom. Good times all round. (Also, can I just say that I would have loved to have seen Detritus and Moe in Bugtown? That would have been a hell of a story. I’m imagining the bizarre and intense meeting between Detritus and Hiroshima. Or the Pile jamming with the Bulldaggers.)

His letter did more than make my day, it made my week. I loved doing Misspent Youths. I loved the characters. Doing that book was fun and exhausting and satisfying and … unprofitable. The publisher didn’t make any money. I certainly didn’t make any money. I did draw 160 pages of comics in about a year while working a part-time job. Brave New Words (the publishing company – they also put out the first four issues of Oz Squad) put out more issues of Misspent Youths than any other series they printed. Cancelling the series was a mutual decision – the guy behind Brave New Words was reassessing his business plan and I wanted a break to improve my art skills. I’d planned to pick the series up again, to publish it myself.

Other things happened instead. My drawing skills did improve. I drew the Misspent Youths characters in some calendars that got printed at Kinkos and sold to friends. I got married. I moved from Santa Rosa, California to Seattle, Washington. My wife and I tried running a publishing company and put out few anthology magazines. I worked in a couple bookstores and as an office manager and now as mail carrier. In the thirty years since Misspent Youths I’ve illustrated/collaborated on a lot of projects (comics, RPGs, novels) that haven’t gotten finished. I’ve enjoyed that work. I got paid for most of it. I’ve improved my skills in the process. But I’ll never get any fan letters complimenting or complaining to me about that work. It sits, unfinished, in my files.

Bad art in the world is more fun than great art in a drawer. I’m not saying that Misspent Youths was bad. Not at all. I put my heart and soul into it. It was the best work I could do at the time. And it’s out in the world. Copies can be found on ebay and on comics specialty sites. If the internet crashed all the art on my websites would be unavailable but someone could still read an issue of Misspent Youths.

I’m a different person than I was when I did that book. The characters still keep me company but they’re older and wiser and (mostly) more settled. They wave to me from the back of my imagination. I love the idea of drawing comics but, so far, working as a mail carrier doesn’t leave me the time and mental energy necessary to do an ongoing series. Drawing is relatively easy. Writing takes more concentration than it used to.

So what’s my point?

Number One –
A big thank you to Chris Eng for writing! Chris has finished some projects of his own. He has a couple of novels available through Amazon: Molotov Hearts and ZeroWave. He didn’t ask me to include those links.

Number Two –
That project you’re working on? Finish it. Put it out into the world. Art is ephemeral. Do the best you can and let it go. What was brilliant once is often considered terrible by a new audience. What was obscure and forgotten originally can find new fans. But it needs to be available.

Yes, I’m talking to myself as much as to y’all.

Back to work. See you next week!

Skook WIP #9

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Welcome to the ninth issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter. You are a fabulous person and very good looking. Give yourself a gold star!

Greeting Card Conversions

In which I present a sampling of before (scans of the original ink and colored pencil/art marker drawings) and after (adjusted in Photoshop) greeting card designs. The final designs are available at my Zazzle store.

Probably Not Bob

In the January 15th issue of this newsletter I posted a card design featuring a beer drinking, cigarette smoking reptile. One of my reader’s asked if it was a portrait of Bob the Lizard. My response was, “Who?” The reader sent me an image of Bob saying that he was a character in the Grimjack comics published in the Eighties and Nineties. I read a good chunk of those Grimjack comics but I don’t remember much about them.

My beer drinking, cigarette smoking lizard is Aunt Hortense. She made her first appearance in The Highly Unlikely Adventures of Moe and Detritus minicomic, issue 5. She’s the parental figure of a bunch of dimension hopping lizards. I published that minicomic in 1989. I don’t know when Bob the Lizard started showing up in Grimjack comics but the first issue of that series was pubished in 1983. Did Bob influence my creation of Aunt Hortense?

I don’t remember. What I do remember is that, sometime in the mid-Eighties, a good friend of mine got tattoos of some drawings I had done. One of those drawings was the silohuette of a lizard. I remember thinking, “I should draw more lizards!” From that seed came Aunt Hortense, Seth, Zerro, Lamallia, Missi and Willy. I first drew them as basically identical but, over the years, they evolved distinct appearances. Aunt Hortense got craggy and squarish. In the Nineties I featured the lizards in a series of xeroxed calendars and some issues of GLYPH magazine.

In recent years I’ve only drawn Hortense a few times. Once was the previous greeting card design. More recently was this portrait done for my tattoo sporting friend for her birthday.   

I didn’t do much to update the image for a greeting card. Hortense is not someone you mess with.

Good Buddies

This image is blatantly inspired by the Chuck Jones directed cartoon Feed the Kitty. I saw it as a kid on one of those afternoon cartoon shows and it stuck with me.

We all need friends and having friends who are very different from us is good for our character.

A Smile and a Dance

I have no idea what’s going on in this illustration. He’s happy so I’m happy when I look at him. That’s good enough for me.

Let the joy shine!

A Little Monster

Inside every big monster is a little monster that just wants a hug. And a cookie.

Giving this critter a cookie and a hug will not only bring you joy, it will keep you from feeling those claws and teeth. It is a monster after all.

Spreading the Heap Around

I did this drawing of the Heap as one of my daily sketches back in 2019. It’s one of my favorite pieces from that project so it seemed like it would look good on a mug.

To better fit a mug I extended the image, colored the figures and redid the background. Here’s a process gif showing the main stages.

I usually imagine there’s story behind my illustrations. The Heap and this girl are grooving at a night club. Why?

I don’t know. I often always know the story. I have to think about it.

The Heap as a DJ? As an MC? Maybe this image is part of an album cover?

Okay then.

And if it works as an album cover, why not on a t-shirt?

Okay then.


Influences – J.C. Leyendecker

It’s hard to discuss J.C. Leyendecker separate from Norman Rockwell. Rockwell is now the more famous of the two illustrators but Leyendecker came first. Rockwell idolized Leyendecker and his early style is strongly modeled on Leyendecker’s. I was glad to read that the two artists did become friends.

I love Leyendecker’s art for its precision. It’s deceptively simple. It’s all sharp angles and clean lines, geometry and design. All his characters, even the (rare) down and outers, have a sparkle to them. No grime.

Oddly, it was easier to find good images of Leyendecker’s work online than Rockwell’s. The link in my first paragraph will take you to a ten part blog series that features a wealth of his paintings. I only grabbed a few for flavor. The man did thousands of paintings – magazine and book covers and clothing advertisements.


It occurs to me that Leyendecker’s idealized men and women could have been models for the original comic book superheroes. The artists of early comics would have known his work. Today, he is a nostalgic footnote. In the late thirties and early forties, he was famous. It would have been hard not to think about Leyendecker’s work when you wanted to depict a heroic figure.

Character Concept Sketches and Model Sheets – The Heap

The Heap. The Face. Octobriana. Fantomah. Stardust. You’ll find depictions of all these characters in my shops. They are all comic characters who have escaped into the public domain. They are actually just a few of the comic characters who (mostly) debuted in the early days of the American comic book industry who are now available for anyone to use. So why am I  interested in this bunch?

Honestly, it feels like they found me. I didn’t go looking for public domain comic book characters to illustrate. I’ve participated in online remake/remodel challenges using other public domain characters and none of them stuck in my imagination.
Each character has a different appeal.

Stardust is a space wizard. His sorcery is of the “Technology so advanced as to seem like magic” variety.

Fantomah is a jungle vengence goddess.

The Face is … so basic he’s fun. He’s a guy who puts on a scary mask to fight crime. No superpowers. No tragic backstory.

Octobriana is a kick ass revolutionary.

The Heap is the original comic book swamp monster.

Until now, all my illustrations of these characters have been one-off images. I hadn’t considered drawing any of these folks on a reoccurring basis. Because of that they often look significantly different from version to version. I’m now past the “just get started” phase of creating merchandise in my shops and I’m moving on to the “create a consistent brand” stage.

That has meant doing what would have been preliminary sketches. These are to try out different versions of a character to see what looks good. I figured I’d start with the Heap. I’ve drawn him quite a few times over the years and his design is pretty simple. He’s basically a humanoid haystack with a sort of a carrot nose. In most of my illustrations I’ve given him some sort of eye. The Heap was drawn by a number of different artists during his original comic book run but most of them just gave him shadows where his eyes might have been. Having eyes means there’s more of a chance of having expressions so I decided to keep them. Most of my earlier versions have had some sort of roots and fungus on them. That gives a little variety to his design.

The Heap is a compost pile that’s come to life. It grew up around the body of a WW! pilot who had crashed his plane in a Polish swamp. It shambles about the world fighting monsters and human evil doers. 
Once I’d gotten a feel for the details of the character I set about creating a model sheet. I plan to do this with all the characters I will be using. Model sheets are usually created when a character is going to drawn by different artists in a variety of media (animation, comics, toys, breakfast cereal, whatever). It gives the creative team a base to work from. I’ve done model sheets for myself when I’ve been designing characters for comics and graphic novels. Most model sheets feature a character in a series of standing positions – front view, side view, back view. Most of my model sheets will have character in motion. It’s more fun to draw.

I basically stuck to my Big Swamp Boogie version of the Heap. I liked it when I drew it in 2019 so why not?

I’m mostly going to be showing my process work as gifs. I like watching an image as it evolves but, if you’d rather (or would rather also) see the different stages as separate images, just let me know.

These Days …

I like deadlines. But only deadlines that I’ve either given myself or negotiated with a client. I like them because they help me to structure how to manage a project. If something is due in two weeks I know I should be finishing at least 1/14th of it every day. I therefore know the minimum of work I need to complete. I also know that life happens and I may not be able to do 1/14th of the project every day so I aim to get 1/7 of the work done each day. That does not mean I push myself to do twice as much work as possible every day. I hate rush jobs. It means I’ve planned (or agreed to) a schedule that allows me to do good work at a comfortable pace in the time I have available outside of my USPS job and my responsibilities at home.

Last year’s newsletter was an exercise in getting myself to write on a regular basis. The art I posted was primarily from past projects. I published an issue a week. That was my goal and I met it. Yay me! My one frustration was that I wanted folks to subscribe and only a couple of people did so. Apparently the set up of my website made the subscription link difficult to find. I subscribe to a couple dozen newsletters. I don’t read every issue but having them show up in my inbox reminds me that they exist. So for 2021 I decided to use an email newsletter service to see if that would make it easier for readers to sign up. A number of the newsletters I read are hosted by tinyletter.com. Most of the rest are hosted by substack.com. Substack allows writers to charge for subscriptions. Tinyletter does not. I don’t plan to charge for subscriptions so I chose tinyletter.

Because I like being ahead of a deadline I started setting up emails. At the moment I’ve got images prepped (and some writing about those images) for newsletters into April. The first seven newsletters went out with no problem. You folks subscribed. Thank you!

Last week I hit a snag. I pressed send on issue 8, went to have a cup of coffee and came back to this message –

“Your account has been flagged by our abuse prevention system. Our team reviews all accounts for Compliance with our Terms of Use. If your letter has not been sent after 12 hours, please reach out to our Support team with the username for your account.”

Issue 8 was stuck in limbo and, most annoyingly, I didn’t know why. Was it the Rockwell images? Was it the joke about the red canid with the trumpet? Did I have too many links? I read the Terms of Use. I checked FAQs. I missed my Friday posting deadline. Phooey. After 13 hours the newsletter hadn’t sent so I sent tinyletter an email asking for help. Friday became Saturday became Sunday. I

The really embarassing thing is that, having concentrated on putting together this newsletter for the last few weeks, I’d kind of forgotten that I still had a website. Having remembered I recreated the issue as a blogpost and sent out links via tinyletter as a test to see if it was just my 8th issue that was blocked or my whole account. Those links went.

On Monday morning I got a response from Stanley at tinyletter –

“Hi there,

Thank you for reaching out about your TinyLetter account. We’ll be glad to help offer some clarification here. 

Taking look at the account, it appears that our automated prevention system, Omnivore, detected content, keywords, or activity that can indicate the possibility of harmful information being sent through our service.

Upon review, however, we can see that the letter is fine and has been moved back to drafts where it can be resent. 

We appreciate your patience during our human review. As the specific keywords and content that Omnivore detects are constantly changing, we’re unable to provide a full list of all potential triggers, however if you run into any issues in the future, please reach out and we’ll be happy to assist. 

You can read more about our detection practices here:
http://mailchimp.com/omnivore/

Please let us know if you have any questions. We’re here to help. “

I responded, jokingly asking if it was my joke about the horny fox. Stanley then answered with –

“Hi David,

Thanks for the reply. For proprietary reasons I wouldn’t be able to divulge exactly what set off our system, but rest assured we’ve made adjustments to prevent it from stopping letters in the future 🙂

Let us know if you have any questions. Take care :)”

I sent out issue #8 on Monday afternoon. If you haven’t read it yet it’s available in both the tinyletter archives and my website. Hopefully you’re reading this issue on Friday morning in your email as planned. If not, check my website on Saturday. I’ll be reposting it there.

Hopefully you are also doing well and only a little stir crazy. I get outside as part of my job and I’m stir crazy. Hopefully you’re managing better than I.am. See you next week!

​

Skook WIP #8

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Welcome to the eighth issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter. Thank you for reading! Or at least looking at the pictures.

Greeting Card Conversions

As usual, we’ll look at a few before (ink and marker/colored pencil drawing) and after (Photoshop edited) greeting card designs. The final versions are all available in my Zazzle store.

Out of the Depths

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is my favorite of the Universal Monsters. Hanging out in the sea with fish seems like a cool way to live. I’m pretty sure I saw Revenge of the Creature before I saw the original movie. Of course I did a cartoon bunny version of the character!

All the Creature wanted was companionship. It was the last of its kind. Sure, it killed a few people but a lot of those people had it coming. If they’d left it alone it wouldn’t have gotten so aggro.

Hmmm. Companionship. Solitude. The eternal conflict of the sensitive soul.

Cuteness and Cuddles

Kermit claims that it’s not easy being green. It seems more likely that it’s just not easy being Kermit. A lot of my favoite things are green.

This critter has no problem being green. She’s got her ragdoll for company and a good set of specs to see the world in all its wonderful detail.

 

A Little Bit Shy

I mentioned last issue that I like dragons but I don’t often draw them because there are already a lot of great depictions of dragons out there. Still, once in a while, a dragon must be drawn. Even shy, self effacing dragons can make demands.

Yes, shy dragon. We see you. You’re a handsome critter. Please don’t set the furniture on fire.

Fox Music

I will not make a joke about a horny fox.
I will not make a joke about a horny fox.
I will not …

Ooops.

Shhhh. Don’t interrupt this solo.

Drink This

Greeting cards are momentary expressions. A mug is a necessity. One of the best surprises of my daily sketch project in 2019 is how many of those sketches were good drawings. And good bases for mug designs. Here are a couple of repurposed illustrations of two Fletcher Hanks’ most famous characters.

Stardust Superwizardry

Stardust is a superwizard. He uses highly advanced technology to punish evildoers.

When need arises he can multiply himself for extra wizardry. And to show off.

Fantomah Will Get You

Fantomah hates you. Fantomah hates just about everyone. Fantomah is not a people person.

If you value your safe human existence you will stay out of Fantomah’s jungles.

Influences – Norman Rockwell

I chose the following three Saturday Evening Post cover illustrations to represent my love of Norman Rockwell’s work because they are great comic strips. It’s fun to imagine that in some alternate world, Rockwell drew a Sunday comic. Or produced graphic novels.

Rockwell was prolific. Over 300 paintings for the Post. Over 4000 published paintings in his lifetime. Book covers. Interior illustrations. Movie posters. I love the detail and expression in his work. Every person depicted is unique. Every object seems to have a history. His images are moments captured, snapshots of an ongoing story.

Every time I look at his work I’m inspired to be a better artist, to pay more attention. To think about the story an illustration is encapsulating.

These Days …

I got lucky. I had a week off from USPS when Seattle got hit with a heavy snowfall. Snow was predicted at the end of that week so we got as many chores and errands out of the way as possible early in the week. We had light rain and clear days. It didn’t seem like snow was acoming.

We went to bed Friday night with a cloudy sky but that’s typical for Seattle. We had canceled plans to have a friend stay overnight because we were worried we wouldn’t be able to give her a ride home in the morning. It looked that might have been too much caution. We woke up with a few inches of snow on the ground and more falling. Between Friday night and Sunday afternoon we got 11 inches. On Sunday evening it started to rain. By Monday afternoon the roads were as safe to drive as they ever are.

Tuesday I went back to work. The mail for my route had not been delivered for three days. Saturday there had been too much snow and only the regulars delivered parts of their own routes. The mail for my route got cased up and left. Sunday was a regular day off. Monday was Presidents’s Day. There were Amazon parcel deliveries both days but I’m guessing they only concentrated what they knew they could get out. I started work at 6 am. I had a tub of unsorted mail left by carriers who didn’t know my route. I did a parcel run before I started sorting my route and I still ended up with a truck overflowing with parcels. (Literally. For the first two hours parcels would fall out of the back of the truck every time I opened the back.) Once it got dark I had to slow down. I put in a 15 hour day. It would have been longer but the night supervisor called me back to the station. I had to bring back two swings worth of mail.

I had spent my week off hanging out with Sarah, doing a lot of art and watching some good series via streaming. (No cable. We haven’t had cable in a decade.) I knew that my route would be a mess. I knew that mail would be heavy. I had gotten some rest. The sun came out and the day was relatively warm. So those 15 hours had some annoying parts but I did enjoy a lot of the day. I feel satisfied making chaos into order and getting mail and parcels to their proper places.

It didn’t hurt that I had Wednesday off. My body hurt but I got a day to recover. I got new tires installed at Costco. I have one of my old tires put in the trunk so I finally have a spare. During the last big snow (in 2018) I had run through a hidden pothole and shredded a tire. I discovered that my car didn’t come equipped with a spare in the trunk. Yes I should have checked sooner but since all my other cars had had them I just assumed that spares were standard. I am clearly not a car guy. Further evidence – my “new” spare is just a tire. It’s not a wheel, ready to just be popped on if needed. I had expected a wheel despite clearly not having an extra rim hanging around. Silly me. But it’s better than the nothing I had before.

My big sister came by with another “Corona Cooler” of her wonderful cooking. Puerto Rican pork ribs and red beans. Gluten free corn muffins. Lentil sausage soup. Gluten free Mexican chocolate upside down banana cake. She often exchanges the new cooler with the previous one after we’ve gone to bed but this time the sun was still up. We got to chat and give each other air hugs.

Thursday was a much shorter, easier day than Tuesday. Rain. Lots of parcels too big to carry in my satchel and therefore requiring extra trips. Still easier and shorter.

And now it’s Friday. Other parts of the country are getting a snowpocalypse that makes our weekend look like a tea party. I’m happy to complain about my week but I know it’s minor compared to the mess in Texas. If you’re in the middle of it I hope you are safe and warm. If you’re somewhere else I hope you’re safe and warm as well. Everyone should be safe and warm.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. See you next Friday!

Skook WIP #7

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Welcome to the seventh issue of the Skook Works In Progress newsletter in which I show off some art and write a lot of words. Thank you for joining me. The finished version of each image is available in some form at either my Zazzle or my Redbubble store.

Card Conversions

I’ve spent a few weeks converting scans of hand drawn greeting card illustrations into more print friendly images. The originals were done with primarily with black ink and art markers or colored pencils. The print versions have been been cleaned up and had color added using Photoshop.

Little Red Dragon

I love dragons. I haven’t drawn that many of them because lots of other artists who also love dragons so there are plenty of beautiful pictures of dragons already out in the world. But once in a while it’s fun to add my own depictions to the horde. 

Clearly this is a friendly dragon. It’s the sort of critter that hordes buttons instead of gold. 

Bunny Frankenstein Monster

This fellow is part of my series of classic monsters recast as cartoon bunnies. Because bunnies are terrifying.

I find it amusing that the Universal version of the monster is often depicted as green. He wasn’t intended to be. Charles Pierce, the designer of the creature’s appearance used green make-up because it looked better as grey when filmed in black and white. The original Universal Frankenstein films were all filmed in black and white but color publicitiy photos of the green make-up led the general public to believe that creature was supposed to be green.

An Ice Scream Dream

While I was doing bunny versions of classic monsters it seemed like a good idea to also do bunny versions of modern horror icons.

Three scoops!

Smile!

This critter is one of my favorite drawings. It’s so damned happy.

We all need some happy!

The Beast Within

Sweet and innocent outside. Big jerk inside. Your typical cat.

The original art was done as one of my daily art posts in 2019. I’ve now updated it as a design for a mug. 
Coloring Fluffy

I haven’t managed to do new work for my Redbubble store yet this year. When I do I’ll be sure to make gifs of the process. I’ve now made enough of them I can do it without having to google the process every time. Until I can do (and show off) that new work, here’s a gif of Fluffy putting on his Easter colors. 
Inspirations – Fletcher Hanks

Hmmm. Fletcher Hanks is both inspiration and … anti-inspiration to me. I’d read I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets, the first collection of his work, a few years ago. That got me sketching versions of Stardust and Fantomah. Since I’ve started to create merchandise featuring the characters I felt compelled to do a reread of the book. I discovered that there’s now a complete collection of his comics – Turn Loose Our Death Rays and Kill Them All. I was tempted to buy the book. I mean, I’d need it for reference, right?

Fortunately my skinflint side prevailed and I checked it out of the library instead.

Paul Karasik is the book’s editor. He loves Hanks’ work. This interview gives a good explanation why. His reasons make sense to me. Hanks was working at a time when the comic book industry and the superhero genre was being invented. He worked solo when comics were mostly being done assembly line. He had a big weird imagination. I admire that. I understand being a fan of something because it’s a weird seminal work.  
Now that I’ve seen all of it I’m also quite happy to not own any of his work. Besides Stardust and Fantomah, Hanks created the characters of Big Red McLane (a lumberjack) and Space Smith/Whirlwind Carter/Buzz Crandall (same guy, same girlfriend, different names – a riff on Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon ) and some one shot characters. 300 plus pages of Hanks is too much Hanks for me. Intellectually I get the raw appeal. He was one of the pioneers of early comic books. He was doing superheroes before the genre had been codified.
Unfortunately decades of comic reading – superhero, underground, manga, bande dessinee, etc – as well as drawing my own comics means that I have a hard time appreciating his comics as more than artifacts. Fantomah and Stardust are his stand out characters. They are more fascinating to me for their potential than for most of what Hanks did with them. They are in the public domain which means anyone can use them in art and stories. Other folks already have. That potential wakes my imagination. What could one do with a space wizard and a jungle vengence goddess?

These Days … 

So far, so good.

When I’m out delivering mail I’m often asked how I’m doing and that’s my answer. I wear my mask. I get my job done. I come home and do work that wakes me up.

Writing this newsletter and having my online shops has given me a focus that, until recently, I didn’t realize I was missing. I’ve enjoyed doing commissions the last few years. I’m proud of the work I’ve done. In between the commissioned work I did a lot of one off illustrations and posted them to my website. I did those for fun, for practice, to fill my time. Between commissions and one offs I kept pretty busy but everything I did was short term. If it was a commission, it had a deadline. If it was a one off it needed to be a small project because I was doing it around the commissions that had deadlines.

I finished my last commission in early autumn last year. With nothing on my plate I looked for something else to do. I considered setting up a Patreon account but I didn’t feel comfortable asking folks to send me money to just indulge my whims. If I was going to ask for support and subscriptions I wanted to be sure that I was providing something predictable. I was also interested in creating things that were real and physical, not just more digital ephemera.

And then I remembered that print on demand online stores existed. When something seems like a good idea I tend to dive in first and figure out what I’m doing as I go along. I signed up for a Zazzle store. I made some merchandise. I did some research and decided that Redbubble was a better platform for some of my work than Zazzle so I set up a store there too. Suddenly I had places to put all those one off illustrations I’d been doing between commissions.

As of this writing I have 174 products on Zazzle and 77 designs on Redbubble.Yes, none of this merchandise actually exists until someone orders it. That’s part of the fun. I’m creating potential products. I’m not putting up images that I think will sell. I don’t know what image will catch someone’s fancy. I’m delighted when someone orders something unexpected.

I’m now in the process of creating new art for my stores.I’m thinking more of specific designs. A cup design is not a greeting card design. What works on a t-shirt probably won’t fit on a mask. As I think of specific designs I’m also thinking of consistency and style and branding. Ew. Branding.

I don’t plan to apply a hard style to future work. I’m not going just do one type of image because I think it will be popular. I’m a terrible capitalist. I’m doing this for my own amusement as much as to sell things. Hell, I’m making art so I have something to write a newsletter about. By publishing this newsletter every Friday I’m prompting myself to make art to put in the shops. One thing leads to another and another and back.

The idea of branding comes up because I know I like consistency in the work of others so, probably, others would like consistency from me. I’ve got a number of characters I’m planning to use regularly. I’m creating model sheets of them so I can keep them recognizeable, consistent, from image to image. I’ll post those and other process sketches in the upcoming weeks. More art!

I’m waking up earlier so I have more time to work on the art, the shops, this newsletter before I head to USPS. I put in a little more time before I go to bed. (Big thanks to my wife for pointing me at my drawing board on those days when I think I just want to sit and stare into space.) Focus is … oddly relaxing. Instead of a lot of little projects I now have one (somewhat vaguely defined) project. It’s an evolving project. A work in progess. Heh.

Thank you for your help. You subscribed to this newsletter so I have to show up with something for you every Friday. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think would enjoy it. I welcome any comments or suggestions. Hit reply and start typing.

I hope your week has gone well. I hope you have the focus you want and projects that give you purpose. See you next week!

Skook WIP #6

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We’ve made it six weeks into 2021! Congratulations to us! It’s Friday and time for another issue of the Skook Works In Progress newsletter i.e. this email. Here. Look at the pictures. Read the words. Form an opinion about something and send me an email.

You don’t have to do that part. I already appreciate that you’re spending some of your precious moments here. Thank you!

​Card Design Upgrades

Here is the latest set of before and after greeting card illustrations. The originals are scans of hand drawn illustrations. The afters are available in my Zazzle shop.

Mamas Don’t Let Your Puppies Grow Up to Be Cowhounds

He’s a good boy. A very good boy! He won’t fetch your slippers but he will round up the herd.

He’ll also look darned good doing it. He won’t get dusty or mudsplattered and he’ll always have a smile.

Dancing ThunderI have a friend who is very fond of rhinos. This happy critter was done as a commission for her. Below is my scan of the original. 
And below this is the modified version. What kind of music would inspire a rhino to dance?More Tea?This illustration was originally done as a thank you for a friend.

It’s the image I’ve made the least adjustments to. I increased the contrast so that the blacks are more prominent and the whites are brighter. I also replaced my original signature with my signature chop.

Feeding the Birds

All my illustrations are moments captured from a story. I don’t always know what the story is. I’m often simply trying to capture an image I’ve seen in my mind’s eye. If asked I know I could find a story to fit the illustration. I could find many. I’ve read a lot of horror stories and seen a lot of Sylvester and Tweety cartoons so if asked I might go to those sources for inspiration. That would be my mind following well worn grooves. I know that’s not the story here. I had friendly thoughts when I started drawing. 
To me, the additional colors suggest that friendlier story. 
Fantomah Needs Coffee

I did this black and white drawing of Fantomah in 2019. I like the drawing and thought it would look good on a mug. 
I made some adjustments – extending the illustration, changing the background and adding color – to make the design work better on the new “canvas”. Below is my process gif. 
Influences — Bernie Wrightson

I loved monsters as a kid. Some things don’t change. I started reading comics in the early Seventies. At the time the Comics Code had started to loosen up and comics featuring supernatural monsters – werewolves, vampires and the like – started being published. My allowance was small so, to begin with, I couldn’t buy any of these new horror comics but I did skim through them on the stands. I didn’t have friends who read comics but I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon reading the comics of the son of a friend of my mom’s. This comic was among the books. I mostly remember having read it. The cover stuck in my memory more than the story it is depicting.

Apparently that issue sold well enough and that story (Swamp Thing) got enough positive responses that DC Comics decided to launch a series based on the character. My budget didn’t let me buy the comic but I did check out each issue when I saw it on the comics rack.

Time passed. My allowance got a little bigger. I finally decided to start collecting Swamp Thing with issue 24. It was the final issue of that version of the series. It was cancelled after that. 
I was able to catch up with the whole series when we discovered Perelandra, a comic book shop. By then my brother and I both had paper routes and, for us, significant spending money. Swamp Thing issues 11-23 were drawn by Nestor Redondo. Redondo’s art was good but it was the art of the first ten issues that really hit me. The illustrator for those issues (and the original short story in House of Secrets) was Bernie Wrightson. I’d seen a lot of comic book art that I liked and thought was well done. Wrightson was one of the first artists I saw who both drew the way I wanted to and in a way I thought I eventually could.

Besides Swamp Thing I also found Wrightson’s work in the Warren black and white horror magazines. His style was a wonderful combination of the cartoonish and the grotesque. He drew handsome men, beautiful women and hideous monsters in way that had them all seem to exist in the same world.

Outside of comics Wrightson is probably best known for his illustrated version of Frankenstein first published in 1983. His work in the book is insanely detailed. His depiction of the creature is one of my favorites. 
I met Wrightson once in 2007 when he was a guest at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. I had brought a copy of the first edition of his illustrated Frankenstein with me in the hopes of getting him to sign it. He looked at the book like seeing an old friend.

These Days …

At the end of each day I read a few pages from a book to Sarah. The last few years I’ve mostly read mysteries. We’ve got a stable of authors that we rotate through as their latest novel becomes available. We have two Sherlock Holmes adjacent series that are favorites – The Mycroft Holmes books by Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Anna Waterhouse and the Mary Russell books by Laurie R. King. The Abdul Jabbar/Waterhouse stories are prequels to Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories and focus on the adventures of Sherlock’s older brother. The Mary Russell books are sequels that feature the adventures of a young woman who becomes Sherlock’s partner and, later, wife. There’s a forty to fifty year gap between the events of each series. We finished the most recent Mycroft Holmes book, The Empty Birdcage, a few weeks ago. We’re currently reading Laurie King’s not quite latest: Rivera Gold. Surprise, surprise! Zedzed is major character in both books.

Who?

“Basil” Vasily Zaharoff was a Greek arms dealer and general no-goodnik who lived from 1849 to 1936. He was known as Zedzed to his friends. I don’t remember having heard of him before meeting him in these novels. Apparently he’s the originator of that evil supervillain plan where you start a war so you can sell weapons to both sides. (More Sherlock Holmesian connections – that was Moriarty’s plan in both the movies A Game of Shadows and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.) When he appeared in Birdcage I had assumed that he was a fictional character. Hs appearance in Rivera meant that he was either a real person or the authors had collaborated on creating a villain. The latter seemed unlikely so I looked him up.

The Mary Russell books are full of meetings between the detectives and real historical people. It appears that Mycroft Holmes books will follow that pattern as well. I may want to do research on some of the background characters to see how “real” they are. There are many Sherlock Holmes sequel series that feature the character meeting prominent historical figures. There are also quite a few stories that feature Holmes meeting other (less) famous fictional detectives or dealing monsters from popular horror fiction. The character of Holmes has been in the public domain for years and he gets a lot of work because of that. This article at The Guardian goes into greater detail about what he’s up to and who is writing about him.

I’m not actually a fan of Sherlock Holmes. I think he’s a great character. I’m happy to try new movies or television series that feature him but I don’t really seek him out. I read most of Doyle’s short stories when I was a kid. I enjoyed most of them well enough. Holmes solves a few of the mysteries with deductions or facts that, even as a kid, I knew to be wrong. Either Doyle hadn’t done his research properly or new facts had been discovered since he wrote the stories. I’m generally forgiving of old stories having outdated information but the stories themselves didn’t make me feel like I had to read everything Holmes. Hound of the Baskervilles is the only one of the original novels that I read.

Doyle famously got tired of writing the Holmes series and tried to kill the character off. It’s not surprising. It’s hard work writing about someone who is smarter than you are. I don’t think Doyle was stupid but he did have a number of beliefs that Holmes would have thought illogical. It’s telling that Professor Challenger, Doyle’s attempt at another series character, is far more id than superego.

Sarah is a fan of Sherlock Holmes in that the character exists at the center of a Venn diagram featuring other things she’s a fan of – English costume dramas and murder mysteries. She’s watched the Jeremy Brett series more than once and we’ve caught most of the new films and series that have come out in the last 20 years. She isn’t so inspired that she’s hunted down other written versions besides the King or the Abdul-Jabbar/Waterhouse series. We started the King series in large part because we knew it featured a smart female detective working with Holmes. She started the Abdul-Jabbar/Waterhouse books because she’d liked enough of Jabbar’s nonfiction that she wanted to try his try at fiction.

Zedzed meets with Mycroft briefly in Birdcage. We’re a third of the way through Riviera and he has only been spoken about. I expect he’ll have a more prominent presence as the novel continues.

Outside of books, real life continues. I was disappointed to discover that getting a new President doesn’t automatically result in a new Postmaster General or Postal Board of Directors. Unless the current batch resigns or the new President fires them they’ll be on the job for another three years. Or more.

Last week I sent in my vote on the new contract between the union and USPS. We’ve been working without a contract since 2019. If this one gets ratified it will mean a little back pay and more certainty of employment for a few years.

Parcel volumes are low so I’m working less overtime. Smaller paychecks but more time to work on art.

Thank you for reading! I hope your life is pleasantly boring. If it is exciting I hope it’s because you’ve chosen that state. See you next Friday!

Skook WIP #5

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Welcome to the latest issue of the Skook Works In Progress newsletter. Thank you for looking at the pictures. If you also read the words, thank you again! I’ve been making good progress converting the scans of hand drawn cards into printable designs. Some of that is because mail volumes have dropped since Christmas giving me a little more time at home in the evenings. Some of that is my current tendency to wake up before my alarms so I have a little time after the coffee kicks in and before I have to start getting ready for work. Everything I’ve been worked on so far in 2021 is in my Zazzle shop.

Card Conversions

If you’ve read previous issues you know I am upgrading a series of hand drawn cards into slicker, hopefully more marketable designs. Here’s this week’s set of befores and afters.

Bunny Dracula

As I was thinking of new designs I thought it would be fun to do a series of cartoon critter creatures – silly versions of classic monsters. My first design was a cartoon bat version of Dracula. I showed that image a couple of weeks ago. I then thought it would be more fun to do all the monsters as bunnies. Below is the original bunny version of Dracula.

And here is the final version –


Bunny Mummy

Of all the “classic” monsters, the Mummy is my least favorite. The original Mummy movie (and its remake) are a lot of fun but they don’t really feature the shambling bandage zombie that most of us picture when we think of “the Mummy”. Oddly, this bunny mummy card illustration is one of my favorite bunny monster designs. He looks so much happier than the human mummy monsters.All the “classic” bunny monsters come bearing flowers. They don’t want to kill you. Probably. 
Hase Nosferatu

Dracula has acquired a reputation as being a sexy fellow. That’s fine. I don’t think he comes across as sexy in the original novel but that’s me. I’d seen versions of Dracula in picture books when I was a kid but my first encounters with “real” vampires was in Montague Summers’ book. I read that in grade school. Those vampires were a long way from being sexy. The “hideous bloodsucking corpse” is what I think of when I think of vampires. So I have a fondness for Nosferatu. Any line up of bunny monsters had to include a bunny Nosferatu. 
I tweeked the colors a bit for the revised version. Red seemed more in keeping with a vampire than violet. 
A Little Dino

I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I could tell you the names of most of the dinosaurs that had been discovered by the early Seventies. Between then and now the number of known species and our understanding of them has expanded beyond what I can pay attention to. When I was a kid, we were told that dinosaurs were dumb, slow moving lizards who became extinct because they just couldn’t hack it in a rapidly changing environment. Now we see them as the relatives and ancestors of birds who were wildly successful and needed the impact of an asteroid to unseat them as rulers of the earth. Yet, in my mind’s eye, I still see dinosaurs as more reptilian than avian. Even when you know better it takes a lot of work to overcome childhood conditioning.

Apparently I have a thing for blue butterflies. That’s seems to be my fallback color when I depict a butterfly.


Pup Mug

In 2019 I posted an image a day to my website. The images were done in “widescreen” or “landscape” format. It turns out that size ratio works pretty well on coffee mugs so I’ve been converting my favorites of those drawings to drinkware.

This one required very little editing. I extended the backgroud to cover more of the circumference of the mug. What a friendly trio!
Inspiration – The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster has written a lot of books. I’ve read very few of them. This is probably because, at the time I was reading the most science fiction, his books weren’t available. A big chunk of my science fiction reading was of books checked out from the library. A lot of what he wrote got published as paperback originals and, when I was a kid, the library didn’t stock paperbacks. The Man Who Used the Universe was published in hardback in 1983. It’s been reprinted a few times but, based on the bare bones nature of its wikipedia entry, I’m assuming it’s not one of Foster’s more popular works.
It tells the tale of a sociopath who rises through the ranks of the underworld and into power in legitimate business and politics. And makes the world a better place in the process. I’ve forgotten most of the details of the plot. What stuck with me was the idea that being an evil person didn’t mean you had to make the world a terrible place. If you thought ahead and considered consequences you’d realize that making the world a better place for everyone made the world a better place for youself.

This is one of the books that helped shape my character. I’m not a sociopath. I’m not terribly ambitious and I’m certainly not a master planner. I am selfish and self centered and empathy isn’t my strong suit.This is one of the books that suggested to me that those traits could be strengths. I could be big in my selfishness. I could be selfish about the world around me. I could include the well being of others in the self that I’m centering. I don’t need to feel others pain in order to recognize that they are in pain and do something about it. I can consider the longterm effects of my decisions and plan accordingly.

These Days …

On Friday I got an email notice from Zazzle –
“Unfortunately, it appears that your product, Stardust Superwizard Superhero, contains content that is in conflict with one or more of our content guidelines.

We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly.”

I checked the guidelines and responded –
“I’ve received your review of my product 16801659427862834 The Stardust Superwizard mug. Thank you for your vigilance of possible copyright issues.

The art used on the product is my own, slightly modified from art I posted to my website in 2019. The character, Stardust, is in the public domain and may be used by anyone. I researched this before I started producing art feature Stardust. I can provide links to my original website posting and the wikipedia article on Stardust if needed.”

I didn’t get a response on Saturday. I didn’t expect one since Zazzle appears to give its human staff weekends off. SInce the mug was still available I thought maybe I’d changed their mind. On Sunday morning I posted a link to my newsletter to Facebook that I illustrated with product image of the Stardust mug. On Sunday afternoon the product vanished from Zazzle. Bugger. I discovered later that the digital file used to create the image had also been deleted.

In the comments on the FB post I mentioned the Zazzle objections.

On Monday I was back at USPS and couldn’t do much myself but two things happened. One of the folks from the FB thread called Zazzle and got someone to approve the design for sale. (Case Number: CAS-6095831-G2V6M3) I also got an email response for Zazzle –
“Due to intellectual property concerns, your submitted design was not approved for the marketplace because Zazzle is not licensed to sell or produce unauthorized merchandise of Stardust the Super Wizard. We are sorry for any disappointment but hope you understand our position in this regard.”

Hmmm. On the one hand, I do understand their position. They don’t want to get sued. A lot of people try to sell merchandise on Zazzle using images that they’ve just grabbed from the internet. Zazzle is also full of shops that mostly feature repurposed public domain art. I hate to think of the effort it would be to check the provenance of every image.

On the other hand – there’s already a shop on Zazzle that features images of Stardust the Superwizard using scans from Fletcher Hank’s published artwork. Hanks is the fellow who created the character back in the 1940s. It doesn’t seem to be currently active. The last upload was in 2017. I’m guessing the designer swiped his images from one of Fantagraphics’ Fletcher Hanks collections.

What puzzles me is – who did they think owns the character of Stardust and where did they get that information? As I told them, I did some research. Aside from the wikipedia article I also checked the listings in both the US trademark and the US copyright websites. No copyright listings. There are 237 trademarks using the word “Stardust” but none for “Stardust the Super Wizard” (or “Superwizard” or “Super-Wizard”).

I’m not going to poke the bear. My friend got the design approved. He did it by sending them the wikipedia article, something I clearly should have done instead of giving them the opportunity to do the research themselves or ask me to send them the links that I said I had. I recreated the mug design on Monday night. My friend has a referral link that gives discounts. Feel free to take advantage of it.

As of this morning the Stardust mug design is still available. I’ve added another Stardust, two Fantomahs and a Heap to my mug designs since then. I’m finding that I really enjoy doing images for cups and mugs.Greeting card designs are fun but greeting cards are ephemeral. They are given and then (unless you’re a packrat like me) discarded. One does not wear the same t-shirt every day. But one can have a favorite cup that one uses every morning. I like the idea of making someone’s favorite mug.

That’s all for this issue. I hope you are doing well. I hope you’ve had some moments of peace and joy. See you next week!