When in Doubt, Make a New Gallery

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After browsing the galleries at ArtStation.com on and off for a couple of years, I’ve decided to add my own work to the noise. My gallery can be found here. The site has a nice clean design and the focus is on works of scifi/fantasy/horror/and-similar.

This will be my third online gallery. I first made one at Epilogue.net way the hell back in 2003. Blogger didn’t yet allow image posting and it seemed like a good site to show off work. My big complaint was that submssions were moderated so not everything I wanted to post was accepted. Still, it was free and the art by other members was all pretty good. I posted there less and less as time went on. Why wait for someone to approve (or reject) my art when I could post it to my own site? My last posting there is from 2013.

My second gallery is over at DeviantArt.com. A working artist friend suggested the site as the place where all the cool working artists put their stuff. Maybe. It’s definitely a place where lots of people post a lot of stuff. I’m not crazy about the site’s design but it’s free and there’s no moderation. I’ve only posted there sporadically. I’m pretty sure that my last post there was also from 2013.

A lot of the folks who post at ArtStation, at least at their Pro level, seem to work in movies and video games. There are quite a few comic artists as well. At the moment I’m using the site as a way to currate my portfolio, to put up a variety of what I think is my best work. Having a gallery there is free but they do have a paid Pro level that might be worth joining. Eventually.

Changes, Updates and Anniversaries

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In three months, in 2018, this website will be 15 years old. I’m fudging that a bit – this website began its life as the “blog”: skook.blogspot.com in January 2003. My brother had started his own blog a few days previously and that inspired me to jump in. My posting was infrequent. I’ve never been much of a diarist. Nor am I an ardent reviewer of things. But I’d started the thing so I posted.

In 2005 Blogger included an image posting feature. About midway through 2006 I realized that I had stacks of sketches that I could scan and post. That, plus original work done for commission (or my own amusement) kept the blog active for years. 

In 2010 I leased the DavidLeeIngersoll.com and DavidIngersoll.com urls. I can’t say I bought them. You can’t buy a web address. If you don’t pay to renew that address every year then you lose ownership of it. I suppose that’s fair. It keeps people from grabbing up addresses and then just sitting on them. Currently people grab up addresses and pay a small yearly fee to sit on them. 

On January 1, 2012 I launched this website. Skookworks.com, DavidLeeIngersoll.com and DavidIngersoll.com all point to the same place. All the posts from Skook.blogspot.com are archived here. (The images associated with those posts are still located with blogger. I’ll have to fix that eventually.)

I’ve had times, over the years, when I wasn’t able to post much. The worst period was during my first couple of years at the Post Office. Nizzibet was ill and I had little time for anything other than delivering mail and looking after our basic survival. Between November 2014 and October 2015 I posted pretty much nothing.

In January 2016 I started regularly updating again. I’ve kept that up until now. Any breaks and changes have been planned. It’s been comfortable and I’ve been happy to be able to keep to a schedule. 

So, of course, it’s time to make some changes. I’m suspending regular updates for a while. I’m going to be redesigning this site. New banners. Lots of archiving and restructuring. I’ll be adding an online shop. We live in a capitalist society and I would be failing in my duties if I didn’t give folks the opportunity to purchase a thing or two. Some of this will happen quickly. Other plans (like the shop – I don’t currently have any products to sell) will take longer. 

I’m also going to devoting time to unfinished projects. If you’ve read my blog since the beginning you know that I’ve got a lot of them. Some of them are going to remain forever incomplete. The David who started them is not the David I am now. The current David can’t do anything with that earlier David’s work. Others have been nagging at me for years and I’m giving them the focus they need.

And I’m looking for illustration work again. I’ve turned down quite a few jobs in the last few years because I knew I couldn’t promise to meet a deadline. I may not be able to turn around an illustration overnight but I can now predict when I will be able to get a job done and so I feel comfortable offering my services once more.

I will use this blog to post updates. I will still occasionally use it to post art and illustrations. And, if all goes well, I will post again on a regular schedule.

Thank you for your time and attention. Cheers y’all!

What is Best in Life? – Pencils

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By the time the robots take over the world all the large carnivores are likely to be extinct. So where did this chap get its furs?

I emailed the finished (inked and colored) version of this illustration to a friend. Just the illustration. No commentary. His response was perfect –

“I don’t think you MEAN for this robot to have skinned a teddy bear, but absent more context, that’s what I’m going with. Because I like it 🙂 “

That works for me.

Faithful Delivery – Colors

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There’s a movie called The Postman. It’s based on a novel by David Brin. The story, in both the book and the movie, is about how a guy accidentally restarts civilization by delivering the mail. The actual plot is more complicated than that. The movie is sentimental and obvious and heavy handed. The novel takes some side tours into intelligent computers and supersoldiers that are pretty basic for a science fiction story but might seem a little weird if one had seen the film first.

I enjoy both versions of the story. But I really hope I never have to deliver mail in a radioactive wasteland. On a horse.

Faithful Delivery – Inks

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Once upon a time, I was an active correspondent. I wrote a lot of letters. I’d write letters during my breaks at work. I’d write letters to friends of friends. I made minicomics and traded them through the mail.

And then came email and the internet and, specifically, Facebook. I still communicate with a lot of people but mostly via a sentence or two.  I don’t write physical letters anymore. I occasionally get cards, mostly from my big sister and a friend in Colorado. I can’t tell you how much I love seeing those in my mailbox. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy delivering cards and, especially, letters to my customers. I treat that mail like gold.