Gallery – The Black Seal #2

It was in doing illustrations for the second issue of the Black Seal that I found my basic style. The bulk of the illustration is done on paper. I use a mix of ink and pencil and markers. I then enhance the illustration in Photoshop – add lighting effects, blurs, patterns – things I think will make various elements pop out better. At various times I’ve tried to more digitally and I always come back to putting as much of the illustration on paper as possible.

Story Seed #57

Someone (a man or a woman) wakes in the middle of the night. They’ve heard a noise somewhere in the darkness of their bedroom. They don’t have pets. They live on the tenth floor of a large apartment building. Nervously they reach over and turn on the light.

Sitting in a chair across the room is a very large raccoon. The raccoon has its forepaws up in a gesture of peace.

It says, “I’d like to make a deal.”

Recommendation

I’ve got nothing this week.

Local News
Andy Syversen passed away on Thursday night. I found out that he was ill on Tuesday. A friend emailed me asking if I had heard and knew more than she did. I was at work when I read her email and waited until I got home to do a search of his wife’s Facebook posts to see if I could find out anything else before I contacted her. It turned out that she had posted the news on the 10th, the previous Thursday. By Tuesday he was no longer able to speak.

The last time Andy and I had spoken was at a memorial for another friend back in the spring of 2013. Seven years.

We used to see each other regularly. Back in the day, that is, back when we were in our teens and twenties, we were part of a group of friends who got together and partied. That group still exists, just scattered in the winds of relocattions and responsibilities and jobs and all the vagaries of adulthood. We’ve come together, a little bit, using Facebook in a benevolent way to send each other love and photographs.

Andy and I met in high school in Sebastopol, California. I don’t remember what classes we might have shared. High school was a place to get away from. My memories are of nights in the orchards and at friends’ houses and in open spaces around the Russian River. Drinking. Getting stoned. Talking. Trading insults. Hiking around.

That continued after graduation. After we had jobs and had bills to pay and apartments of our own and some folks started getting married. He started working for UPS as a delivery person. I’m sure I saw Andy at least once a month until I moved up to Seattle back in 1995. He married Crissy Smith and they had a daughter, Maggie.

Andy was a good guy. Steadfast. Smart. Dependable. Kind. Friendly. Fun. Whatever faults he had were enough outshone by his admirable qualities that I don’t remember them.

On Saturday I posted this on Facebook –

“Grief has five stages?
I’ve never gotten past denial. What are the other four like?”

It’s true. Anger? Bargaining? Acceptence? Friends and family members die and I keep going. I get that they are no longer able to talk to me. Or anyone. But knowing them has made me who I am. How can they be gone?

I am a better person for having Andy as a friend. The world is a better place because he was in it. I say that to the world because I didn’t get a chance to say it to him.