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!