Tag Archives: Daily Sketch
01.02.2024
01.01.2024
Skook Words (and Pictures) #51
Hello, hello! You’re looking fabulous, as usual.
This is the last newsletter of 2023 and the last newsletter for a while. You will (huzzah! hooray!) continue to get emails (or see posts). Starting on Monday I will be posting daily. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions so much as I invent yearly projects. This is my project for 2024. As I’ve mentioned in previous newsletters, I’m working on mastering drawing using Clip Studio Paint and my Wacom tablet. I’m working on the sketches as if I’m doing a daily comic strip – six small sketches from Monday to Saturday with one large sketch on Sunday. I’m restricting myself to a half hour for the smaller sketches and an hour for the larger ones. (With a little wiggle room in these early days as I have to figure out how to do things in CSP that I already knew how to do in Photoshop.)
A new format means it’s time for new website banners. You won’t see these if you only see these newsletters in your email. These will be appearing randomly over at Skookworks.com starting January 1st.
Aside from improving my skill with CSP, I’m experimenting to see if I can increase my audience.
I’ll be simultaneously posting the sketches to my Substack newsletter.
I’ll be posting details of the sketches to my Instagram account that will feed to my Facebook page. (Instagram crops images to 1×1 ratios. The sketches are 2×1 and 2×3. I’m precropping the sketches because Instagram can’t be trusted to make good crops.)
I’ll be posting hi-res downloadable versions of the sketches to supporters of my Ko-Fi account.
Here in the real world I’ll be working on Sunk Cost Elegy, illustrations for a new Oz book and … stuff. And delivering mail. Of course.
I’ll undoubtedly write the occasional essay post but, for the next few months, expect more pictures than words.
Thank you for tuning in so far. Your attention is appreciated.
See you Monday!
Skook Words (and Pictures) #49
Welcome to the next to the next to the last Skook Words newsletter of 2023. Apparently we’re only getting 51 Fridays this year instead of the desired 52. I feel ripped off. To whom do I complain?
These Days …
This is my long week at the Post Office, the one where I work 6 days in a row. Because of the high volumes of parcels the folks on the Overtime Desired List and those of us on the Own Assignment list (we’re willing to work more than 8 hours to finish our route when necessary) are coming in at six AM. We load up our trucks with as many parcels as are available, go deliver them and then come back, sort our route and then deliver everything that’s left.
I actually prefer this set up. Delivering parcels by themselves is easy. All I have to think about is getting the right parcels to the right address as efficiently as possible. Then, when I’m delivering the rest of the parcels and the mail, that goes faster because I don’t have to make extra stops and trips to deliver larger parcels that don’t fit in mailboxes to the customer’s doorsteps. I’d be fine doing this during the rest of year.
Talking to Myself
Scene –
The Cartoonist sits at his desk. He is drawing using his Wacom tablet. To his right, a fat orange cat sits on the desk between the monitor and the printer. The cat doesn’t care about this drawing thing. To his left is a room temperature mug of coffee. The Brand Manager enters. The coffee in his cup is hot and mixed with eggnog. He looks over the Cartoonist’s shoulder at the art on the monitor.
Brand Manager – “That doesn’t look like Sunk Cost Elegy.”
Cartoonist – “It’s not. It’s test art for my 2024 project.”
The Brand Manager groans.
Brand Manager – “You’re shifting gears again? How can I manage your brand if you can’t stay consistent?”
Cartoonist – “Number 1, not my problem. Number 2, it’s going to help get Sunk Cost Elegy, and everything else, done quicker. And less expensively.”
Brand Manager – “Do tell.”
Cartoonist – “You saw the notice from Adobe? That they’re raising the price of the rent for Photoshop?”
Brand Manager – “I remember that, this year, you were going to learn enough Clip Studio Paint that we could stop paying Adobe’s ransom.”
Cartoonist – “I got sidetracked. My fault. But I’ve learned that the best way for me to learn something is to make it a project. Remember 2019? When I did daily half hour sketches and posted them to Skookworks.com?”
Brand Manager – “I remember that some of those sketches took longer than a half hour to finish.”
Cartoonist – “And some of them took less. It evened out.”
Brand Manager – “If you say so.”
Cartoonist – “Yeah. Okay. Stay positive here. Even when I did a sketch in a half an hour I still had to scan it and post it. For my new 2024 project I’m going to do daily half hour sketches directly in CSP. No scanning necessary. I’ll learn the program, post a sketch every day and still have time to work on Sunk Cost Elegy. I did these test images to get a feel for how ambitious I could be in 30 minutes.”
Brand Manager – “Not bad. Did that large one take a half an hour?”
Cartoonist – “That’s my Sunday post. I’m thinking of this like doing a daily comic strip – 6 small images and one large one. I’m giving myself an hour to do the large ones. The small ones will post Monday thru Saturday and the big one will post on Sunday. Since 2024 starts on a Monday it works out perfectly.”
The Brand Manager sips his coffee. He thinks. He smiles.
Brand Manager – “I like it.”
The Cartoonist looks perplexed.
Cartoonist – “You like it? Really?”
Brand Manager – “Oh, yeah! It’s a perfect opportunity to spotlight the Brand!”
The Cartoonist facepalms.
Brand Manager – “Think about it. You’ve got an Instagram account that only gets used when the Mail Carrier decides to post a photo of a sunrise or puppy or something. You’ve got a Ko-Fi account that you’re not posting to. You’ve got a Substack account that has only three subscribers. We can hit all of them!”
The Cartoonist thinks a moment. He drinks some of his coffee.
Cartoonist – “What are you thinking?”
Brand Manager – “I post the same image to Substack and Skookworks every day. Substack has a different audience than Skookworks with different ways of creating subscribers. For Ko-Fi I’ll post a hi-rez version of each image that’s only available to your patrons. Instagram can be set to feed to Facebook. For Instagram … hmm, Instagram wants its images to be square so that means a little more work but I can set up a template that you can plug the images into. Like this – ”
Cartoonist – “Cool. And then what?”
Brand Manager – “You’ve heard me complain that it’s hard to get an audience on the internet because no one can just stumble on your work? This will be a way for people to stumble on your work.”
Cartoonist – “Right. But then what?”
Brand Manager – “We get famous and conquer the world!”
Cartoonist – “Fame and world conquering don’t automatically go together.”
Brand Manager – “Let me worry about that. Don’t you have a lot of drawing to do?”
Merry Merry!
That’s it for this week. I’m looking forward to being very busy until the end of the year. I expect that most of you will be too. I hope that, in your busy-ness, you find some joy and, once in a while, some rest.
Thank you for reading. See you in seven!
Tuesday Night Party Club #49
Gallery – 2019 Daily Sketches 333-364
This the final gallery of the daily sketches I did in 2019. I actually only did 362 sketches. I miscounted a couple of times while I was scanning the original drawing so I thought I had done 364 sketches and I only discovered I was wrong as I was setting up the final posts in December. I filled in sketches 363 and 364 by finishing some much more complex drawings that I’d been putting off completing. Those can be found here and here. Sketch 365, posted on New Year’s Eve, was purposely blank to symbolize a fresh start for a new year.
Story Seed #98
The Rest of the Time
Carl Kolchak was a newpaper reporter who investigated mysteries that always seemed to involve supernatural creatures. No one believed him. So those stories didn’t get published.
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were FBI agents who investigated mysteries that had seemingly supernatural elements to them. Scully kept offering rational, scientific explanations to the mysteries. Mulder went for weirder rationale. Mulder’s theories were, if not always correct, always closer to the truth than Scully’s. But since “the supernatural” isn’t a legally accepted way to close a case, most of their cases went unsolved.
How the hell did Kolchak or Fox and Mulder keep their jobs? Employers like results.
Consider Carnacki the Ghost Finder. Carnaki was a character invented by William Hope Hodgson. He starred in a series of stories in which he investigated seemingly supernatural mysteries. Sometimes the solution to the mystery was a supernatural one. Sometimes the mystery had a rational explanation.
I’m assuming that Kolchak wrote enough stories about political corruption and ordinary sleaze that newspapers kept giving him checks.
I’ve decided that the X-Files tv series only showed the mysteries that had supernatural resolutions. Nine times out of ten Scully’s rational explanations would prove true and the pair would either catch an ordinary human killer or discover that the death(s) were caused by some sort of weird misadventure. 90% of the time Scully was correct so she quite reasonably stuck to her guns whenever Mulder offered up some “alternate reality” theory. She knew he was sometime right but it was her rationality that let them solve cases and keep their jobs.
Kolchak and Mulder and Scully were interesting, entertaining characters. I started watching their shows because I like weird fiction stories but I kept watching the shows because I liked the characters. Would I have been disappointed if some of the mysteries had had mundane solutions? Sometimes. But I would have kept watching.
The seed here is character. Find a character you want to hang out with. That character will tend to have adventures in a specific genre. But a good character will work in different genres. A good character will be fun to hang out with when they are just hanging out.
Recommendation
Pawprints is a Zazzle store that features the art of Wallace Tripp. I ran across it while researching the site and I think his illustrations are delightful.
Local News
Work, work, work. The volume of parcels continues to increase at USPS. Most days I’ve ended up delivering the last part of my route in the dark. Some days I’ve been drafted to carry part of another route. I make sure to carry that extra mail in the middle of my day. Trying to deliver mail to unfamiliar addresses in the dark is no fun.
And then I’m up at 4 am to try to get some art done or write this newsletter or just get enough coffee into my system to be pleasant company to the folks around me.
As I’ve said, I’ve got two online stores, one at Zazzle, one at Redbubble. Each platform has its own features. With Redbubble I upload an image and the site puts that image on all its available products. I then make adjustments to each placement so the image looks good on each object. With Zazzle I choose a product and then put an image on it. Each store has a different selection of products. Last week I spent time on Zazzle making a pair of Cthulhu shoes. I’m rather proud of the results. Surprisingly there aren’t a lot of Lovecraft oriented shoes available. Yet.
A couple of weeks back I made a danger graphic. I’d been looking at the biohazard symbol and I kept thinking that the pronged triumvirate looked like goat skulls. I thought sure someone else would have had that same thought and created a design already. I did a few image searches and came up blank so I created my own version. It’s proven quite popular on my Tumblr blog. It’s probably one of my most reblogged posts.
I have more art in process. I don’t expect to get much of it done between now and Christmas. It’s that way every year.
Thank you for dropping by! I hope that you are safe and warm and have as much company as you need. Be good to yourself and be better to those who need it.
In 2021 this newsletter will be hosted at tinyletter.com. If you subscribe, each issue will come directly to your email address. I’ll continure to post links to issues here but, if you want cut down on link hopping, please use the form below to sign up –
See you next week!
Tuesday Night Party Club #47
Gallery – 2019 Daily Sketches 303-332
This is the penultimate collection of my daily sketches from 2019. 30 images all in one covenient place.
Story Seed #96
Once again, there are thirty images above. They all have stories. The story you find in the illustration will be different than the one someone else tells.
Recommendation
This week I’m recommending David Lasky’s Etsy shop. David is a cartoonist, art teacher and friend. His work is lovely and eclectic. Check it out!
Local News
Rain and cold and darkness have settled over the Pacific Northwest. The holidays loom but we’re staying away from other humans and their icky diseases. The mail and parcel volumes have increased as expected so I’m getting overtime whether I want it or not. Wearing a mask in addition to rain gear leaves me with just a narrow strip with which to observe the world. I feel disconnected and unbalanced. The mask does keep my face warm. That’s an unexpected bonus.
I’m also officially a Guy Who Wears Glasses. As I got used to the new prescription I started wearing them in more and more situations and now I wear them more than I don’t. I go without them in situations where I need to have a mask on because I haven’t yet taken the steps to prevent them fogging but otherwise they’re just part of my wardrobe. The eye doctor recommended cataract surgery. Supposedly that will correct my vision issues so the glasses may not be a permenant accessory. I won’t be taking any steps toward surgery until after the holidays though. Too much to do, not enough time to recover.
I’m continuing to add images to my Zazzle and Redbubble shops. Both shops recently had complete strangers make purchases. That was encouraging. One can’t become a mogul by selling just to ones friends.
I’m currently completing and/or coloriing older illustrations of Little Red aka The Mighty Nizz. The image below is from 2011 or 2012. I’m pretty sure it’s the third time I’d drawn the character. I found it when I was clearing and organizing a stack of art and art supplies this summer. It was mostly still pencils, only the lettering and the bear in the tree had been inked. I wish I’d remembered to scan that version but we’ll have to settle on the completed inks. 
From that to this – 
I also colored two images from 2015. This –
Became this –
And this –
Became this –
I actually prefer this version to the more detailed one I did later. I’m making both available in my shops. I long ago learned that my taste is not necessarily my audience’s. Unless I hate an image I’m likely to make it available.
In 2021 this newsletter will get a new title – Skook WIP (Works in Progress) and will be hosted at tinyletter.com. If you subscribe, each issue will come directly to your email address. I’ll continure to post links to issues here but, if you want cut down on link hopping, please use the form below to sign up –
It’s Thanksgiving this week. We’re keeping it small. Just me, my wife, our nephew and his girlfriend. Easy enough since we share the apartment. Others were invited but the C19 resurgence is keeping them home. I’m working the day before Thanksgiving so any cooking I do will happen in the morning on Thursday. Since we’re keeping the menu small I don’t expect to do much. Since I’ll be tired from the day before I really don’t plan to do much.
Thank you for dropping by. I hope that your holiday is warm and relaxing. We’ve been in a slow, stupid apocalypse for months now. Celebrate by doing what makes you happy and keeps you safe. See you next week!
Tuesday Night Party Club #45
Gallery – 2019 Daily Sketches 273-302
Here are 30 more of the half hour/daily sketches that I posted in 2019, now in one convenient gallery.
Story Seed #94
Move the Frame, Change the Rhythm
My wife has said that a story can be anything. It’s all in where you place the frame. It’s the lens through which you view the tale. It’s all in how the story is told. Based on modern adaptations most folks would assume that Beowulf’s story ends with him killing Grendel’s mother. His story is longer than that. And it’s a poem. In old English. Basically a foreign language. So most modern audiences experience the story as translations or adaptations or reimaginings.
And that’s fine. That what humans have been doing with stories for as long as we’ve been telling stories. We rewrite them for new audiences. Or because we wanted a different mood than what we got in the orignal. Or we thought the original ending sucked. Hamlet could be a comedy. Joan of Arc’s story is triumphant if you stop writing it before her betrayal the Burgundian Faction. The Hunchback of Notre Dame could be a musical with a happy ending.
Yeah.
It’s easiest to do this with a story that you didn’t like. One that left you unsatisfied. One of the things I enjoy about a story I didn’t like is thinking about how I would rewrite it to fit my tastes. The public domain is full of stories that don’t work.Pick one up. Figure out what bugs you about it. Once you strart moving the pieces around, once you see it from a different angle, it becomes something new.
Have I said this before? Probably. It’s been that kind of week. I write to remind myself as well as to speak to world.
Recommendation
Matt Howarth was one of my inspirations for comics back in the 90s. He’s still producing work and has a huge back catalog available. Check it out!
Local News
Jeez.
The last couple of weeks have been mind numbing. I’ve spent entirely too much time on Facebook, both on my phone and on my desktop. I voted, what, three weeks ago? And then it was all waiting. Last week was my Long Week (six days working in a row) and the weather got cold and rainy. I’d get up in the morning and scroll news sites and FB. While delivering mail I spent a lot time mentally writing political screeds. Once I got home I just wanted to forget about it all. Too tired. And I had art to finish. And plenty of other people had already posted some damned fine screeds.
On Saturday I got to work and discovered that our start time had been changed from 7:30 back to 7 AM. Apparently that had been announced on Friday and I’d missed it. So I was late but no one minded. I’d showed up. Enough other carriers called in that the rest of us were being mandated to work overtime to cover the missing carriers routes. Bleah. It was another long cold rainy day. I’d be finishing it delivering in the dark.
I was loading up my truck when we heard people setting off fireworks. The election was called for Biden and Harris. Relief. It’s amazing how much easier it is to do your work when you don’t feel a sense of impending doom.
Yes, there’s a lot of work to do. Yes, the vote was much closer than it should have been. Yes, there are far more obstructionists still in Congress than there should be. Biden and Harris are conservatives. I’d prefer some radical progressives. They are far far better than the guy who just lost. The people they appoint will mostly be in their positions to do their jobs rather than line their pocketbooks. For now, that’s enough.
My screeds can wait. There’s art to make.
I hope that you are also feeling a little lighter. Able to laugh a little more. Able to plan for a future. Thank you for dropping by.
Tuesday Night Party Club #42
Gallery – 2019 Daily Sketches 243-272
Thirty more of 2019’s half hour daily sketches in one convenient gallery.
Story Seed #91
What Stays Up
A transatlantic flight doesn’t land. The pilots can’t find a signal from the ground. There’s nothing but ocean below them and something has taken over the plane. It stays aloft for hours past when it should have lost fuel. It will respond to some commands but it won’t descend.
There’s only so much food on board. How do the passengers react? How does the crew? Do they work together to figure out a solution? Do they go Lord of the Flies?
Recommendation
Jackie’s Vegetable Kitchen. Jackie put up with me for four years in high school. We haven’t talked much since but we’re connected on Facebook so I’ve gotten to see glimpses of her life. If you’re someone who likes to cook and is interested in vegetarian recipes, Jackie has dozens of dishes worth trying out.
Local News
Last week –
At USPS we delivered local voter pamphlets, then ballots. Every voting session I have ballots for people who have long since moved. Apparently all the noise about voting has had folks be more proactive. I had a lot less undeliverable ballots this time around.
Artwise I’ve been working my way through adding greytones to the character drawings for the pirate book and I’ve been working with an author and his publisher to narrow down cover designs for the author’s novel.
I’ve been feeling scattered mentally and emotionally. Apparently that’s pretty normal these days. It does mean that this newsletter is a short one. I’ve had a lot of thoughts but writing them out coherently hasn’t happened.
Thank you for dropping by. Stay as healthy as you can. Avoid idiots. Thank your friends for making your world a better place. See you next week!
Tuesday Night Party Club #39
Gallery – 2019 Daily Sketches 213-242
Here are another thirty of the sketches I posted on a daily basis last year.
Story Seed #58
The Screaming Memes
Mirriam-Websters site defines meme as:
1: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.
Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.— Richard Dawkins
2: an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media
Letitia Chan has figured out how to encode a meme inside a meme. She has figured out how to transmit instructions for thought and behaviorial change within a short video. The videos she creates are seemily simple amusements – kittens chasing butterflies, fat puppies rolling down stairs, baby goats hopping enthusiastically. Watching the video once implants a new behaviour or core belief into the viewer – a smoker quits, a previously sedantary person takes up exercise, a Christian gives up their faith.
Chan is not driven by ideology. She’s just experimenting and amusing herself. She wants to see what ripples she can create in society. She doesn’t intentionally create harmful metamemes. She avoids encoding violent ideas and prejudices.
But any technology, once available, gets used in unintended ways and Metamemetics is too dynamic too go unexploited. Chan’s coding is quickly reverse engineered. Advertisers, governments, con artists and scumbags of all kinds flood the internet with new and dangerous memes. Activists of all stripes fight back with alternative memes. Minds and behaviors change minute by minute.
Recommendation
This is a request. My friend Andy Syversen passed away last week. Folks have come together to support his wife and daughter in many ways including this one –
A college savings account has been set up in support of Maggie’s future education dreams. We invite you to make a contribution to this account established in memory of Maggie’s wonderful dad, our amazing friend, Andy. Maggie’s full name is Wencke Margaret Syversen, named after Andy’s mom and grandmother.
A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged program that helps families save for future education expenses. There are no fees with the Ugift savings program; your entire gift will go to Maggie’s college savings account.
To make a gift contribution using Ugift:
1. Go to Ugift529.com.
2. Enter Maggie’s Ugift code: R0D-81Y
3. Enter your name and the amount of your gift.
4. Make your gift via electronic funds transfer.
Please share with other friends and family of Andy, Crissy and Maggie.
In gratitude. Dana and Autumn
I’m posting this here as much for myself as for others. I read the original request in our FB messenger group. That’s going to vanish quickly. By posting here I’ll hopefully increase the signal and make the link easier to relocate.
Local News
I’m writing this part of this post this (Tuesday) morning. I’ve had the last 11 days off from USPS. I’ve done a bunch of artwork, got rid of some furniture, rearranged some furniture, scanned and posted a bunch of old photos of friends to Facebook and watched a few more TV shows and movies than usual.
Last night I got confirmation of a book cover commission. This morning I’m reading parts of that book in order to get a sense of what I am illustrating. So I’m reading this morning rather than writing more detailed news.
Thank you for dropping by. I hope you are safe from whatever disaster is occuring in your part of the world. May things get better from here.
