It is the day. The day this newsletter arrives in your email mailbox. It is not a physical thing. Not physical in the way a letter written on paper and sent through the postal service would be. It can’t be held by your hands. It is a different type of magic. It is ones and zeroes that follow formulas to present themselves as letters and words and sentences.
I spent a week and a half without my desktop computer. For a few days, I went online using my phone and a tablet. Those devices were adequate for basic web surfing but, to me, thoroughly unsatisfying for spellcasting.
Spellcasting?
Magic is the process of convincing the universe to do what you want. Human culture is a series of spells attempting to work magic on reality. Our technology has advanced to the point that much of it functions like magic. Swipe your finger across an image on a screen and a day later a blender arrives at your door. Push a button on a little box and your car starts up in the garage. Tell your phone an address and a voice will give you directions on how to get there (and make adjustments if you make a wrong turn).
This is all fantastic until the magic doesn’t work the way you want it to. In my case, neither the phone nor the tablet give me the experience or control that my desktop does. I like a large screen, especially when I’m working on an illustration. I like using a physical keyboard. I barely passed typing class in high school. After a few decades of practice, I’m much faster at typing my thoughts than at writing them longhand. (Word processing programs really help this. Being able to go back and add or remove thoughts, correct spelling or perform various other types of editing/writing hoodoo has made my computer my preferred tool for composition.)
Many programs apps only work well on a desktop. I like my phone. I can text and get those directions and check Facebook and even talk to someone once in a while. The tablet is less useful. It’s an Apple product and it doesn’t seem to play well with some of the Google apps I like to use. Magic isn’t magic when it requires effort.
Not having a working desktop hasn’t stopped me from working on art. All my illustrations still start as marks on paper. I’ve laid out the first of our Mighty Nizz comics and begun a series of Land of Oz/Oz Squad designs for my online stores.
The new computer came home on Wednesday. I scanned the pencils, enlarged them, converted them to bluelines and printed them out for inking. Magic!
Once they’re inked (and toned) I’ll color them digitally. More magic!
The Oz designs will get posted to my online stores. I’ll include the images in a future newsletter and post them to the Oz Squad site.
The Mighty Nizz comic will get posted to mightynizz.com and I will include links to it in a future issue.
Magic!
Mugshots
This week’s process GIF stars a group of colorful penguins. Did I have Pride in mind when I did this? Well, no. But I didn’t not have it mind either. Capitalism demands that everything be commodified and that all our dreams and hopes be sold back to us.
Hmmm. That’s not the best way to create interest and close a sale, is it? Let’s try again.
Penguins! Everyone loves penguins! Penguins love penguins! They’re always ready for a formal occasion in their permanent tuxedoes! This bunch is relaxed and ready to party in flying colors!
Available –
On a mug in my Zazzle store!
On all sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store!
The Colors of Cthulhu
By now you know I enjoy doing illustrations that feature Cthulhu. It (He? She? They? What pronouns are appropriate for an ageless Eldritch Horror?) is the most well known of HPL’s creations. It gets namechecked in a number of his stories but only appears in person in one tale. Lovecraft depicts it as a gigantic creature with a head like an octopus and a body combining features of a human and a dragon. It is trapped/entombed in the sunken city of R’Lyeh, only able to emerge when “the stars are right”.
Part of the fun of depicting the Big C is that there’s not really a canonic version of what it looks like. Lovecraft’s sketch is of a statue of Cthulhu. The statue was carved by humans who had, at best, only seen it in their dreams. The humans who do encounter it in person all die or go mad. I figure their descriptions of it are suspect. Humans interpret their experiences based on what they already know. Anything truly novel is going to be very hard to describe. Our senses only take in some of the information available to them and our brains are only able to process part of the information they receive.
Cthulhu is described as green. It may only appear that way to human eyes. We see a narrow spectrum of colors. I feel comfortable letting it be whatever color it feels like being. Great Old Ones have powers beyond our comprehension. If an octopus can change its colors at will, why not a being from beyond space and time?
Below is a process GIF of Cthulhu forming in our reality.
Here are the four designs I’ve got available in my Redbubble store. Collect them all!
And that’s it for this week.
Take care. Take rest. Take revenge. Take a moment to breathe.
See you in seven!
