Skook Words (and Pictures) #34

Posted on September 1, 2023 by skook

Greetings and Salutations!

It’s good to see you! You’re looking well. Someday you must share the secrets of your success!

These Days …

Our new housemate is all moved in. He’s brought a cat with him. So far it spends most of its time in his room but it has begun venturing into the greater universe of the apartment. Its expeditions have been short. Our cats are getting used to the idea that there is another four legged being in their world. They are mostly respecting the threshold to our housemate’s room as border not to be crossed. No wars have broken out.

The weather is getting cooler. A little rain has fallen. We’ve managed to be a little bit social. On Wednesday we visited with friends who were in town from Taiwan. We’ve know them for years, having met them before their move to the Republic of China. We hadn’t seen them in about three and a half years so there was a lot of catching up to do.

The day job continues to be the day job. I’m continuing to carry a little extra. Lately I’ve been volunteering to deliver the express mail for the 98106 zip code. (We serve four zip codes in our station. Besides 98106 we carry for 98126, 98136 and 98146.) This has me travel more than if I’m delivering part of a specific route. Express mail usually arrives after I’m already out delivering my own route so I have to go back to the station to pick it up. I like the variety of the task. The number of expresses and the amount of driving required is different every day. One day I had only two parcels but they were miles apart. Another time I had five parcels to going to addresses in a four block area. Some days none of the packages require customer signatures before delivery. Some days all of them do.

Cathulhu

Last week I turned in what I thought was my last illustration for the updated edition of Cathulhu and was almost immediately commissioned for three more. Yay!

Tails of Valor from Golden Goblin Press was my first Cathulhu job. I illustrated that book back in 2019. I shared my illustrations for two scenarios last week (one set in ancient Rome) and the week before (one set in ancient Egypt). This week I’m sharing my illustrations for the final scenario.

The Undesirables (set in Dark Ages France) by Oscar Rios
The cats of Paris struggle to survive in a city driven mad with fear. The streets are filled with the dead, the dying, and the terrified as a deadly and mysterious plague runs rampant. The church places the blame on Satan, black magic, witches, and their familiars… namely cats. As a purge of such undesirables begins, will the cats put a stop to the actual witches spreading this vile pestilence, or seek to escape the city and reach the countryside?

I have two more posts worth of illustrations from the Tails of Valor project queued up, one next week and one the week after.

The Process GIF

Bzzzzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzzzz. Means “Glad to see you!”

This design can be found on all sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Thank you for reading. May the next seven days treat you kindly. May you have continued success in the endeavors that matter to you most. May you get the rest you need and may you, on occasion, be surprised by joy.

See you next Friday!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #33

Posted on August 25, 2023 by skook

Give me a Y!
Give me an A!
Give me a D!
Give me an I!
Give me an R!
Give me an F!

What does that spell?

YADIRF!

What does that mean?

Time for another fabulous newsletter!

These Days …

Tomorrow the Seattle Post Office is moving the start time for all its carriers from 7 am to 7:30. The Union has filed a grievance and hopefully we’ll get our start times moved back again. We had that new Seattle Postmaster drop by our station on Wednesday to introduce himself and one of the questions a carrier asked was why he was moving the start times. His answer didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It seemed to be that, because we were handing less mail now than in previous years, we …

That’s where his explanation stopped making sense. He talked about route adjustments and how when he was a carrier he used to have so much mail he’d have to leave some of it undelivered on a regular basis. We have less mail but we’re allowed an hour in the office to set up our route and if it takes longer than an hour we’re supposed to use “street time” and …

If we have less mail it seems like we could actually start earlier? Like at 6:30? We started at 6:30 ten years ago when I started working for the Post Office.

The fellow emphasized that we carriers need to do our job safely so we can come home to our loved ones. Yet by moving our start times he’s making it more likely that, especially once Daylight Savings is inflicted on us, we’ll be delivering mail in the dark. Often on unfamiliar routes because we’re being mandated to work overtime.

Tellingly, during his speech, the Postmaster said something like, “We all love the Post Office, don’t we?” This was clearly a prompt for us to applaud, cheer and huzzah. He got resounding silence. I will give him credit. He didn’t pause his speech for us to react after that. He soldiered on, saying that we loved to be able to provide for our families and give service to our community.

I was neither impressed nor especially disappointed by him. He came across as a guy who thought that the current rules were good and that they should be followed. Questions weren’t encouraged. I have some sympathy for management at the PO. They’ve been tasked with making the USPS, an organization that is not and should never have been designed a business, into a profitable business without being given the resources and autonomy to do so. Those above them demand that they make the carriers and their stations hit a set of numbers that are based on a fantasy of an efficient organization that has all the resources it needs to do its job. We, the carriers and the clerks, have contempt for management because we know that the number they want us to hit are bullshit.

I’ll save further complaints for another day.

Cats!

I’ve just about finished my illustrations for the update of Cathulhu. Since I’m waiting to show those off until Sixtystone Press makes it available, this morning I’m showcasing some more of my illustrations from Tails of Valor, Golden Goblin Press’s scenario book follow up to Cathulhu. These are from the adventure –

Triumphus Felis Ferae (set in 41 C.E. Rome) by Jeffrey Moeller
First the vermin became scarce, and then kittens and cats began wandering off, never to be seen again. Later, people began acting strangely, disobeying the Praetorian Guards and attempting to enter the Imperial Palace. Then the Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (known to later history as Caligula) himself vanishes, leaving the city teetering on the edge of utter chaos. Can a band of brave and proud Roman street cats solve this mystery, and restore order to the Empire? Triumphus Felis Ferae is Latin for “the triumph (all march) of the wild cat” or more simply, Stray Cat Strut.

All of the illustrations in Tails of Valor were published in black and white. Oscar Rios, the publisher, commissioned me to color one of the illustrations as a present for Jeffrey Moeller.

It’s a Mad Mad Mouse (Process GIF)

The art I do is for amusement. My own. Hopefully yours. Hopefully people I’ve never met.

A lot of the art I’ve created in the last couple of years I did with a thought toward putting it on something – a mug, a t-shirt, a poster – and making it available for sale. The image below was made with that in mind. Sooner or later, when I have my own POD shop, I will put it on something, if only for a short time.

Until then, it’s only getting posted as fan art. Because one does not rattle the doors of the House of Mouse. Next year, in 2024, the version of Mickey Mouse as depicted in the silent cartoon “Steamboat Willie”, will enter public domain. Mickey Mouse will continue to be a character trademarked by the Disney Corporation. Copyright is limited. Trademark can be forever. I could argue that the design below is a parody and therefore this depiction is fair use. I could argue that, as long as I don’t market the thing as a version of Mickey, I’m not trying to infringe on Disney’s trademark.

But, honestly? I did this for the fun of it, not to throw rocks at the windows of the Mouse’s fortress.

M! I! C! K! E! Y!

M-O-U-S-E!

Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.

And that’s it for this week.

May the next seven days treat you well. May you get the rest you need and may you have some fun and experience some joy.

Cheers!

Tuesday Night Party Club #4

Posted on January 28, 2020 by skook

Artstuff

In my first newsletter I mentioned wanting to create more physical things. Like books. Tails of Valor and Tails of Terror are currently available at the Golden Goblin website. I spent a good part of 2018 and 2019 working on the illustrations for these volumes. Tails of Valor is a collection of role-playing game scenarios for the Call of Cthulhu setting/rule set. It’s a sequel of sorts to Cathulhu, from Sixtystone Press. Cathulhu is a version of CoC that allows players to role-play as cats. Cats deal with the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos differently than puny humans.

Tails of Valor features three scenarios –

Triumphus Felis Ferae (set in 41 C.E. Rome) by Jeffrey Moeller

Shadow Harvest (set in 5th Dynasty Egypt) by Stuart Boon

The Undesirables (set in Dark Ages France) by Oscar Rios

Tails of Terror is an anthology of sixteen horror stories featuring cats as protagonists. I provided title page illustrations for each story. A sampling of those illustrations are below. I’m not going to say which illustration goes to which story. That’s a surprise for folks who purchase the book.

Tails of Terror was edited by Brian Sammons and features these stories –

Brown Jenkin’s Reckoning by Edward M. Erdelac
Derpyfoot by Christine Morgan
The Cat in the Pall by Pete Rawlik
Ghost Story by Brian M. Sammons
Palest of Humans by Don Webb
Bats in the Belfry by William Meikle
Satisfaction Brought Him Back by Glynn Owen Barrass
The Bastet Society by Sam Stone
The Veil of Dreams by Stephen Mark Rainey
The Quest of Pumpkin the Brave by Oscar Rios
The Cats of the Rue d’Auseil by Neil Baker
The Knowledge of the Lost Master by Andi Newton
The Ruins of an Endless City by Lee Clark Zumpe
A Glint in the Eyes by D.A. Madigan
A Field Guide to Wanderlust Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
In the End there is a Drain by Tim Waggoner

My thanks go to Jeffrey Moeller for requesting me as illustrator for Tails of Valor. Big thanks also to Oscar Rios for taking a chance on me. It was great to get back to work. I’d been passing on commissions for a few years because my postal job had taken up so much time and physical energy. This project was an important part of helping me get some sanity and peace of mind again. Thanks also to Mark Shireman for his design work on both the books. They look fabulous.

Story Seed #28
Looking through a photo album you see that some of the photos have changed, they depict events differently than they used to.

There’s your uncle, laughing and smiling at a family picnic that he didn’t attend. There’s your mom and dad holding hands in a Christmas photo. You know they were fighting that year. You know you hadn’t been able to catch them in the same room together. There’s your best friend casting a mooning look at the girl who never noticed her. The girl is returning the look.

These aren’t new photos. These aren’t digital things that could be altered in Photoshop. These are prints that have been sitting in these albums for years. What happens when you show them to other people – the people in the photos? Will they remember the same events, the same life?

Lifestuff

Letter carriers advance in their careers mostly by seniority. The longer I’m with the post office the more personal and sick days I accrue. I get regular, scheduled raises rather than having to ask for them. When a route becomes available the person with the most seniority will beat out other bidders to claim said route.

Last Wednesday I senioritied into a parking space. Our station is located at the Westwood Mall in West Seattle. I’ve needed to park in the Mall’s parking lot since I started with USPS. Our station has a fenced parking lot for our delivery trucks. There are parking spaces for employees along the western edge of the lot. I didn’t get a spot in there. I got a spot along the drive into that parking lot. I got the second spot from the entrance.

I was notified about my new status last Tuesday by other carriers who had seen our new parking chart. On my own I wouldn’t have looked at the chart. I’ve been assuming that I wouldn’t have an assigned spot for years yet.

It’s a little satisfying to have lasted this long. I’m not going to get used to it. If carriers with greater seniority transfer in I’ll be back out in the mall lot. It’s nice for now though.

NewsletterStuff

I was inspired to (re)start writing a newsletter because I’ve subscribed to a number of newsletters and getting them in my inbox over the week helps me get outside the bubble that my version of the internet wants to keep me trapped within. Facebook shows me more of what I already “like”. Amazon shows me more of what I already “like”. Youtube shows me videos similar to the ones I’ve already watched. Google shows me more of what I’ve already searched for. Getting more of what I’ve already gotten makes me dull and stupid.

The newsletters send me places I wouldn’t go on my own and make me think about things I don’t automatically think about. This week I’m linking to Orbital Operations, from Warren Ellis. I’ve found a lot of the other newsletters I read via his newsletter. He’s a writer of comics and television and novels and other things who, when he has time, writes about science and the future. When he’s short on time he writes about his current projects and links to interesting things.

Subscribe

To get the subscription link, click on “Home” in the menu bar under the site banner. A whole list of links and nonsense will appear on the right. The subscription link will be under the search field at the top.

That’s it for this week. Be as good as you can. Forgive yourself when you screw up. Make amends when necessary. See you next Tuesday!

Valorous Cats and the Great War

Posted on August 24, 2018 by skook

It’s been a busy last couple months. I’ve been doing illustrations for two successful Kickstarters.

The first – Horrors of War – is a collection of Call of Cthulhu scenarios written by Adam Scott Glancy set during World War One. That one funded back in 2014. I originally contributed an illustration to the original Kickstarter video and illustrations to one of the scenarios. After that my life got too complicated for me to commit to meeting deadlines. Mr. Glancy’s life got complicated as well and work on the project stalled.

Things have simplified for me, enough that when he contacted me earlier this year I was able to happily commit to illustrating two more scenarios and a series of general illustrations for the book. The plan is to have the project done by 11/11/2018. I expect to have my parts done well before that.

At about the same time Oscar Rios of Golden Goblin Press let me know that things were a go for Cathulhu Kickstarter. That campaign ran from June 29th to July 29th and successfully overfunded. One of the successfully met stretch goals was to have a PDF of the illustrated edition of Tails of Terror available for October. That meant I needed to complete sixteen illustrations in August.

I turned in the last one this morning.

I’ve got lots of work yet to complete on both projects but I thought I’d take a moment to breathe and update this website. Cheers y’all!

Tails of Valor Cover Process

Posted on April 5, 2017 by skook

Last Sunday I posted my basic sketches for the individual images that I planned to have make up the cover for Tails of Valor. Here’s what I did to turn those images into the final cover illustration.

Using Photoshop I collaged the images in a variety of ways to find a balance that looked good. The version below is number seven.
Once I figured out the basic layout I did a rough sketch that combined all the images in a way that (hopefully) worked together aesthetically.

Next I did detailed pencils of each scene. We (the book’s editor and I) decided to have me do each scene as a separate image and then have book’s cover designer put them all together for the final product. I regularly combined my working images in order to be sure that I was getting a good balance for the final illustration.

Next I “flatted” images for coloring, meaning I separated out specific areas of each image that I wanted to be able to color individually. At this point I wasn’t necessarily choosing the final colors that I planned to use, just something close.

And then I started adding detailed colors, adjusting colors on specific layers, doing gradients and playing with different brushes. I really don’t have much to say from here on. There was trial. There was error. There was “Hey! That looks good!”

I hopped back and forth between all the illustrations but, in the beginning, I spent most of my time on the Egypt and Rome sections.

I made my biggest post-pencil changes here by moving the jumping cat in the Rome section up in space. The change doesn’t look like much but it makes the scene livelier.
And done. Mostly. I’ve made some tiny adjustments to parts of the illustrations since I created the jpeg below but I’m probably the only person who will notice them.

Golden Goblin Press will be kickstarting Tails of Valor in July. I’ll put a post about that when the time comes.

Tails of Valor Cover Sketches

Posted on April 2, 2017 by skook

I haven’t had a chance to finish any new illustrations for this site. I’ve been working on a cover for Tails of Valor, a collection of scenarios for the Cathulhu version of the Call of Cthulhu RPG to be published by Golden Goblin Press. There are three scenarios in the book: one set in Ancient Egypt during the time of the Pharaohs, one set in 15th century France during witch hysteria and one set in Rome at the time of Caligula. The editor asked me to create a cover that featured images from all three adventures.

Aaargh.

Multiple image covers are tricky. You’ve got to balance the images and colors so that the results are pleasing rather than just chaotic. I started by sketching an image for each scenario by itself. I figured that once I knew which basic image I would illustrate I could then figure out how to combine them in a way that looked good.

The Egypt image. The France image.

The Rome image.

Come back Wednesday for a process post of the cover from pencils to final colors.

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