Tag Archives: The Black Seal

Skook Words (and Pictures) #38

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Greeting and salutations!

Welcome back to another edition of the Skookworks newsletter.

I hope you are doing well and that your week has passed pleasantly.

My week has had rain and family medical issues. Neither of these were a surprise. The rain is part of the reason we moved to the Pacific Northwest. It keeps things green. The medical stuff is manageable but it takes time and attention.

Which Team Do You Root For?

Vampires or Werewolves? Vampires vs. Werewolves? Out of the great variety of supernatural creatures in Western mythology the Vampire and the Werewolf seem the most popular. Vampires come out on top, most of the time. There are far more stories/novels/movies/series about vampires than werewolves.

It makes sense. The original vampires were bloodsucking corpses. Currently they are (mostly) sexy immortals.

The original werewolves were humans who transformed into wolves and killed people. They were generally pretty mortal. Sometimes they turned into vampires after they died. Currently werewolves are humans who turn into wolfpeople and then they kill people. Not in sexy ways.

In general, I prefer werewolves over vampires. Most vampires are murderous assholes. They don’t have to be. They know what they are doing  but they do it anyway. Werewolves, on the other hand, are most bloodthirsty beast, lacking the intelligence or human memory to stop them from snacking on whoever happens to be handy. And they look cool.

That said, here’s a sexy vampire lady.


This lovely creature is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Out of the Aeons

That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die.

In other words, you never know when a project that you thought was dead will come kicking back to life. My first illustrations in the gaming industry were for The Black Seal #1, a magazine focusing on Call of Cthulhu related material that came out Sixtystone Press back in 2003. I did more illustrations for the second and third issues. For the fourth issue I did the cover illustration.

Numbers 2 and 3 came out soon after the first, but number 4 … got lost. For almost 20 years.

This summer it finally found its way out of the crypt.

Have a look –

It’s currently available at DriveThruRPG.com.

Working Digitally

I find that having specific projects helps me to practice my art skills. The Vamp up above is the last of “Big Face” designs I did for my Redbubble store. Those were done to see how much I could improvise in ink. My recent process has been to do rough sketch with a non-photo blue pencil, do a tighter sketch over that in regular pencil, scan that into Photoshop, remove the blue lines, convert the remaining pencils into new non-photo blue lines, print that out, ink it, scan the inked version into Photoshop, drop out the blue lines, clean up the black lines and then color the image digitally either in Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint (sometimes both, depending on the techniques needed).

I’m used to that process and it hadn’t seemed that involved until –

We got this cat, Crunch by name, with the thought that he would give our older cat, Kemo, company and keep him from wanting my attention when I want to draw. Silly us. Whereas Kemo meows (and sometimes claws my leg) when he wants to be noticed, Crunch just flops down wherever I happen to be. This makes inking with a brush and an open container of ink kinda challenging. And not relaxing.

So I figure it’s time to improve my digital skills. My next project starts with these sketches –

These are the first four of about a dozen physical sketches that I’ll be turning into finished illustrations, mostly with Clip Studio. I’ll be inking them digitally. I’m concentrating on Clip Studio because
A) the program is specifically designed for doing comics
B) the program is much less expensive than Photoshop

All of the illustrations are going to be images from The Surrilana Depths. They’re not intended for the finished version. They’re to help me develop the world, the characters and the style I plan to use in the finished version. I’ll start showing the results next week.

I hope you the next seven days are good to you. If the universe insists on giving you nonsense, I hope that you are able to be good to yourself.

Thank you for reading. See you sooner!

 

Tuesday Night Party Club #38

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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.

Tuesday Night Party Club #36

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Gallery – The Black Seal #1

I did my first RPG illustration work for The Black Seal back in 2001. AOL has purged all the archives of their inactive accounts so I can’t check the sequence of communications that led me to contribute. I remember being contacted by John Turner first. He’d seen my illustrations on the Delta Green website and asked if I would be interested in submitting illustrations to a new fanzine of modern day Call of Cthulhu (and specifically Delta Green related) adventures in Britain. I emailed back a positive response and was soon working with Adam Crossingham, the editor, doing illustrations for the first issue of The Black Seal. 

The Black Seal was named for an Arthur Machen story “The Novel of the Black Seal” about a hidden civilization secreted in the wilderness in Wales. The magazine’s focus was to be on material about PISCES, the UK’s Mythos fighting equivalent of Delta Green. I provided specific illustrations for a few articles and some random simple spot illustrations to be used as needed. I didn’t know what print quality TBS would have so I mostly did straight black and white work. I did spend a lot of time doing Photoshop effects on the second illustration in this gallery. I was still very inexperienced with the program and was figuring it out as I went along.

 

The Black Seal saw three issues printed between 2002 and 2004. I did illustrations in each issue and provided material for a couple issues that may see print someday. Work on TBS got me started doing Call of Cthulhu related illustrations. I’ll be showing some of that in future newsletters.

Story Seed #55
A Conspiracy of Squirrels

Most animal attack stories focus on large predators. Sharks. Bears. Wolves. Small varmints are primarily represented by rats. But rats hide in dark places. You usually don’t see them during the day. Squirrels? If you live in a town with trees you see them constantly. They’re everywhere.

Spying.
Plotting.
Organizing.

They only look cute until there are hundreds of them out for your blood.

Recommendation

This week I recommend How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctrow. Doctrow is a writer and activist with a focus on the benefits and dangers of modern technologies, particularly the internet. This is his latest book, free to read online.

Local News

I spent more time on my Redbubble store than my Zazzle store this week. Redbubble’s set up makes it easier to position on image on multiple products so it’s made it easier to feel like I’m getting more done. Mostly I’m importing images that I created to show off here at Skookworks in recent years but I’m beginning to create some images just for Zazzle and Redbubble. My favorites have been expansions of some designs I originally did as bandanas for Dagon Industries. The images are on most of the products in my Redbubble store. Since Zazzle’s focus is on individual products I’ve started by putting the design on the square puzzles.

This Cthulhu design is meant to be displayed as a diamond but Zazzle doesn’t offer that option. Just turn your head to the left a bit.

Great Cthulhu Glow Green Jigsaw Puzzle

Great Cthulhu Glow Green Jigsaw Puzzle

by Skookworks

That’s it for this week. I appreciate the visit. I hope that you’ve got people around you who keep you amused and make you feel loved. If you do, thank them! They’ll only get more amusing and loving.

Available Now

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Two publications of interest have just become available.

The PDF version of Investigator Weapons, volume 1 is ready for those folks who don’t need dead tree editions. This is the first book from Sixtystone Press. Sixtystone are the guys behind The Black Seal. It’s by Hans-Christian Vortisch under a fine cover by Chris Huth. I recommend it.

Also available is The AKLONOMICON, an illustrated anthology of Lovecraftian fiction. It’s huge and beautifully ugly. I’ve provided illustrations for a couple of the stories. A complete table of contents can be found here.

Ahead

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Project Updates

I’ve updated the front page at Sentient 39. Finally some original art – giving a hint to what the series will be about.

No 2004 calendar. I needed to have managed my time better this year. Ah well, I’ve got a head start on 2005.

The Black Seal #3 is scheduled to go to press in December. Lots of illustrations to finish for that.

Illustration work for Mandate of Heaven continues, a little bit at a time.

Back Up

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Epilogue.net is back up. It seemed to load pretty fast even over our 56k modem. They won’t be accepting new work for a while yet. Which is fine – I’ve got a lot of illustrations to do that either don’t fit their format or that I wouldn’t want to submit until after they’ve been published by the people who commissioned them. I haven’t had a chance to check the links between here and there yet. I’ll do that later this morning.

Today I should be able to finish one or two of the illustrations for The Road Less Travelled for the next issue of The Black Seal. At least finish them to pre-photoshop stage. Photoshoping is often the trickiest part. It’s easy to get caught up in adding needless effects and flourishes that take a lot of time to produce but do nothing to improve the illustration itself.