Tag Archives: View from an Oak Tree

Skook WiP #102

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Greetings from the Pacific Northwest!

I’ve been feeling kinda brain dead the last few mornings. I get up, pour myself a mug of coffee and stagger down the hall to my studio. I sit at my computer and stare at the screen for a bit. Spending November writing on Daughter of Spiders was great for building the habit of writing each day. Writing instead of scrolling my social media feeds. A bunch of bad writing at least feels like I’ve made an effort. Social media scrolling can be fun and I enjoy snarking with folks but I rarely feel like I’ve accomplished anything.

I’ve gotten a bit stalled on the actual story of Daughter so I’ve been spending some time writing background i.e. world building. How much of it will end up in the story? I’ll know when I write more of the story I guess.

This morning I’m writing to y’all.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features a meeting on the road, travelers exchanging stories and giving directions.

This design can be found:
On a mug in my Zazzle store
On a variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store

Mighty Nizz

The last page of the first Mighty Nizz comic posted on Wednesday. Below is what the art looked like when I scanned it into Photoshop. Go here to see what the final art looks like.

I’m currently inking the next Nizz story. It’s eighteen pages. I work on art in the evenings after work and as I have time on the days that the post office isn’t using my body to shlep around mail. I’m expecting to be able to post the first page on February 1st. I prefer to have the whole story finished before I show off any of it.

Thank you for reading. The nights are getting longer. Stay warm. Have some hot chocolate. Or eggnog. Toast to the good days and laugh at the bad.

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #101

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Welcome back!

These Days

It’s dark. Dark when I’m writing this. Dark when I go to work at USPS. Getting dark again when I finish my deliveries. We even had some dustings of snow. I suspect that it’s winter.

It’s the 2nd of December. I kinda sorta participated in National Novel Writing Month in November by expanding Daughter of Spiders. When I first thought of adding to Daughter  I’d planned to just be making the original 2013 posts a bit longer and more detailed. They were all very short – hints at stories rather than stories themselves. Once I started writing? I found myself turning those short memoir excerpts into complete chapters. No, I didn’t write 50,000 words. I didn’t expect to. I haven’t added up what I did write. I’d rather not know just yet. I did find that, if I continue expanding each post in the same way, I’ll probably write at least 400,00 words. That likely means that my intention of posting a new version of Daughter, complete with new illustrations, in 2025 is probably optimistic.

In order to make time to write I took myself off all my social media. I’m only on a few platforms – Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. Staying off Twitter was easy. I haven’t posted anything myself in years. I get links to tweets emailed to me by Twitter in hopes of getting me to come to the site. Last month I just deleted the emails without opening them. Tumblr and Facebook took a little more effort to ignore. I see a lot of artwork that I like and am inspired by on Tumblr. I like wishing people happy birthday and snarking on folks’ posts on Facebook. I used to wake up by drinking coffee and scrolling my feeds. In November I drank coffee and wrote. By the time I had to make breakfast and get in my uniform I … had feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment from … well … accomplishing something. Having accomplished something at day’s beginning makes spending 9+ hours delivering marketing and propaganda (and parcels) a lot easier. So, while I’m not committing to a strict fast of social media, I am going to maintain the habit of just writing in the mornings.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features Medusa tending to some of her permanent guests. I like Medusa. She’s a sympathetic monster, one of many of the victims of the Greek gods.

This design can be found –
On a mug in my Zazzle store
On a variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store

Mighty Nizz

Below is the scan of the physical art for the 9th page of the first Mighty Nizz comic. The final version of the page can be read at the site.

I’ve finished the pencils for the next Mighty Nizz story. Inking, shading and coloring will take a while but they are in progress. I prefer to have a whole story finished before posting the first page. That’s likely to be sometime in January or February. I’ll keep you updated.

‘Tis the Season

Christmas is coming up. If you know someone that you think would like my illustrations on schtuff, now is the time to order that schtuff. Heck, if you’d like a present for yourself, go for it! The sooner the better. Give the folks at Zazzle or Redbubble time to make it and send it.

I’ll see you next week.

Take care. Take flight!

Skook WiP #100

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Greetings!

It’s the day after Thanksgiving. Hopefully you celebrated like a human instead of a Puritan. Those guys were jerks.

I am celebrating the 100th issue of the Skook Works in Progress Newsletter by mentioning that this is the 100th issue of the newsletter and otherwise moving on. Yay!

For NaNoWriMo I am expanding the text of Daughter of Spiders. New illustrations will get done as time permits. (The first time took almost two years.)

Otherwise –

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features a collection of dangerous women. Dangerous women are good. Don’t let sad men tell you otherwise.

This design can be found on:
A mug in my Zazzle store
A variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Also –

This second process GIF is of another dangerous woman. I’d originally planned this image as another mug design but once I started rendering her a full body portrayal seemed like a better direction.

You can find her on schtuff in the Redbubble store.

Mighty Nizz

Page eight of the first Mighty Nizz story can be seen at MightyNizz.com. This is a scan of the physical art. The final (cleaned up) color version is at the site.
Until next time
Jump
Climb
and ambush the creatures who threaten to do you harm.
Hug and cuddle those who just want to be good company.

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #99

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November 18th. I hope you are well. Well groomed, well fed, and well thought of.

I’m working at updating and expanding Daughter of Spiders for NaNoWriMo. It’s taking the majority of my words this month.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF is of an illustration of the sort of tree you want to have around if you want to read outside on a dark night.

This design can be found on:
A mug in my Zazzle store
All sorts of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Mighty Nizz

The seventh page of the first Mighty Nizz story can be read now. A scan of the original art is below. The colored version is at MightyNizz.com.

Thanksgiving is next week. Be the best company you can. Eat as much as makes you happy. Reject the Puritan strain that infects American Culture. Those guys were anti-fun.

See you on the day after!

Skook WiP #98

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It’s 11/11/22. It’s the 11th day of the 11th month. The war to end all wars ended today back in 1918.

Yeah. No comment.

I’m off social media and putting my best efforts into updating Daughter of Spiders as my project for NaNoWriMo. Any internet use has to be for historical research for the story. No current news. No gossip. No reviews of old b-movies.

Mugshots

This month’s process GIF features a girl and her dragon. Or perhaps a dragon and her girl. Or maybe the tragic death of a lollypop. It’s all a matter of perspective.

It’s available as:
A mug in my Zazzle store
A lot of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Mighty Nizz

The latest page of the first Mighty Nizz story is up. The scan of the original art is below. The final colored version can be seen at MightyNizz.com.

Versus

Back in October I was commissioned to do a portrait of someone, a friend of a friend. The initial suggestion was to portray the fellow taking out a giant bug.
The commissioner also thought it might be fun to portray his friend as Katsuki Bakugo (a character from the anime My Hero Academia) fighting Meruem (a character from the anime Hunter x Hunter).
My client gave me the choice of depicting either scenario. I sent him sketches for both and asked him to choose his favorite. He went with the anime version.
I worked up pencils for the portrait. I’m not familiar with either of the animes from which these characters originate so I had to do some research to get their details right. I think I did fairly well.

Once I got approval on the pencils I moved on to inks and then spot blacks and shading.
Below is the final version. I had to be a little more careful with this project than with illustrations that are intended for print. I can fix errors on those pieces digitally. The physical art for this one went to the client so it had to be as clean and mistake free as possible.
That’s it for this week.

Take care. Take charge. Take flight.

See you next Friday!

Skook WiP #97

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How are you doing? Are you getting enough to eat? Getting enough rest? Did you vote?

It’s the fourth day of November. That means I’m four days into expanding Briar Rose Taylor’s memoirs. I’m not expecting to get the 50,000 words written necessary to turn Daughter of Spiders into a novel. I’m using National Novel Writing Month as a prompt to get work done now that otherwise I’d do … someday. I’m putting in at least an hour first thing in the morning before breakfast, chores and then doing time at USPS. In the evenings I’m having dinner, hanging out with Sarah and illustrating the next Mighty Nizz story. I’m taking a break from social media. I’m writing the bulk of all of November’s newsletters in October and doing quick additions and edits before they actually post.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features a space station with infinite living space. Infinite corridors anyway. For infinite running from infinitely hungry aliens.

This design is available on:
A mug at my Zazzle store
All kinds of schtuff at my Redbubble store.

Mighty Nizz

The latest page of the first Mighty Nizz story is live at MightyNizz.com. A scan of the physical art is below. The final, color version of this page can be seen at the website.

A New Mouse

Part of the advantage of print on demand is that I can change the designs if I think of ways to improve them and I’m not stuck with a bunch of stock I don’t want to sell. I recently started wearing a t-shirt with the image below emblazoned on it. At the end of the first day I thought of a way to improve the design.
Below is the new version. It’s available on all sorts of stuff in my Redbubble store. Both the original (because it looks better on some products than the update) and the new version are available in my Zazzle store.
Have a great week!

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #96

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Greetings and salutations!

This issue and, most likely, November’s newsletters, will be shorter on personal news than previous issues. In order to give myself time for NaNoWriMo in November I’m writing at least the basics of the letters in October. Given that I have no powers of prognostication I’ll be leaving off the “These Days” sections. Let’s just pretend that I’m having fun delivering mail and getting lots of writing done in my off hours.

Mugshots

This month’s process GIF is … hmmm. One of those images that came to me without any explanation. I’m sure there’s a story to be told here but I’ll leave it you to start it.
This design can be found on:
A mug in my Zazzle store
A variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Mighty Nizz

Below is the scan of the latest page of the first Mighty Nizz story. The finished color page can be found here.

Sketches

Practice, practice.

Daughter of Spiders

I’ll be setting up a gallery (or galleries) for the illustrations featured in this project. The text will be going away on November 1st. If you’d like to read it before then I recommend starting here.

I hope your week goes smoothly and is dotted with plenty of joyful moments.

See you in seven!

Skook WiP #95

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Yesterday was Thursday. That means today is …
Newsletter Day!

These Days …

Last week we went to Mississippi. I’m supposed to schedule my vacations at the beginning of each year. That week wasn’t scheduled. We had friends who decided to get married after all my vacation time had been nailed down. All the slots last week were already taken. Fortunately I was able to get one of the other carriers to give up her vacation time so I could use it.

Monday and Friday were both spent traveling. Monday involved getting to the airport. Going through security. Waiting around. Sitting on a cramped plane. Trekking across the next airport from our arrival gate to our next departure gate. More sitting on another, smaller cramped plane. Getting a rental car. Getting to the hotel. Friday was basically the reverse. The folks who work at the airport and on the planes were generally kind, friendly and helpful. The people who run the airline industry and profit from it are horrible monsters who deserve nothing but contempt. I’d rant more but I’ve already given them two days of my life.

Our time in Mississippi, Tuesday to Thursday, was quite pleasant. We’ve known the bride for decades, me since high school, Sarah since the beginning of this century. We met the groom on Tuesday and, thankfully, liked him and enjoyed his company quite a lot. We’ve been considering moving to Mississippi when I retire (living in Seattle gets more cost prohibitive every year) so we were also doing a little exploring when we weren’t hanging out with our friends.

The wedding on Wednesday evening was small. I performed the ceremony. The bride and groom wrote their own vows. They’d intended to have it outdoors in their backyard (they have five acres) but, after days of sunshine, a storm had rolled in, so we did it in their living room.

Thursday Sarah and I did some more exploring in the morning and hung out with our friends in the afternoon. We talked. We cooked. We listened to old records. We ate. It was very good.

This week has been one of my scheduled vacations. As is traditional, we haven’t gone anywhere. We just hang out, I do some art and spread out the chores that I would normally be trying to stuff into my evenings and single days off.

Process Writing

David Mann has written a process post about the comic I illustrated. Follow the link to read all about it.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF is of a trio of faces. Mugs for mugs. Or whatever.
Available on:
A mug in my Zazzle store
A variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Mighty Nizz

The third page of the first Mighty Nizz comic is live at her website. Below is the scan of the original art. Follow the link to see the page in color.

Sketches

I do a lot of sketches. Most of them are a patchwork of faces and partial figures and random things. This week I’ve been doing some sketches with the idea of depicting full figures in relation to each other. I liked the way these turned out so I’m sharing them here.
NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month. I usually forget about it until I see someone posting about it early in November. Life is too busy for me to play catch up so, at that point, I figure it’s too late for me to participate. “Maybe next year,” I tell myself.

This year, on October 15th, Facebook tossed one of those historic “Maybe next year” posts into my reminders feed. That’s an early enough notice for me to think about whether I could join in with any success. NaNoWriMo considers a novel to be about 50,000 words. 50,000 words divided by 30 days is about 1700 words a day. A double spaced manuscript is about 250-300 words a page so I’d need to average about five and a half pages a day.

Given the other things I am responsible for and want to accomplish, I don’t think I could succeed at writing a novel.

Except.

I can use NaNoWriMo as a prompt to make progress on updating one of my earlier projects.

Daughter of Spiders is an illustration/writing project that I posted here daily in 2013. Back in (I think) 2010 I’d had the idea that it would be fun to do a portrait of every version of the Frankenstein Monster. I thought it would give me subject matter to post here. Then I thought of adding portraits of monsters/creatures that were take offs of the Monster, mostly from B-movies. And then I thought it would be fun to do portraits of other monsters from B-movies. And, for me, every picture tells a story, I started thinking of a story that would connect all those portraits. And that led me to invent some characters and scenarios and an overarching mythology to tie things together. It became something very large, featuring illustrations of beings inspired by pulp fiction, horror movies, fairy tales and … stuff.

Originally I planned to start posting in 2011. As the project got more complicated I pushed the start date to 2012. I finally started posting on January 1st, 2013. Each illustration was accompanied by a short “excerpt” from Briar Rose Taylor’s memoirs.

Every once in a while I’ve thought about expanding those excerpts and doing new illustrations. This last Wednesday I read through the whole project. For a moment I thought about trying to put out a new version starting in 2023 – ten years since the first version was posted! Cool!

Dumb. 2023 is set aside for the Mighty Nizz.

But I did decide that I will do a revision and expansion. At the moment I’m thinking I could be ready to post the new version in 2024 but I’ll be okay if I can’t do it until 2025.

Skookworks.com is already a massive website. Rather than create 365 new posts I’ll be pulling the original posts, expanding them and reposting them with new illustrations in 2024 (or 2025). If you’ve never read the original series you have until November 1st to do so. Start here. Click on “next” at the top right of the post to go to the next installment.

And that’s it for this week.

May the next seven days treat you well!

Skook WiP #93

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Hello World! Hello hello! Thank your gods it’s another day above ground!

Unless you’re a troglophile. In which case, go deeper!

These Days …

More overtime at USPS.

A couple of veteran carriers retired last week and we’re trying to cover. One of those carriers was an overtime king, regularly casing and carrying multiple routes in addition to his own. He’d put in 35 years and had over 3000 hours of accumulated sick days.

Today will be the last day for three of our sorting clerks. They’ve made “career” and are being sent to the plant. So tomorrow we’ll be running behind getting parcels and magazines and mail distributed. Management asked for volunteers from the carriers to come in early to help out and I was tempted to volunteer. I keep thinking that I’m not really that injured. That my knee is more functional than it is. It can do all things the other knee can. For a while. A few hours of standing and walking and it reminds me that it is, in fact, weaker than the other knee.

I do my best to help out. I volunteer to carry off other routes. Before the injury I always volunteered for walking routes. I like walking. Now I have to restrict myself to carrying off mounted routes – the ones where you drive along filling mailboxes from the window of your truck. Even then I’m trying to keep my work hours as close to eight as possible. I’m not going to put in 35 years but I’d like to make it to a designated retirement age.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features a lovely lady. If you like blizzards and ice.

This design is available –
On a mug in my Zazzle store
On schtuff in my Redbubble store

Tintin in the Land of Disillusion and Aching Bones

I discovered Tintin when I was a kid. I don’t remember how old I was. I’m sure I’d been reading American comics (especially Spider-Man) for awhile. My family was visiting a friend of my mother’s and the woman had copies of The Shooting Star and (I think) both parts of Tintin’s adventure to the Moon.

I  recently found a site that has a treasure trove of Tintin covers – the originals, parodies, homages and take offs. The site is running a cover contest. A few years ago I did a watercolor painting of a middle-aged and weary Tintin. I combined that painting with some stolen Tintin cover dress to produce the image below.

After I submitted, I got this response from Swapmeet Dave –
“I put together the Tintin pages some time ago and got a good response then, but in each of the years since, I get just one or two submissions or comments. But then, just last week, I got 3 new pastiches and now yours! I’ll get them on the site the next time I update it. As a deaf 83-year-old geezer, I just don’t have the energy that I used to.”

That was back in August. Dave hasn’t added my submission yet but I don’t mind. I only hope I’ve got it together enough to think about running a website when I’m 83.

Mighty Nizz

The first page of the first Mighty Nizz story is live!

I installed the Toocheke webcomics plug-in at the Mighty Nizz site. Once I figured out that it didn’t want to play with the WordPress theme that was already there I installed the Toocheke theme. Now it looks very different from this site. I’d like having a standard appearance across my mob of sites but I’ll take functionality over conformity. Some of that functionality (the navigation buttons for instance) won’t be apparent until multiple pages of the story have been posted. I’m still playing around with the layout and organization. If you have any problems or suggestions, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Below is a scan of the physical art of the first page.

The final colored page is here.

May your Friday be a good one and your Saturday be even better!

See you in seven!