Skook Words (and Pictures) #24

Fffffrrriiiddddaaaayyyyy.

(And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.)

These Days …

Sarah has been gone for a week now, helping a friend deal with family medical problems. I am a big fan of routines and this has messed up my routines.

I am also aware that a break in routine in important for recognizing which parts of a routine are valuable and which parts are just things you do because you’ve been doing them.

I’m not complaining. I’m observing.

Having a job means that most of my routines are still intact. I get up at the same time. I make breakfast at the same time. I come home at … whatever time I get done. I go to bed at the same time. What’s different so far are my eating and sleeping habits. I’m only cooking for me. I’m not watching any of our shows. Watching shows was a social occasion. Something we did at during dinner. Sleeping is just me turning out all the lights and collapsing.

The cats still wake me up in the middle of the night in order to be fed. They have their routines as well.

The Process

This is the last set of colors for these sketches. I like the results. I can’t claim that the lighting and shadows are accurate and realistic. I’ll have to try the process on a comic story to see whether I like the results there.


They’re Still Here

When I was a kid, I loved dinosaurs. Not that many had been discovered. I could probably name most of them. At the time, dinosaurs were thought to be stupid, cold blooded, slow moving reptiles that lived in swamps and became extinct because … no one was really sure why they became extinct. Probably they were just too dumb to live. The mammals showed up and the big dumb lizards decided to just give up and die.

In the decades since I was kid, dinosaurs have evolved. More and more of them have been discovered. There are too many now for me to name. They got faster. More varied. More adaptive. More social. More … feathery. Less dumb. It became clear that they didn’t die out because the mammals out competed them. It took having an asteroid dropped on the earth to wipe them out. And it still failed. Dinosaurs never really went extinct. Sure, the really big ones are gone. But we’re surrounded by their descendants.

Birds are dinosaurs.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The egg.

From a feathered dinosaur.

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

That’s it for me. I hope the next seven days are kind to you. I hope you share that kindness with others, whether they need it or not.

See you next ffffrrrriiidddaaayyyy.

Finnegan’s Brink #1 (cover A) in Color

Finnegan's Brink 1 cover B coloredIt’s only in recent years that I’ve felt comfortable doing color illustrations. Being able to make changes in Photoshop helps a lot with that. Back in 1994 I wasn’t very comfortable with my abilities so the publisher hired Julia Lacquement to color the cover of the first issue of Finnegan’s Brink. I think she did fine job. I don’t know anything about her process. The publisher got her a copy of my illustration and I only knew she colored it when he showed me the final painting.

Little Red: Detail Work

Once areas of flat color have been laid down I can work on adjusting the details. If I don’t like a color I can adjust it. I use the colorization feature of Photoshop to change tones and shadows from their original grays to whatever hue fits best with main color of that area of the illustration.

I’m not quite finished with this illustration. I have a few small areas where I need to add or adjust colors but it felt done enough that when Nizzibet asked me to send her a copy I was happy to do so. Little did I realize that she ulterior motives. She used it for a present for a friend’s birthday.

New Hat Cup

I think it turned out pretty well. Any further adjustments I make will probably only be noticed by me. And any changes I make just make this cup more of a unique object.

Little Red: Flat Color

Laying down flat colors is the least interesting part of creating an illustration. Sometimes it’s fun but mostly it’s a matter of making sure that you’ve filled in all the little spots where you want a certain color or made sure that all the large areas are outlined properly so that you can use the paint bucket tool to fill the middle. I put all the colors on a separate layer than the black and white art. You could do your coloring on the original art layer but making any changes if you make a mistake would be next to impossible.