Don’t look now. It’s that day again. The day this newsletter arrives in your email mailbox.

Hopefully.

For those of you who haven’t checked the website, three weeks ago I broke the subscription function for my newsletters. The subscription form had been inviting people to join the 530 folks who were subscribed to Skookworks. I went looking for where that number was coming from, got distracted and, in the process of adding some new functions, I shut off the subscription one.

And then I didn’t have any dedicated time for a couple of weeks to figure out what I’d broken.

On Sunday I made some adjustments to the function of Skookworks and the “subscription” function is back on the main page. Ideally that means subscriptions get sent out again. I still don’t know where the subscription form was getting the idea that 530 people were subscribed. It’s currently listing a number that actually matches all y’alls email addresses.

So … HI!

These Days …

Sarah gets back in town tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to that. I enjoy my own company but we got married because we enjoy each others company and I’ve been missing hers. We’ve been talking and texting on a daily basis. That’s fun. Being physically in the same place will be more fun.

We’re still looking for a new housemate. We’ve had one person come by and look at the place and have another scheduled to come by on Monday. We’ve only had one scammer contact us and that got no further than one email exchange. Never trust someone who wants to sent you money to rent a place sight unseen.

We have a Craigslist ad up that I need to repost. The thing disappeared off the front page of the site after a day. I’ve been checking other listings to be sure that we’re not asking more than average. I see very few listings for our area of Seattle. Does that mean this neighborhood is unpopular? Or do people living here just not want to leave so there aren’t spaces available?

I’m working on some color illustrations for an RPG manual. I’ll show them off when the book gets published. You’ll have to trust me that they are pretty good.

When I’m working on art I like to have either music or a Youtube video playing in the background. Despite Youtube being a video sharing platform a lot of what’s featured is just someone talking into a microphone. Those videos don’t require me to look at them to get their points. I listen some politics, some media reviews, some examinations of social phenomena, some people giving their opinions of other peoples opinions. There are a lot of videos focusing on that last one.

There are a few Youtube channels that require me to actually watch the videos to get the full effect. One of those, that I think should get more attention, is the Panel Jumper. I did a portrait of Cole Hornaday and Ben Laurance back in 2020. The channel features video essays on the history of comics. A couple of my favorites are:

The One about Swamp Monsters

The One about Octobriana

Their current project is a documentary on Peter Antoniou – Apostle of the Impossible. They’ll be filming here in Seattle on August 22nd and September 18th. I may have to stay up past my bedtime to attend one of those.

Designing for …

Redbubble is a terrible place to try to sell ones own designs. It is designed as a site to sell people things. Any things. If you’re trying to get folks to buy just your things Redbubble will insist on showing people other things by other people.

But Redbubble is a great site for practicing making designs. They give you a variety of products on which to position your design. You can see how an image looks on t-shirts, mugs, bathmats, shower curtains and clocks. You discover that almost no designs work on miniskirts.

I do sell the occasional something through my store at Redbubble. Supposedly one could rake in the bucks if one chases trends, owns a category or has a big social media presence.

Me? I have fun making art. Having the store gives me a place to put that art. I hustle enough at the Post Office. Here is a process GIF of one of my recent designs.

You can find it on schtuff here.

I hope your week has been eminently tolerable. I know we’re being told that the world is going to hell and that we should be mad at somebody. I’m not going to argue. I’m just going to do my best to make my corner of the world better today than it was yesterday. I’ll still be angry but I’ll try to be rational about it. (Yes, I know that’s an oxymoron.)

See you in seven!