Retrospective Sketchbook: Two Weeks To Go!

Wednesday May 20, 2026 • Howard Tayler

“I think I’ll take up doodling as a hobby.”

I said that to Sandra twenty-six years ago, in March of 2000. Less than four months later I’d launched Schlock Mercenary online. My writing decent, if perhaps a bit dad-jokey. My art was really, really rough¹.

We’re doing a book about this.

You can back the project over on Kickstarter. If we hit our $30k stretch goal (not far off right now, it’s pretty likely we’ll get there) then the book will grow from 32 pages to 80 pages.

As of this writing we have just over two weeks remaining in the project. Click the link to get all the details, and to see some sample pages.

Sandra is in charge of this, because I dislike my early art enough to not want to touch it. I’m spending my time right now working on the bonus stories² for book 20, and that Kickstarter project won’t launch until I’ve made a lot more progress on them.

For right now, though, you can help us a lot by backing Doodling as a Hobby: The Retrospective Sketchbook of an Accidental Career. My art and writing have come a long way since March of 2000, but one thing that has remained constant—and constantly amazing—is the support and generosity of you fine folks who followed me on the trip.

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¹ I’ve often said that the only way for my early art to suck any harder would be for us to raise atmospheric pressure.
² Yes, that’s “stories,” plural.

We All Have Rawwrs Together

Saturday February 21, 2026 • Howard Tayler

I’m working on the bonus story, “Refulgence of Refuge,” and the final panel has to do quite a bit of heavy lifting. If you’re familiar with book 19 then you know (spoiler alert) that a civilization of feathered raptor-oids among Earth’s dinosaurs was rescued by an advanced civilization. “Refulgence of Refuge” gives us the details of this rescue, and because of the title, which literally means “shininess of the safe place,” I need to make the some panels, especially the last one, live up to the word “refulgent.”

Back when the only version of THE LION KING was the original animated feature Sandra and I came up with a term to describe certain kinds of triumphant endings: “we all have rawwrs together.” And of course the JURASSIC PARK franchise features several iconic closing scenes in which a dinosaur (the t. rex, usually) goes “rawwr” with a cool backdrop.

So, the closing panel needed some shiny and some roaring. I’m not revealing the entire thing here, but I’m happy to share the “rawwr” part of the panel.

How close am I to being finished? In lieu of a progress bar, here’s a spreadsheet full of tick-boxes.

My goal is to finish everything during the first week of March, and then race through the various editorial, commentary, and marginalia tasks for Book 19 in time to send it to the printer at the end of March.

Progress Report: the Impact Panel

Tuesday January 20, 2026 • Howard Tayler

This took longer than I wanted it to.

It’s for just one panel in the Book 19 bonus story, but it’s an important panel, and it needs to look good. In the amount of time I spent noodling on this? 2018’s version of me could have written and illustrated two weeks of comics.

I do, however, take comfort knowing that 2018’s version of me, while quite good at his job, could not have done this panel without focused practice and enough time to become 2019’s version of me.

Much of the time I spent working on this piece went into research. I had questions: What was the angle of the impactor? How large was it? What are the physics of the impact? I looked at lots of art from science communications (sci-comm) folks, and tried to reconcile their many different approaches with the theories about the event, and (of course) with the picture *I* wanted to draw.

Yes, it was time-consuming, but I learned some new things, and I learned how to DO some new things, and right now I’m pretty pleased with the results.