Caligan Blue

@caliganblue.com

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Web developer, writer, reader, keeper of cats, SF&F fan. caliganblue.com

Numbered Pantone color chart
Head and hands of a werewolf suspended in empty space over the vaguest sketch of a window frame. Palms, fingertips, tongue, and nose are pressed to the imaginary glass.
Battered cover of a paperback copy of Wizard's Bane, by Rick Cook. Image shows several dragons in flight, with front and center a dragon diving slightly off center toward the viewer, its helmeted head gape-jawed in threat, while its rider fires a flaming arrow from a bow. Blurb in upper left reads, "'The Wiz' had been a demon programmer--but now he was in a world where his spells had better work--the *first* time!"
Cover of a hardcover version of Poppy Z. Brite's book Drawing Blood. Cover shows an evening skyline view of small separate houses, black against a deepening purple-pink sky, with the moon risen behind fractal black froths of bare tree branches, while at the bottom the tree roots can be seen against a darkening white background. In the center is a cutout rectangle with a warm gold and deep black image of an androgynous person's face, bent forward with long unkempt hair hanging, while the clawed foot of some kind of bird (resembling a chicken) reaches up toward their eyes. The person's mouth appears to be smeared, perhaps bloody.
Cover of Summer of Night by Dan Simmons. Illustration is from the inside of an old house, an open window bracketed by antique-style lamps, with diaphanous curtains blowing inward to either side. Centered in the view of the window is a nighttime horizon with two children on pedal bikes centered.
Rather round black and white cat lies slumped over a circular cardboard scratcher toy, looking like her world has ended.
Cover of Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons, with a cover made up of various types of green plants, and purple flowers, interwoven with sneaky hints of dragon - spiky-scale tail, a gleaming slitted eye.
Six books by John Bellairs, with five balanced on end to display their spines and one displaying the cover; The House With a Clock in Its Walls, The Beast Under the Wizard's Bridge, The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, The Dark Secret of Weatherend, The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull, and finally The Secret of the Underground Room. This last has a sketch-and-ink drawing of a taller person and a shorter person standing at a doorway, where two cloaked figures with strangely blank heads peer out at them. Tagline: Some secrets can kill. A Johnny Dixon - Professor Childermass Book.
A freshly-baked toasty brown loaf of bread bulging out of a bread pan, dotted on top with a cluster of chocolate chips.
Bluesky's Languages settings page, showing no option to disable automatic translation.
Cover of a paperback copy of Crystal Singer, by Anne McCaffrey. Depicts a woman in a utilitarian jumpsuit and boots, wielding a type of drill on one hand, while leaning back ecstatically and lifting a large cut black crystal toward the rising sun.
Cover of The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, by Tamora Pierce, book 3 of The Song of the Lioness Quartet. Image is of a woman riding a white, lightly caparisoned horse; a full face mask, leg covers, and chest piece. The woman is wearing a sleeveless white top and a flowing red cape, as well as white riding pants and boots.
The covers of Alan Dean Foster's books Glory Lane and Quozl. One shows a punk, an alien in a cardigan, and two preppie collegiates emerging from a spaceship into a crowd of other aliens. The other shows semi-humanoid rabbitlike aliens examining a room in a suburban house.
Cover of Barbara Hambly's book Dragonsbane. Image is of a large black dragon with an alien-looking mane-tentacled head and lots of scales and spines. It holds a woman in a yellow dress cradled in its foreclaws, while two people look on in the background from in front of a fog-shrouded castle. Small text: "To slay a dragon was nearly impossible. To save a dragon--ridiculous! Or was it?"
Cover of The Hollowing by Robert Holdstock. Depicts a vaguely humanoid creature walking through a forest. Its head is somewhat craconic, its spine ridged, its feet and hands clawed. It wears tight cuff bracelets of pale metal on its upper arm and wrist.
Cover of Catfantastic volume 1, edited by Andre Norton & Martin H. Greenberg. Illustration is of a tabby cat dressed in an old Dutch merchant(?) outfit, with shelves behind decorated with doves, eggs, books, and other random items. The cat holds a quill between its toes, writing on an envelope. Quote at the bottom: "There has been a sacred and secret pact between cats and writers since time immemorial; these charming stories represent some of the fruits of that splendid fellowship." - Tad Williams, author of Tailchaser's Song
Top-down view of a small bowl half-full of clear broth soup piled with chopped mirepoix bits (visible carrots, onions, celery), shredded chicken, and ragged spoon-dropped dumplings.
Wikipedia image of the Solomon Islands skink. It's a large, fairly smooth lizard-like creature resting on branches, a greyish-jade color, with skin plates blending gently into each other and a small black eye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Islands_skink
Bluesky Languages settings page, showing the section at the bottom where if you have English checked you automatically get English translations instead of whatever people actually wrote.
Cover of Make Way for Dragons! by Thorarinn Gunnarsson (Author of Song of the Dwarves and Revenge of the Valkyrie). It shows a teenage-ish girl with big reddish-blond hair, a jean jacket, knotted shirt, and shorts, riding a skateboard with a colorful little dragon-like creature, while a panicked cat flees.
A wedge of pale cheese, label reading "Murray's Cheese est. 1962: Artikaas Holy Sheep Gouda."
Cover of Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos, Discovering a New Aesthetic of Art, Science, and Nature. By John Briggs. Cover shows several complex geometric fractal designs.
Supposed "birth palette" showing astrologically associated colors, in this case a medium yellow, dusty green, medium pink, and medium orange.
Cover of an old copy of Andre Norton's Moon of Three Rings. A woman in an elaborate, skintight costume of unknown design (with a very broad belt at her waist and double chains hanging across her hips, multiple bracelets, and a crown or crownlike hat) stands with three alien animals nearby, and a naked man in the process of transforming into a creature like one of those animals, a snouted, point-eared, maned beast. Only his head and part of one foot have transformed. Behind them is a backdrop of high peaks and a huge moon.
Image shows the character Susan Ivanova in the black and silver post-Earth-war Babylon 5 uniform. Text reads: FOLLOW THE RULES: "Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. And if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out...."
It was a memory like firelight, untrustworthy, shifting. He knew the conspiracists had attempted violence against a classmate of Theo's, one who had not gone on the trip into the Stacks. They had between them lost two sons and a daughter. They believed Becca's parents had known something was wrong when she didn't go on the expedition, that they had kept her home, kept her safe. The medical printer report indicated relatively trivial injuries to the first attacker, and he was released into the Deans' custody later that evening, muddled but intact. Allan remembered the chiaroscuro mottlings of the study nook in which the attack had taken place, lit only by the hearthfire. The insistence of the other three attackers that the gangly teenage boy had torn out the man's throat with his teeth. The uneasy impression in the irregular light of the amount of blood actually painted on the interior walls. He'd gone back the next day, but the Library had reshelved and the niche reset. By the daylights, it seemed more likely his mind had exaggerated the splashed darkness. References did tend to suggest blood could look like a lot more than it really was.
Title/menu screen of the game Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut. The image shows a black and white sketch of a woman in a stone-floored basement, under an illuminated window, surrounded by shadows, and chained to the wall.
Cover of a Star Trek novel (original series), Uhura's Song, by Janet Kagan. Depicts the Enterprise against a space and planet backdrop, with Uhura, Spock, and a felinoid alien in the foreground. At the top reads, "A mysterious music holds the clues to save an alien race!"
The cover of a well-loved copy of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (collected from folklore and retold by Alvin Schwartz, drawings by Stephen Gammell). The illustration shows a rather cheerful but horrible-looking mostly skeletonized head poking out of the ground next to a rickety clapboard barn (and towering over it), while there are two gravestones off to the right. The head has a cheerful smile and is smoking a corncob pipe.
A dilute tortoiseshell cat with four white-tipped paws snoozing in a ball with her head upside down, chin pillowing one of her curled forefeet.
Cover of a hardback copy of the anthology Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures - introduction by Andre Norton. Several weird creatures are depicted among the twisted branches of a tree, including a cockatrice, a kind of snout-nosed echidna with hands, a patchwork monkey, and a bear-ape-like horned yamadan.
A dilute tortoiseshell cat lounges belly-up on a bed, all four white-tipped paws up and her eyes on the camera.
A somewhat terrifying rough sketch of a cross between a cat and a goose, with its extremely spiny tongue threateningly extended and its ears back.
A small bowl full of vegetable soup on a plate, with a soup spoon sticking out of it. There are visible chunks of mushroom, potato, yellow squash, carrot, peas, and corn, with a sprinkle of sunflower seeds. Beside it on the plate is a chunk of crusty bread.
A stack of seven Serendipity books, arranged to display the titles (Flutterby Fly, Flutterby, Morgan and Yew, Morgan Morning, Squeakers, Kiyomi, Shimmeree), and the front covers of Morgan Morning (with a unicorn foal lying among flowers) and Shimmeree (showing two silver-grey horses and a blue-eyed lizard).
Cover of an illustrated children's book, A Treasury of Bedtime Stories, Illustrated by Hilda Offen. Various characters depict stories from the inside, ranging from little fae to a small bear, a rabbit with scissors, Hansel & Gretel, and others.
Top-down view of a bowl full of miscellaneous brown chunks, which if viewed closely might resolve into bits of mushroom, chunks of potato, and chicken thigh, all covered in a pureed and sauteed brown sauce.
Covers of two battered Alan Dean Foster books, Glory Lane and Quozl. Both covers are lushly illustrated, the former with a wild variety of aliens greeting a punk with a colorful mohawk, striped pants, and black leather jacket, a multi-eyed green alien in a cardigan and long-sleeved shirt, and two very preppy-looking humans, all emerging from a spaceship. A glowing ball floats above the green alien's hands. On the other, two vaguely rabbit-like creatures stand in a bedroom in front of an old-fashioned TV, a mounted deer's head, and walls with pinups and sports flags, looking curious and confused.
A long bookshelf's worth of RPG books, mostly White Wolf's World of Darkness, but also some D&D, GURPS, Shadowrun, Deadlands, Call of Cthulhu, Farscape, Babylon 5, and other miscellany.
Front cover of the hardback original of the Vampire: The Dark Ages RPG book from White Wolf. A single red rose and some ivy leaves are displayed against a background of white-streaked black marble, with the title in a blocky capital font.
Top-down view of a bowl of red stew more-or-less halved with rice. Visible chunks of chicken rest in deep red sauce.
Cover image of The Bank Street Book of Fantasy. Smaller text reads: Graphic story comics adapting the work of Anne McCaffrey and Nathaniel Hawthorne and other world-famous fantasy authors. The illustration is a fairly generic image of a medievalishly-dressed woman on horseback being menaced by a spiky green dragon.
Nighttime black and white photo of an eagle's nest. One juvenile bald eagle is vaguely visible in the back, napping with their head under a wing, while in the foreground a tiny flying squirrel roams around in the nest proper.
A scruffy copy of a book, tilted to display both the spine and a sideways view of the cover. The title is "the lives & times of archy and mehitabel" with the author's name "don marquis" and publisher "doubleday". All printing is in lowercase. The image on the front cover is a cat in a small boat, apparently fishing with a pole.
Crystalis protagonist standing outside the now-functional windmill, though blocked off from the tunnel it has bafflingly opened by a skirt of rock, because obviously.
Crystalis protagonist preparing to fire their fully-charged sword at a bipedal tiger-like creature approaching across the pixelated plain.
The pink-haired protagonist of Crystalis has just left town, and is now practicing charging up their sword (with little bubbles rapidly orbiting to indicate that it's ready to fire). Rough mountains to either side of the town entrance open out onto a plain dotted with what look like evergreens.
Pink-haired protagonist in a rough-walled little building, talking to the Elder of the town, who is saying "Please by careful. Our destiny is in your hands."
Screen image from the NES game Crystalis, showing a pink-haired protagonist standing just outside the blocky machine they've just emerged from, with a framing device of cavern walls surrounding the image. At the bottom is the HUD with hitpoints, force bar, experience count, level, money, and MP.
Front cover of an old, battered copy of The Neverending Story, having long since lost its dustcover. The Auryn and title of the book have been redrawn on the scuffed red cloth.
Photo of the front cover of Diana Wynne Jones's book Archer's Goon. Two school-age children are depicted in a kitchen sitting next to an absolutely enormous, bristle-haired, heavy-jawed man in a gigantic leather jacket who's busy cleaning his nails with a heavy knife.
A pile of shredded pork, visibly browned in places, with chopped onions and jalapeños, resting on a flour tortilla.
An empty eagle's nest overlooking a lake and evergreen-covered hills. A red circle picks out an opportunistic chipmunk.
A microwave with its door wide open, displaying the catastrophic explosion of a pair of hardboiled eggs inside. There are egg bits everywhere, all over the counter, the front of the door, inside, the (not shown) ceiling of the machine, and even two flecks visible *on top* that must've somehow managed to rebound off the door and ping up there. It's a mess.
A small bowl full of fluffy jambalaya, with tawny, spice-flecked rice grains clinging to browned chunks of sausage and chicken.
Extreme closeup of a juvenile bald eagle staring down into the camera. A striking skyline of hills and trees is more or less visible behind it.
Izzy Hands, as portrayed by Con O'Neill in Our Flag Means Death. A man in pirate leathers with combed-back hair, a graying beard and mustache, and a complicated expression.
Closeup of the palm of a spread hand. A quite sizable purpley-red bruise with greeny-yellow edges easily an inch and a half across takes up half of the heel by the thumb.
A black and white night vision camera view of a bald eagle nest. Two late juvenile eaglets are sleeping in it, one with head tucked behind a wing, the other using their sibling as a pillow.
Two juvenile bald eagles in their nest. One has leapt and flapped a good foot above the nest, practicing pre-flight maneuvers.