Secret Milk & Cheese Commission

A while ago I was commissioned by Dark Horse Comics to do a drawing commemorating manga editor Carl Horn's twenty years with the company. It was weird because it was a commission, but also "work". Not a private thing but invoiced and paid like doing a cover. Had to do some finagling because the paperwork was work-for-hire but I wasn't going to sign even a pinup with M&C as work-for-hire. It was fixed easily enough to get around the legal red tape.

I forgot they had asked for a "little drawing". And I made it larger than usual. They said it was going to get framed, and I kind of got anxious and overcompensated. A lot. And I knew other artists were doing drawings and I didn't want mine to suck. I could've saved myself a lot of time but my brain doesn't work that way. Another reason I'm still in therapy.

Overall, I like it. On the whole. Pretty much. I effed up my hand something fierce on it so I better like it. But I don't like the way I worked out the fire behind Carl's head, that was rushed in the layout without enough planning ahead. I was trying to avoid coloring it too close to Cheese and his logo, and I went overboard with the red pencil and marker. I should have used more orange and just highlighted with red, but I couldn't stop messing with it. A big problem is that the background flame shape overall doesn't work, it's not varied enough, it looks like a red waterfall rather than flames. But hopefully it reads okay and it sits in the background on casual viewing and is buoyed by the better realized flames in the foreground. The flames look a lot better in the foreground and in the torches. My two cents.

Anyway, they gave the anniversary art to him a while back so I can finally post it here.

More later, soon.