As those of you who’ve followed my blog, lo these many moons, have been witness to, over time, I have gone from wanting to be a commission artist and illustrator, on book covers and whatnot, to wanting to do my own stuff. We could make a strong case that this is a manifestation of my general failure to play well with others or an attention span honed like a obsidian scalpel–very very sharp, but very very short-lived–but I’d like to argue at least some of it is related to the fact that sometimes I just get these ideas and I have to go run them down or they’ll start pooping on the rug.

For example, today I’m working on the cover for the next chapter of Digger, and I had a layout all laid out, figure front and center, and I got the background about half done and thought “Hey, that’s a really neat bit there!”

A really neat bit.

You know, a whole painting of neat bits like that would look really cool.

And I started doodling, and suddenly my Digger cover is probably going to be a landscape. A nifty landscape, hopefully, but a totally different thing than my original idea. And because I have a fairly strict schedule for Digger, it has to be done tomorrow.

Try this shit on most art directors at that late a stage, and they’ll break your painting arm, and furthermore, they’ll be fully justified in doing so. There’s a coupla people who can get away with it–you and I probably aren’t them.* But because I am calling the shots on Digger, I can decide arbitrarily to do this. And it’s cool. And man, some days, I just have the greatest job in the world.

*Well, I’m not, anyhow.