A year and change ago, my friend Ray commissioned me to produce some artwork for me. The payment came not in the form of cash, but rather a ticket to a live performance by Sarah Silverman, which was to my mind as good as cash, in that I had already committed myself to buy said ticket.

The commission was on its face a ridiculous one, but one cannot pick and choose, and besides which, the challenge of drawing something so outlandish was one which appealed to me. He was running a Dungeons & Dragons game - and this was back in the days of 3rd aedition, not this "4th edition" abortion these kids today have the audacity to call "Dungeons & Dragons"... the only people I hate more than those whippersnappers are those fucking 2nd edition fossils who doggedly refuse to stop enjoying their antiquated fossil of a system - and needed an illustration for his ultimate evil monstrous encounter for his epic-level party.

His description, as best I recall it, was "A red half-dragon, half-Mind-Flayer blackguard in full plate armour, wielding a lance and a whip, whose mount is a black half-dragon, half-beholder". To those of you not versed in the arcane secrets of D&D, allow me to translate: "One ridiculous monster thing riding another ridiculous monster thing."

I spent quite some time working on the line art for this one, before Ray sprung it on me that I had about two days to do all of the colours, both of which were days when I would need to sleep and work. I decided I could maybe miss some sleep, and maybe not some work, and embarked upon a cockpunchingly vigorous schedule of colouring in order to get it to him on time.

The result was... not bad. The armour was a little plastic-y looking, and some of the scales on the head were less detailed in their texture than I would have liked, but for the time allowed, this, my final result, was basically okay: 


I will say I'm fairly proud of the yellow light coming in from the left, at the very least. I had considered going back in there and taking another pass at some of the light and shadows before posting it, but ultimately decided it was a finished work as it was, and I ought to simply post what I got paid for, for good or for ill.