It started several years ago as a header for a proposed M&C strip.
Then I decided to turn it into a pin-up to sell.
Now I don't know if it will get turned back into an opening splash page for a new strip or remain a big pin-up. Either way, I add lines to it when other drawings are underway and I feel stuck.
You might have noticed that some years back I started getting heavily into crosshatching and texturing on my art. It's sort of like therapy. I enjoy laying all those little lines down and watching it take shape as a swirl or background element or a framing or halo effect around things. The only problem is that it takes a long time, and while it's mentally soothing, it's physically painful for my hand.
New M&C comics of some length, shape or form have been increasingly on my mind. I think a lot of it has to do with my getting burned out on drawing them in their pin-up poses. It gets monotonous, and increasingly hard to come up with catch phrases for those situations. i don't like to just churn out the same lines. It would be easier to just crank out "Onward to Mayhem!" or whatever, but I don't enjoy that and want to add something, even something slightly, different to everyone's piece.
The thing is, the characters live and breath in comics, for me at least. Pin-ups are like posters and there are only so many things the character designs are capable of doing. I haven't drawn them sitting on their stupid couch -- the one that somehow shows up in every apartment they take over -- in ages. Or written an ongoing dialog with them. About...stupid stuff.
I have a lot of things to catch up on before I can get serious about something like that. And it looks like whatever it is that's going on with those little digital M&C figures I've posted will be needing some new artwork sooner rather than later. I don't think it will call for them sitting on a couch, but it will involved them saying something stupid. I guess that's a given, whatever they're appearing in or on.
I still love them.