Evil Thoughts

Looks like someone's thinking some dark thoughts.

This is a vector drawing, done in InDesign. OK, so I cheated a little and added a bitmapped grunge texture to the background.

 

Here's the very rough original sketch.

Lest you think that all my illustrations just fall out of the mouse fully formed, here's a look at the InDesign pasteboard for this drawing. The final drawing is there on the actual page, but note all the rejects and false starts strewn around it. The one in the upper left corner is the very first version. I just couldn't get it to work, no matter what I did.

Also note that in all the versions on the left hand side, the monster has some kind of weird hollow tube on top of his head. My original idea was to have the evil cloud emanating from this tube. Why? I have no clue. It didn't make much sense even to me. In the end I came to my senses and replaced the tube with a horn and just had the cloud erupting from the general area of his brain.

That's today's tip: Don't be afraid to scrap something and start all over. If a drawing ain't working, maybe there's a reason.