Fees and frustration

I was about 2/3 done with this when the editor emailed telling me to change from a toll booth to a sign. Heaven bless "The Patch."

For you who aren't in the art gig, that's where you draw out a new section of the drawing and put it on top of the old one. In this case you can see the sign is the same size as the tollbooth was. It's no secret patching is MUCH easier in these salad days of Photoshop.

But still it takes a few steps:
First to the light board with the original
put a blank sheet on top and sketch the cover up
Ink the patch
Scan the patch
Using Layer transparency and/or Layer Multiply fit the patch
Erase white edges to fit
Combine patch and original art, clean up
edit colors and finish coloring.

You know what? In my head it seems a lot fewer steps.