40th Birthday gift art - Front row at Bent Knee

About a year and a half ago, a friend of ours contacted me to ask a favor - a piece of birthday art for her husband's 40th birthday, TWO YEARS HENCE.  We came up with a concept, of them front-row at a Bent Knee (awesome indy alt-prog band!  check them out!) concert, surrounded by family, friends, and some of his favorite musicians.   

Having that much lead time can make a person LAZY, so I put it aside while doing cover recreation commissions... plus, I had like, two years!    Anyhow, another thing holding me back was my initial sketches and reference collection... it was not satisfactory to me.  So a few weeks ago, I re-worked the layout and came up with one I was happy with, enough to commit.  Since then, it's been a lot of inking, erasing, and inking again!  

I showed our friend tonight, she's super stoked about it, and named all the people in the image, which means my likenesses were at least _close_.     I also finished it with a couple of months to spare, and no more guilty feelings about putting it off!

Ink on 14x18" bristol.