Have My Heart, I Don’t Need It... (Patreon)

... is the name of a piece by an outrageously talented Australian artist on Instagram who goes by the handle @franchesxka. A while back, I commissioned her to create a label for my hot sauce, back when I was on that big hot sauce kick. (I still am on a hot sauce kick, and I’m running out, and the folks here in Europe who ship peppers to me aren’t shipping outside of Germany anymore… If anybody has any knowledge of European supply chain management in regard to hot peppers, LMK. 😜)

Here’s that label, by the way, if you don’t wanna dig back...

Cool, right? I had stepped on a scorpion somewhat recently (one of those big, brown suckers, so I was fine), and since she does amazing work in the whole chimeric vibe, I was like, “run with it.”

In any case, she’s delightful, has a particular panache for the Gothic, and just does some fucking spectacular work in general. Plus, she’s just really cool. We hit it off right away, and I was glad that she was able to play a part in my quarantine-era hobby of throwing some well-deserved $ to some talented illustrators.

So imagine my surprise when she threw this little masterpiece my way (up top). Something that she had been tossing around in her head, until it finally exploded on the paper. Damn, she’s good. Check her out. It’s dark, but flirty, and it reminds me of how much I love Halloween. We’ve all got that dark side, Mwahaha.

As she put it, it was the evolution of this earlier piece...

Flabbergasted. Both are cool, but damn, dude. Anyway, just wanted to post both here because sometimes it’s fun to watch the evolution of an idea, and I would hate for it to be relegated only to my wall forever. So, I wanted to share. Hope y’all enjoy.