This was a portrait commission for my work colleague Diego Escobar of his youngest daughter Dialeysi Carolina Abella. I had been trying to avoid commission work for quite some time. I don't like having such little control over the images I am working with. Quite often the person commissioning the drawing has a very definite idea which photo they would like used. Also, I generally take much too long and therefore have quite a backlog of things I would rather get to. But over the previous few years I had come realize that these commissions are quite meaningful to those receiving them. Perhaps I have become more sentimental as I have aged or maybe I have just started to realize that my work has the capacity to be meaningful to others and not just be some sterile, neutral artifact. Yes, maybe I had started to recognize the humanity involved in this process. This is all very obvious, I suppose -but sometimes I can be a real prick about the supposed importance of my work. So commission work began.​

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Diego's photo was very grainy and the portion I wanted to use was very small. (She was surrounded by stuffed animals) The unusual shape was a result of my editing out all the items that were "not her" and going with the resulting outline. I loved the fact that she is cross eyed here and the bandana was something I felt really helped the composition. Leaning into the indistinctness of the image and going fairly dark were my main goals. Overall I was pleased. It had been Diego's intention to use the same image as a tattoo on his forearm along side images of his other children. Perhaps this will hold him over until he can achieve that goal.