More from the Haul of Wonders …

 … in which I haul out illustrations and wonder publicly why I drew them. This is from the Vaguely Familiar Wing, and required crack detective work to solve.

The clue is the clock (really more of a watch with a hormonal imbalance) and its only numbers, 10 and 31.

Hidden in my sketchbooks, similar watches dance and gesture like something from an animated fever dream sequence. Each watch displays the same time, 10:31:

I even inked some of the watches, so they definitely were being prepped for some final use.

(I gotta say, though, I like the feel of black Prismacolor pencils as final art; I've gotten away from that over time.)

Other sketches in my books show the same desk scene and the word Timcor, and then most of the mystery was solved: I did this for a consultant in a branch of the tax industry called a 1031 exchange (don't ask; the explanation made my eyeballs shrink two sizes). I applaud the guy for trying to humanize his line of work. I believe the desktop was for a Web homepage he was building, and each element on the desktop would take you to a new page (very Web 1.0).

For all the fun I must have had, you'd think I'd have a better memory of this project.