Kaiju dropping in on a glassy tube

I'm closing in on 3 months back since my release back into the freelance sector. Happy to say I've had a few jobs to keep me busy, but I've been trying to carve out an equal amount of time to work on my own drawings and experiments. It is very easy for all that to go out the window as soon as a job comes in, but at least so far I've been happy with the balance. One insight from this last one: A lot of times the stuff I end up liking most in a "personal" piece (or whatever you would call a picture of Godzilla using an aircraft carrier as a surfboard) are all the little details, effects and tangents that I end up adding after all the information from the initial sketch has already been executed. (In this one, for example, the big pillar of black smoke really helps sell the palette, but I only added it in the last 10 minutes of noodling after the thing had already been marinating for a few days.) In a perfect world, this would all end up in client work too, but more often deadlines only allow for the bare minimum of time needed to push the thing across the finish line. (Unless you are a client reading this, in which case the final art you received is all exactly as intended.) Alright! Back to the drawing board:)