Butterfly Poems

I'm working on a series of illustrations for a book on poetry written by a wonderful chap called Bill. All of the poems are about butterflies and all the varying degrees of mischief they get up too! This is for a poem entitled "Butterfly Airforce" to accompany the following lines -

"The Duke of Burgundy looks quite a dandy,
And when in combat, drinks vintage brandy."

Text book illustration

Most of the time text books require drawings of things in everyday life, such as plates of peas, or someone doing the washing up. Occasionally I get something a little different, an example being the three witches from Shakespeares play.

Dragons Blood Pirates - Series 2

It's with great excitement that I've started getting busy with series 2 (books 7-12) of the Dragons Blood Pirates series for Hachette in Australia. The first series is out and doing the rounds. Here's a website all about it - Here

Here's a look of things to come.

Kitchen Gardener Magazine - Weedkiller

An illustration for a forthcoming issue, featuring an article on cows eating weedkiller and how their manure still contains weedkiller.

Brrr - Last night was cold

In my sleep I dreamt that I was wearing a really rather spectacular, warm suit. Similar to MIG pilots outfits but about 12 times the thickness. This is what it looked like -

Kitchen Gardener Magazine - Dandelions

Kitchen Gardener Magazine commissioned me to do a drawing for their December issue. Illustrating their popular "last word" feature, this time about a gardener who likes weeds.

Nursing and Residential Care Magazine - Dec 2008

Nursing and Residential Care Magazine asked me to do a rather tricky piece for their latest issue. How do you draw Dementia in Bristol?

Go Faster! 60's punk rock

There's a new music night in town, and I liked the look of the chap on the flyer, so I've done my own version.



Here's some more about it -

GO FASTER is LIVE and streaming, thursdays 8-10pm GMT here

dj nights in Brighton:
1st Sat of the month at The Penthouse
2nd Friday of the month at Fitzherberts

And a myspace page here

And if you're truly bonkers, a Facebook group all about it here

Kitchen Gardener Magazine - Chopping Trees

This is for Novembers issue of Kitchen Gardener Magazine to accompany a story about an allotment owner who's allotment is getting swamped with trees.

Cage and Aviary Birds Newspaper - Header designs

The perennial household favourite, Cage and Aviary Birds Newspaper, asked me to design a couple of headers for a new feature they're running called "Desert Island Birds". As you can probably guess it's premis is based along the lines of which five birds would you take to a desert island with you! BRILLIANT, I LOVE Cage and Aviary Birds Newspaper, it's amazing!

Dragons Blood Pirates - Books 1 and 2 are here!

Terribly exciting news, books 1 and 2 are here - and look how wonderful they look. Awwww.


These are the covers.



Here's the pull out map showing where everything is.



And here's an inside page spectacular.

An ancient Egyptian gentleman making bread.

This jovial chap is making bread in ancient Egypt. Pretty much all the items in the background are taken from reference photos from the British Museum so as to maintain authenticity. I'm not sure that they had orange chickens in ancient Egypt, so I'll have to do some research to verify that.


And as a special treat, here's the original line work to look at too.

Frank! Design Agency vs On:Board Brighton Bus magazine

Frank! got in touch and asked me to draw the cover for the forthcoming edition of Brighton Buses "in-flight" magazine called On:Board. Naturally this is only the illustration at the moment, and the cover will have the logo and various bits of text on it - hence the big sky at the top and not much action at the bottom.

This issue features an article about how Brighton's quite the musical hotbed which explains all the muso's getting on board in front of the Pavilion.

Kitchen Gardener Magazine - Muck Raking

Another Kitchen Garden Magazine illustration! They must love me.

This is again a "Last Word" feature, this time focussing on a gentleman who - despite being green and growing his own veg - isn't as green and environmentally aware as he'd like to be. Here he is chugging through the allotments in his chuggy van, spilling veg all over the place.

Best of British Magazine - September 2008

Best of British Magazine got in touch with me to see if I could do something to go with an article about joining up with the local Amateur Dramatics Society. Not being one to shy away from the proverbial artistic stage, and also being rather partial to the smell of greasepaint, I came up with this.

Kitchen Gardener Magazine - Lazy Gardener

This is for next months Kitchen Gardener Magazine to go alongside the "Last Word" column. As a keen watcher of the leeks being keenly grown in my garden I can identify with the gardener in the illustrations pose.

Building Design Magazine - 2012 Olympics

It's with great pleasure that an illustration of mine is going to be accompanying SIR Steve Redgrave's writing in the next issue of Building Design Magazine! I can't wait to see it on the shelves, it'll be ace.

The feature is about designing suitable accessibility to the bog/swamp/marshlands of Hackney so that the athletes can actually participate in the games, rather than spend several hours getting stuck in traffic jams - or presumably the bogs, swamps, and marshes of Hackney itself.

Some new work

Back in the old days I used to hand colour everything. Then I learnt how to do things in Photoshop and neglected the traditional skills that I'd learnt, so recently I decided to kick start them back into action on a couple of new pieces. The first being a gift for a couple of friends who were getting married - I didn't want a computer print out to give them, rather a finished bit of artwork -



And secondly a farmer carrying a chicken which developed out of a scribble on a piece of paper on my desk and provided a perfect distraction to whatever it was I should have been doing instead -

Cage and Aviary Birds Newspaper - A very chatty budgie - June 26th 2008

Another illustration for Cage and Aviary birds, this time about a budgie called Joey who had quite the reportoire of set-piece saying. A very clever chappy.


The illustration in the magazine - June 26th 2008

Canadian Running Magazine - May/June 2008

Runners in Love for Canada's "Gripped" rock climbing magazine.


And look what plopped through my letter box this morning! How's about that for a hefty spread, nice!

Underground - Dance Troupe on Brighton Seafront

My friend Claire is in a dance company that did a performance of their latest piece "Underground" on Brighton seafront during the May festival. I thought I'd do a drawing of it the other day as it was quite an animated show, so I have, and here it is.

Dragons Blood Pirates - Coloured characters

What a treat! A couple of coloured in pieces. These are characters taken from some of the many black and white drawings I've done for the Dragons Blood Pirates series.


Captain Gunner (with bee stings on his nose).


Slicer the ships cook serving up a "feast".

Carve Surfing Magazine - A selection of Golden hits.

One of the first commissions I had, back in the day, was for Carve Surfing Magazine. This has been an occasional gig ever since. I've got a big stack of the magazines on top of my studio bookcase, and took some photos of a selection of pieces from over the years. It was quite interesting, as firstly I'd forgotten about quite a few bits, and secondly, I'm certain I'm missing a number of magazines which feature my work. I've only moved house about 8 times since I started working with them so I'm sure they wouldn't be that difficult to track down....


This illustration was to accompany an article on surfing in Mexico.



For a while a drew an illustration every month for Carve's sister publication "360 Bodyboarding Magazine" to accompany a feature on how to get a job that would allow you to surf/bodyboard as much as possible. This one was about working on a campsite in France right next to the sea, or something like that. Nice!



One of my first commissions. Note, the hand colouring rather than computer colouring. This was one of a series of drawings that went in a beginners guide type affair, which presented rules and regulations, joys, dangers and annoyances and the suchlike of surfing. This illustration tells you not to drop in on someone who already has a wave.

Dads Van - Watts Publishing - They're here!

Get in! A whole pile of my latest book, "Dad's Van" has just been delivered, what joy! It looks splendid, and I'm exceedingly pleased with it. More more more!

Dragons Blood Pirates - Sneak Preview at books 2, 3, and 4

A couple of interior page drawings for books 2, 3 and 4 of the Dragon's Blood Pirate's series that I'm working on. There's about 30 pages of illustration per book, so these pictures are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Two more books to go and they'll be finished and sent off to the printers, I can't wait to see them!

Book 2 - Saved from a falling bit of ship.


Book 2 - Sea battle.


Book 3 - Luring Vampire Zu from his cottage.


Book 3 - Being shown the right direction.


Book 4 - Slashing through the undergrowth.


Book 4 - Shrunken heads in the forest!

Flapjack Seagull

A work colleague once came back from his lunch break saying that he'd seen a seagull eat an entire flapjack the size of a brick in one gulp. I drew this diagram as testament to its tenacity, and have used it as my logo ever since!

View from my parents old house into the garden.

Sometimes I try doing a proper drawing. They're few and far between in occurrence, but fun to do. This is my parents garden after a rather mammoth growing session of all the plants.

Illustration Friday - Moon

There's this online drawing group thingy that happens once a week called Illustration Friday, where you get given a brief (usually of one word) and people all over the world do a drawing of it. Simple premise, rather like the Brighton Linesmen Society. I've only gotten around to joining in once, but it was splendid fun, and should I have a spare few minutes at the end of a week again, I'm sure i'll get involved once more. This was for a project called "Moon".

Brighton Pier

I've been trying to persuade myself to do a series of drawings based on the local area. So far this is all I've managed, but I quite like it.

Space Golf

I was rather bored one afternoon, so asked a friend what I should do with myself. He suggested drawing some spacemen and aliens playing golf. So I did.

Christmas Card - 2006

Digging into the archives a little here, but here's 2006's somewhat surreal christmas card to family and friends. Nothing like continuity eh?

Les Journey Magnifique!

Shawn "jumpers" "the Harg" Hargreaves was a programmer where I used to work. As he has a brain the size of a planet he soon got tired of working with people such as myself, who only have brain's the size of a continent or two, so he left and started work at Microsoft doing some geeky. This was a leaving card that I made him that was printed out to A1 size and now sits on a wall next to his cubicle or desk or central nervous system or whatever it is that's where he works.

CD cover - Organic Records - "Don't Panic"

This was the first album cover I did for Organic Records, and what a stormer it is too! Still available to purchase, featuring a selection of label head Chris Organic's finest stompers, an admirable addition to anyone's collection.

Brighton Linesman Society - Oh The Rain

This is one of my favourite Brighton Linesmen drawings. I saw some photos that a friend took whilst in Japan of bright orange lanterns, and I've been reading a lot about the best Shin Hanga artist around, Kawasi Hasui. I took elements from both and made this, and was jolly pleased with the results.

Gig Poster - The Gramms

Brighton based pop indie band "The Gramms" feature in this poster. They didn't seem at all interested in it though, so I gave up with them.