The Cat that thought it could Fly

Words and pictures by me, the story idea is by Joe Webb from here - http://www.thisisetch.com/

Fat Bumble

Some character designs for a book about a fat bumblebee.

Dragons Blood Pirates - Series 2 - Book 11

A couple of sneak pages from Book 11 (!) in the series.

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.

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".

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!

Captain Rainbow - Watts Publishing - Internal page art

A selection of interior page art for your pleasure and delight.

Captain Rainbow receives a parcel in the post -



Captain Rainbow's boat is in a spot of bother -



Captain Rainbow's pride and joy -

Captain Rainbow - Watts Publishing - Character Design

Here's some drawings to show how the Cap'n developed.

Originally he was quite fresh faced, and looked a little like a train driver -



A bit of tweaking here and there filled him out a bit -



The addition of a big beard finished the look off -

Captain Rainbow - Watts Publishing - Cover Development

This shows how a cover for one of my books gets developed.

Firstly, I draw a cover rough -



Once it's approved, I put it in place on a mock up so that I can that everything fits properly -



I then get approval to ink it in, and colour it, and here's the finished art -



And here's a mock-up of the finished cover! -

Captain Cool - Watts Publishing - The greatest hero in the WORLD!

As the title suggests, Captain Cool really is the greatest hero in the world. Nuff said. This was my second book for Watts Publishing, and I'm very proud of it. It looks ace! Still available from online book retailers - and well worth every penny spent on it.





Here he is in all his hardcover glory.



Also looking extremely dynamic on an inside spread. Go get 'em Cap'n Cool!

Pirate Books - Harcourt Educational

This was a mammoth project. All in all I illustrated 5 books in a series based on pirates. Each story was effectively a backup bit of colour and text to maintain the readers' interest and add to the slightly more academic stuff that occupied the first half of each book.

Simple line work and bold colours were the order of the day for this series. Little was I to know that this was the very beginning of my pirate drawing career.

As a (partial) result of my work on this, the series won a book design award, which was nice.




Here's a "team shot" of all the covers.



An internal spread.