The Hobbit : Smaug
My design for the front cover of The Hobbit. I’ve re-used Smaug’s wings for Arthur’s cloak in another drawing – for this …
The Hobbit : Gollum
Gollum was my choice for the rear cover design for the Hobbit, though I may shrink him down a little to allow …
The Hobbit : Beorn
Working in pencils (on what turned out to not be the best choice of paper), Beorn was my second choice of a …
Tristan and Iseult
The classic Arthurian tragedy, though not originally part of the saga. I wanted this to be anunpleasant, tragic romance, but not brutally …
Crow’s Dinner
Crow’s Dinner is a short story written for my daughter by my Dad that I’ve illustrated. It’s a rather grim tale with …
Jim Hawkins and Israel Hands
Another memorable scene in the book and an obvious choice to illustrate – I’m not sure if this scene would be allowed …
Blind Pew
Blind Pew always left an impression on me – as a villain, he’s a brilliant and quite understated character and probable the …
Treasure hunting
I hadn’t done a ‘framed’ piece for a while and this seemed a good opportunity seeing as I couldn’t get Flint’s skeelton …
Meeting Long John Silver
An experiment in a character-driven piece rather than an action scene, as well as allowing me to play with creating distance using …
Abandoning the Hispaniola
I bought a pad of sepia paper on a whim and decided to use it to add an extra layer to my …
The Hobbit. Journey to Rivendell
I’ve just moved back to colour pencils and it’s been one of those “where have you been all my life?!” moments. When …
Expecto Patronum!
I returned to Harry Potter for an action based scene to illustrate. This one gave me the opportunity to play around properly …
History of Magic
Another silhouette piece and an illustration from Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. I chose this scene because it’s character based …
Theseus and the Minotaur
Preparing for the 2017/18 Undiscovered Voices Competition (yes, I’m giving it another go), I decided to move my work in a new …
Baba Yaga
One of the last of my Inktober works, I used my ‘Once upon a time’ poster as the jumping off point as …
Little Red and the wolf
My final Red Riding Hood ink drawing for the time being. This was my experiment with coloured inks that I’d forgotten I’d …
Red Riding Hood Revisited
I revisited the Red Riding Hood story after completing my previous pen and ink drawing from the story. I much prefer the …
The soggy bad wolf
I was inspired by ‘Inktober’ last year, and started to work on a series of brush and ink illustrations. This was one …
Witch
One of my Inktober fairytale sketches. I was exploring ways of adapting the style that I’d been playing around with for …don’t …
Troll
Edited to add colour. Trolls and ogres are some of the most varied fantasy creatures in terms of artists’ and writers’ interpretations. …
Harry Potter Sketch
I’ve been running in ever decreasing circles since a portfolio review earlier this year which could be summed up as “we like …
Let’s dance
A return to Inn from the cold and a change of media. I’m probably going to have to digitally colour this one …
Broomsticks are so middle-ages
I probably shouldn’t have got my hopes up too high in regards to the SCWBI Undiscovered Voices competition, but of all my …
Bringing down the moon
Scattering is the working title for a series of illustrations exploring magical and mythological creatures inhabiting modern cities. Aside from being a …
Orc soldier
A more conventional orc – this one straight from my ten-year-old self. It’s nice to be able to go back and properly …
Orc chief
This was my fairly unconventional (by the conservative standards of the genre) take on an orc chief. I’ve always associated the look …
Lizardman
I’ve always felt sorry for the lizardman in the fantasy genre as they always seem to be overlooked, despite being used to …
Goblin Ballista
A non-character based fantasy piece, this was to illustrate goblin technology which I feel is criminally underrated by some scholars.
Goblin Archer
Traditional design of a goblin soldier
Goblin Shaman
The goblin shaman was an early drawing for my creature encyclopedia. Goblins are great characters because there’s such a rich background to …
First author/ illustrator visit!
Well, the Mighty Thumbslurp has been printed at last! To celebrate this momentous event, Janet and myself have just completed our first afternoon …
Task 3: Vanquish dragon
The final task for our heroine before she can sit down and enjoy the nice cup of tea
You’re STILL a Pest!
In honour of the imminent (well, fairly imminent) publication of the printed edition of You’re a Pest, Betsy Thumbslurp! here’s a sample …
Task 1: Clean out the pond
You know what it’s like when you get to spring. The garden needs weeding, the lawn’s a patchy mess, the fence needs …
The mighty Thumbslurp!
WARNING! This book is full of YUCKS, GGRRRRAAHHHS and SNNOOSSEEFFUUPPs.(Not to mention a flying hippopotamus!)
Ready to publish…
Janet chose this as the definitive picture of Coco, with her reaction to her newborn sister who supplants her as the centre …
Into the unknown
The Winter Tower is still may favourite page from …don’t let the dragons bite. It was my second try at this scene …
