GALLERY
About
Hello, I'm a freelance illustrator based in the UK.
I was born in London, and started out in illustration with work for fantasy & horror small press magazines in the '80s, in particular the H.P. Lovecraft-devoted Dagon. My first professional commissions came from Games Workshop for their magazine White Dwarf, and this began a long relationship with the company, illustrating lots of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay publications and the very first Warhammer 40,000 book, as well as many other GW books and boardgames. I've also done game-related material for other publishers, including covers and internal illustrations for twenty-two (I think) of the Fighting Fantasy series from Puffin Books/Wizard Books, and card art for Magic: The Gathering from Wizards of the Coast.I've also produced artwork for various publishers around the world including Scholastic, Time-Warner, HarperCollins and Oxford University Press, illustrating popular authors such as Anne McCaffrey, Raymond E. Feist and Harry Turtledove, as well as some classics including Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and The Silver Sword. I was fortunate enough to receive the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist.
I illustrated the book accompanying the album release of Misterstourworm & the Kelpie's Gift, an orchestral work based on stories and characters from Scottish legend. My artwork was used as large-scale backdrops for live performances of the work by The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, with narration by Lord of the Rings actor Billy Boyd.
As an author, I've written some books about digital art including Digital Fantasy Painting Workshop and Digital Horror Art, and edited Fantasy Art Now published by Collins. In addition to work in publishing, I occasionally do concept and production art for computer games (following two years as an in-house artist at Eidos Interactive), and film and television productions which have included the BAFTA-nominated The Magician of Samarkand for the BBC, and most recently Gulliver's Travels for 20th Century Fox.
Currently: October 2015: My latest picture book The Crocodolly was published in hardback by Scholastic last month, and is available in Australia, New Zealand, and soon to be released throughout Asia in English, also with a translation into Chinese. The Crocodolly is something of a companion to my earlier picture book The Octopuppy which has been doing pretty well internationally -- more info at www.theoctopuppy.com Right now I'm working on my next picture book; so most of my energies have been directed towards my books for children. But I've also just finished another album cover for Axel Rudi Pell, which is the fifth sleeve I've done for his records. I've also been doing a little bit of work on the Game of Thrones computer game.
News
Cthulhu
Monday, October 14, 2013
Prompted by the release of a new edition from Titan Books, here's a squint at one of the illustrations for Shadows Over Innsmouth. This was the first done by Dave Carson, Jim Pitts, and me, working together in 1993, each on a seperate section of the image. As I vaguely remember it, a drunken conversation between the three of us lead to us deciding that this sort of thing would be a good idea. It was decided that we should base something around Cthulhu, and that I would start the ball rolling by doing the central figure. This portly attempt was the result.
I worked on a pretty large sheet of board about 18 x 13 in, so that the others would have plenty of space, and handed over to Mr Pitts, who filled in the left side around the figure. DC then completed the area to the right. Below is his letter, sporting its original antique patina (tea), which heralded the carriage of the finished piece to that year's Fantasycon for display. I think it was then that editor Stephen Jones suggested we do more in similar fashion, to illustrate his planned Innsmouth collection. We did two more equally large pictures, the other two artists taking centre stage, as it were, in each case (Dagon from Mr P, and the infamous Mother Hydra from DC); plus a wraparound cover, a smaller frontispiece, borders, and various chapter headers.
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