I have been drawing all my life. Some of my earliest memories are of myself spread out on a carpet copying pictures from a Disney annual .... and I just kept on drawing. Over the years the books and comics I read influenced my style, from reading ARCHIE comics, and then of course ASTERIX and TINTIN books.
Naturally as I grew older other influences effected what I drew, teachers at school in a small provincial town, doing National Service, a short stint at university and of course career choices. Music, fashion, life choices etc all played a part in what I drew.
For many years I work almost exclusively in black and white, often in pencil, and then in black fine liner pens. For me the quality of the line was paramount. I had always loved the illustrations of Durer and Audrey Beadsley and admired the busyness and the control of their work.
Only in the early 2000's have I started to keep and document some of the work I have done. In previous years I often gave drawings away as gifts or just threw them away when I was in the process of relocating. The drawings and illustrations done from 2004 on wards are very narrative in style.I started to work ina very small format.
What I wanted to create were drawings that would fill you with a sense of curiosity, maybe wanting the viewer to go in closer and observe the story placed within the objects of the picture. From around this time I started using colour in my illustrations, at first koki pens and then pantone pens.
Below you can see a series of dog illustrations that was done using black fine liners and koki pens. These drawings are 100 x 150mm each. The use of colour is bold if not garish, but for me the over-all effect was happy and fun.
Next I worked ona very small series of illustrations of cats in similar environments to how I created the dog drawings. These are also the same size but (on a personal note) lack the sense of fun and become more staid and static.
