The Devil Is In The Detail

The Devil Is In The Detail

A collage made from torn book pages and newspaper cuttings - selecting phrases which were timely and/or had some resonance, for whatever reason.

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On The Fly

Fruit Fly

Kathryn at John Hopkins University Arts & Sciences magazine asked me to create a cover and interior illustrations for a major story on humanity's debt to the lowly fruit fly. The article explores how scientists use fruit flies in their research which could potentially help cure human disease.

It was requested that the cover image and interior spread should be related in both look and feel so I maintained the same scientific elements and took different views of the human character. One of the influences coming into play for the main image was Da Vinci's Vetruvian Man although it was scaled back so as not to be too obvious.

Fruit Fly

Fruit Fly


The colour palette evolved via experimentation during the working process. Once I had the combination of turquoise and olive green then everything else fell into place.
The finished illustrations were very well received and the magazine published on November 15th.

Fruit Fly sketch

These are the initial two approved sketches.

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Pen & Ink Figures

Pen and Ink Figures

Experimenting with pen and ink drawings of invented figure-types.

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It Takes A Team

Fruit Fly

I was contacted by Case Western Reserve University to illustrate a story about how a scientific team had made the discovery of a gene that could stop the growth of tumours in the colon. Going further, could the enzyme this gene produced not only stop cancer but also prevent the disease?

I was given a free hand in how I might interpret the story although was asked to focus on the partnership of the people who brought the ideas to fruition while maintaining the investigative and medical aspects of the article. In terms of colour I was looking for something different rather than the blues and reds often seen in medical illustration.

Fruit Fly

Fruit Fly

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Collector Car Market

Classic Car

I received a request from Matt asking if I was interested in producing an image for the Insider column of Radius magazine about the collector car market. It was a refreshing change - a whole different array of shapes and textures. The story itself was about the best strategies to employ in order to build a diverse and rewarding collection of vintage cars. As there was nothing too editorially specific to illustrate it felt like something more collage-like or abstract could work well. Here is the completed image, published spread, and below the submitted pencil sketch which was submitted for approval before artwork was commenced.

Classic Cary

Classic Car

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