Whoops! It’s been a hot minute since I’ve shared anything here and on social media. I’ve been head-down working on some chunky projects: working with the folks at T Brand Studio, illustrating my first book with Penguin Random House, drawing robots for The Wall Street Journal, and squeezing in lecturing two days a week at the University of Plymouth.

I’ve also been a bit unmotivated to post anything on Instagram. I know the algorithm craves video content, which doesn’t bode well for showing new illustration work, but posting process shots of myself like an influencer doesn’t float my boat. Rebecca Green sums the feeling up perfectly in her blog. I’ll try to get back into the swing, but it feels like an uphill battle some days.

Anyway, I can finally show off a nice beefy project I did for Cura, a leading pharmaceutical distributor based in Kuwait. Working alongside art director Nic Carter from Socio Design, we created a suite of images that the client could use across their brand. You can take a detailed look at the full project in my portfolio, but you can also stick around to see some of the process.

While the palette used throughout the rebrand was punchy and colourful, I had to flesh it out to make it suitable for full-colour illustrations and ensure it worked across most combinations.
Exploration of face shapes and details.
Draft character lineup.
Left: An initial test using only black lines and a rougher brush. Right: A refined and finished illustration using a black and coloured line to help create a hierarchy of character details.
An early colour option for one of the scenes experimenting with the use of green to keep focus on the characters.
Revisiting the original design of the female executive (left) to make her feel more relatable to the target audience.

Almost Perfect Tokyo Podcast

For those curious about my time in Japan, Almost Perfect has released a podcast episode in which we discuss my residency, both before and after, and my experience in Tokyo. Give it a listen, or, if you prefer, head to my site and read all about it.

Helping hands

I reached out to Guy Moorhouse, a talented creative and lovely person, for a website review to improve my portfolio. Coincidentally, he needed eyes over a great personal project he'd been working on, so we decided to give each other our two cents.

The result, I have a refreshed site with updated navigation, a snazzier client list and an improved project filter.

And while I don't think I offered much in terms of feedback for Guy, I gave him permission to use my work in his game prototype, which you should check out.

Random drawings

To end this post, I thought it’d be fun to show a mix of various bits I’ve worked on over the past few months. Ranging from terrible sketches and janky colour roughs to more finalised pieces.

For The Wall Street Journal "7 Everyday Work Problems AI Helps Me Solve".
An unused sketch.
Coming up with a grid system to create house faces for Sense.
A colour rough for Sense.