Who or what made you want to become an illustrator?

Not all heroes wear capes! Mine are EH Shepard, Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson. I love their style, their humor and their ability to tell a story in just a few frames. I always wanted to become a cartoonist, creating characters and coming up with plots. One of my cartoon strips was taken on by my local newspaper, which was great. When I became a dad however, my interest shifted more towards picture books. Reading to my kids at night was one of my favourite parts of the day. Together we discovered so many great picture books and stories. To my kids it was storytime, to me it was research, analysis and pure admiration. I learnt something new from every page. 

So I started to venture into the world of picture books. I was lucky enough to meet great people along the way to give me advice, and support. I love creating interesting characters and add my own layer to their story. 

Being a picture book illustrator is the best job in the world, and without my kids I would have never found out!

Creating characters with, well character...and some with the spirit of Matthew McConaughey.

What piece of software or hardware could you not live without and why?

I couldn't live without my Ipad Pro and Procreate. I have tried every Cintiq from the Bamboo to the 24 inch touchscreen but I always come back to the IPad. I have a paperlike screen protector that gives the resistence and feel of real paper. Procreate is such an inutuitive piece of sofware that it's just a joy to work in. Their development team is incredible too and very responsive. Not that I've had many problems with it.

How many times do you tend to draw a character until you are happy with it?

This varies a lot. Always starting on paper, whether in a sketchbook or on scraps laying around I'll usually use my trusty Sailor bent nib fountain pen or a CMYK four colour ballpoint pen, something you can't erase! Depending on how i feel at the time and I just sketch. Sometimes I find a character quickly, sometimes it takes a while. Either way that character will always develop as we go. It helps me to chat to the client to really understand the characters personality and to know the story. You can't flesh out a character if you don't know what he has to do in the story. It's a complex stage even though it sounds quite straightforward. The main character of the book needs to be right, as otherwise the whole book won't work. You need to identify with the characters otherwise you won't care what happens to them. So you draw, draw and draw the character until you can place them in any situation from any angle. I don't count how many times I draw them but my desk gets pretty cluttered with the iterations. It is a great feeling to look down and know you finally did it though.  

Where do you get the ideas for your characters?

I get ideas literally everywhere. I see characters or faces in wrinkles of a curtain, in funky clouds or in the burnt leftovers from my partner's cooking! Everywhere I look I see interesting shapes that my brain can't seem to not convert into characters. Funnily enough, my 3 year old daughter does it too! So, watch out world, there's a great little illustrator in the making!

When you are not drawing, how do you like to relax?

I like spending time with my kids, go on walks, play golf and ride my bike. I am also a big cinephile and love discovering new films and rewatching old ones!

Animals feature heavily in children’s books – do you have a pet?

I do not. I did have a dog, but saying goodbye to him was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. So, I decided for myself that all my furry companions would be 2D in future. Living eternally in my sketchbook. 

How and why did you decide to pursue illustration as your career?

I've always drawn. For as long as I can remember. Lying in front of the TV copying the cartoons. Drawing on the blank pages of my books assuming that's why the space had been left. I always wanted to be a cartoonist. To have my own comic strip. But by the time I was ready the industry was dying. Newspapers just weren't giving the space to the funnies any more. So I turned to advertising and graphic design. This did not last. I needed to draw. I got into animation drawing storyboards and designing characters and props. Then into games producing the same sort of thing. But my passion was always in the still image. Creating a static image that felt like it had life was what i wanted to do. So thats what I try to do now with every commission I take on.

Can you hear the sea?

Do you have a favourite picture book or recall one of the first picture books you saw?

My favourite picture book is Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs by Giles Andreae and Russell Ayto. It probably wasn't the first but my kids would always pick this one at bedtime and to me it was that Pen and Ink, cartoon style that I thought picture books needed. I love how Russell Ayto plays about with layout and typography and composition.

What was your first commission as a professional illustrator?

I was 18 and had my own cartoon strip running in my local newspaper. I got a call from the editor saying they couldn't afford to keep it going so my space was given over to adverts. So I thought then maybe I make a cartoon strip that was heavily laden with product placement. I hawked it around the town and one forward thinking car dealer took me up on it and we produced a weekly strip advertising his business for a few months. That strip sat in the same space I had taken away. And that is what happened to the funny pages in newspapers.

What is your favourite medium to work with and why?

Pen and Ink. At least that's how I start. I like it because when you're trying to find a character you have to get ideas and shapes out of your brain and onto the paper so you can start shaping them and refining them. With a pencil it's too tempting to erase an arm because it was too long. With ink you are forced to work with what you have and to keep redrawing when its not working. And when you redraw a whole character becasue an arm was too long you may learn something else about them. BUT, because of the internet the world is getting smaller. The vast majority of my clients are in the US whilst I'm in the UK. So rolling up artwork into a tube and sending it around the world is not a viable option anymore. So my finished art is almost exclusively digital. So I use an iPad and for the most part Procreate (Illustration software) and it is able to replicate Pen and Ink and watercolours impeccably. Some people confuse digital art with computer generated art. IT IS NOT. My ipad is a sketchbook. It just happens to have infinite pages at whatever size I need. The Apple pencil is a pencil, a crayon, an ink pen, a ballpoint pen, a paintbrush and from it come whatever colours I need to tell a story. It's still me moving the pencil. The images that appear originated in my brain and spilled out though my finger tips.

Talk us through the process of creating one of your latest illustrations or books.

The scene below of a girl racing a car through the coutryside has been drawn and redrawn dozens of times. In pencil as small thumbnail drawings, to quickly get an idea of composition without getting bogged down in details. Then multiple times at full size to get bogged down in the details. Then imported into Procreate with the opacity dropped so low I can hardly see it. This is because in my mind's eye I know what needs to go where for the composition to work but it's a jigsaw puzzle and I'm pulling the pieces from the murky depths of my brain. Having some of it vaguely visible helps me place those pieces. And because I've drawn it multiple times, muscle memory seems to heavy handedly force me into keeping certain things unbroken. Those trees remained pretty much unmoved throughout all iterations of this scene. The animals changed location, colour and species throughout the process. I'm very happy with it now though.

Have you ever thought about trying out a different technique or a different style?

I'm currently going through that now. Most of my picture book work up to date and therefore what's on this site is a continuence of my concept work from animation and the gaming industry. It's a kind of 2D-3D bridge. There are no black lines just tonal changes in colour to create curves and shape to the characters. There are some ex concept designers making the crossover to children's books, most notably Johnny Duddle (He's great). But I personally have missed drawing my cartoons. It's when I'm happiest and so you are going to start seeing a lot more of my work with deliciously thick/thin ink lines holding everything together all washed in scrumptious watercolours. And you are going to love it!.... or not. Your choice :)

Who or what have been some of your major artistic influences?

E.H. Shepard is probably my biggest influence but there are so many others. Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes redefined a genre, dropped the mic then dissapeared. Class act. More recently I find myself re looking at comic book artists. I was never really into comics as a kid but now I see the skill in telling a story in a graphic Novel format. Taking what you would expect are very restraining frames and creating ever more innovative ways of changing their shapes and filling them with mini masterpieces. There are too many to mention but a guy called Skottie Young just has an incredible way of filling a piece of paper. His composition is faultless. Another thing I try to bring to my work.

Which books from your own childhood really stand out?

The elegant simplicity of E.H. Shepard's pooh bear illustrations bely an immense skill that I constantly try to capture in my work. I think that's where I'm happiest in the raw pen and ink stage of character development. It just feels like its from a different time. Before all the colour flooded the page. Not that that's a bad thing but for me it just feels calmer.

Describe your working technique and how you came to perfect it.

I dont think anyone would claim to have perfected illustrating but i have a routine and it his heavily based around the soul of the character. I read the book I'm to illustrate over and over but not necessarily in chronological order. I'm looking for those stand out moments that define a character. I sketch whilst reading so I'm constantly looking to pull the image from my head. Sometimes it comes together immediately, other times it's in pieces but these early sketches breathe the life into the later refined artworks and I love it!

Do you keep a sketch book?

I do have sketchbooks but I'm lucky in that most of the drawing I do now is for a client, even the sketches and since I have a rule never to remove pages from my sketchbooks, and I like to send my clients the original working sketches when a project is complete. Because of this I have to draw on loose paper that I keep in an old leather folio which looks like an old book. I get a lot of comments about that when I'm out and about sketching.