Last week saw the publication of Orson Teller's Alice Ravenwood and the Tomb of Saint George, "an exciting, pulpy fusion of Ghostbusters, Mary Poppins and Indiana Jones". Now, surely you want to read that!

I mention it here because I very much enjoyed making the logo and cover art for this book, a montage of scenes and characters that populate the story. To learn more and get yourself a copy, visit Orson Teller's website here, where you'll see a second volume of Alice's adventures is already in the works.

Here's a couple of pieces recently done ... actually neither in August, one in May and one in July (though it is the August edition of Fine Food Digest).

One thing about digital art is it kind of ... doesn't exist! It does, of course, and usually it ends up being printed or, in the case of Curious Expedition 2, the video game I worked on with Maschinen-Mensch, displayed on a screen. But until CE2 I'd worked almost exclusively in print, so to have the art existing exclusively in the digital ether feels a bit strange.

I wanted a decent record of all the work I did, so I've made a one-off art book (through Blurb), a portfolio, just for my own archive. Although there are no other copies (the art remains the copyright of Maschinen-Mensch), I did make a little video of a flip-through the book, so you can have a peek for yourself.

A project I worked on at the end of 2022 and into the new year has just gone live over on the Museum of London website. It's a 7-page comic called Deaf Londoners in the 1660s, and it tells the story of three such people, two who we know of from the diaries of Samuel Pepys.

You can read the comic and see the accompanying resources here, including teachers' notes and a BSL-interpreted video of the strip.

The comic was principally researched and written by Dr. Kate Loveman, Associate Professor in English Literature, 1600-1789, at the University of Leicester, and an expert and author on Samuel Pepys, and all done as part of the Reimagining the Restoration project. Also directing the project was the Museum's Learning Manager, James Harrod.

It was great fun to do, with plenty of detail to research - and it was wonderful to have a couple of real experts on hand to advise and provide material and context for the visuals.

Many thanks to both Kate and James for a terrific working experience, and for bringing me into the project.

My work-illustration website has been woefully out of date for a few years now, but I've, at last, spent the past two weeks redesigning and updating it, and now it's live and published.

It should be good for desktops, tablets and phones, so give it a whirl ... and let me know if anything is broken or you spot a typo .... there's always one lurking about somewhere.

I'm currently redesigning and building my work website - after nearly three years of no updates. Anyway, I came across these mole concept drawings I did for Curious Expedition 2 - I don't remember doing them, but I like them, so thought I'd post them here before February vanishes.

Here it is, the final DLC for Maschinen-Mensch's Curious Expedition 2. Previous DLCs have been paired with the (British) Avalon Club and the (Chinese) Taishi Academy, and now it's the turn of (the American) Lux Labs with The Robots of Lux.

There's a bit of a difference with this one as the three new featured characters are all from another computer game called Steamworld Heist, which I'm not familiar with, but had to learn a bit about of course in order to draw them - Piper Faraday, Billy Gill and Valentine Butterbolt.

Other new features include the Naturalist (who can train any animal in the game), the robot chameleon (which was super fun to create), the plasma spiders and the yeti, not to mention a number of new items and bits of equipment, as well as a new location, the old theatre (complete with not-so-hidden Tintin reference).

This DLC features the final bits of art I drew for CE2 towards the end of last year and the beginning of this one. The base game on its own is a very rich experience, but add these modules and its scope just becomes enormous and varied. It's an incredible game and I'm still in awe of how it all came together, and privileged to be a part of it.

The game and its DLCs are available on PC at Steam and GOG, as well as for XBox, PlayStaton and Switch. And if you're quick, they're heavily discounted as I post this!

It's quite unusual for me to preview a project I'm working on when its so early on in development, but following the lead of publisher Fabled.One I can share the news that I'm doing the artwork for a new board game called Calleva.

Set in Britain in 20 BC around the city of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester), it's written by Mat Humphrey - who has a number of really interesting and excellent games in the works, including the also announced Chickens 'n Aliens and Tomb of Akhenaten. I can't wait to see how this turns out and to share more with you. You can follow our progress on the Facebook page and Twitter. Here's the artwork for one of the Calleva cards, already completed.

My announcement of The Brambletye Box a couple of weeks ago was met with a lovely warm wave of enthusiasm, and that has really helped to get things going again with it. Obviously it does sometimes have to take a back seat to my commercial work, but already I've scripted the next scene and completed the thumbnails and A4 roughs for it, and I'm about to commence drawing, so hopefully you'll see those strips going up online very soon.

Remember you can support the comic further at my new Patreon page where I'm previewing sketches and other bits and bobs. A number have already signed up and I'm incredibly grateful for this, it's all kindling to keep things moving forward. Thank you!

Maschinen-Mensch have just announced the next expansion pack for Curious Expedition 2, called The Shores of Taishi, taking us into the realm of the East-Asian influenced islands of the Celestial Shores.

This DLC contains some of my favourite art for CE2, particularly the new Peacock tribe and their village. Other features include a recruitable red panda, a range of new enemies, such as the Ushi Oni and Dangkang, the animal shelter of the Tanuki, and a host of new items, trophies and locations.

Check out the trailer here, and add it to your Steam wishlist here. The Shores of Taishi is released for PC on May 19th, and soon after for consoles.

Recently I was commissioned to provide the cover for Fine Food Digest's Spring 2022 edition (vol. 23, no.2).

The brief was for an isometric view of a mini-market with a number of new shopping methods integrated - self checkouts, recipe boxes, store collection, delivery options, and even a robot at a till (not sure we've got those quite yet!).

Individual elements had to be easy to extract to use as separate illustrations for the interior feature article, so everything had to be on its own layer. It wasn't too different from the way I'd been working on the recent computer games project, Curious Expedition 2.

The biggest difference was in the style I chose, with no outlines and a very clean 'vector art' look (though actually it's not vector art).

Thanks to the the Guild of Fine Food and art director Mark Windsor for the work - a challenging but very enjoyable brief!