Important Stories

Want to tell a story that truly matters? Harness the power of visual storytelling—where words and imagery combine to leave a lasting impact.

This is the story of Isi Metzstein, a young boy who escaped pre-war Berlin on the Kindertransport and found refuge in Glasgow. Told through Isi’s own voice, drawn from an intimate audio interview, the narrative reveals the danger he faced, the heartbreaking separation from his family, and their miraculous reunion as they built a new life in Scotland.

The story was brought to life through a powerful collaboration between writer Paul Bristow, myself, and the young people of St Bride’s School. The resulting comic is a moving testament to how learners and creators can work together to illuminate history—preserving voices that must never be forgotten.

All the illustrations were created in pen and ink, hand drawn and the artwork scanned and coloured on Photoshop. Have a look at the short video to see all the pages in Isi’s story. The idea from the leaners was to have the fire punctuate the black and white to show the violence of the fire that destroys his Synagogue,

Cover art

Ever wondered how a book cover got made and why it looks the way it does? All go through a process, a brief, different drafts and then the final art you see. The first sketch nailed down the foreground composition, what followed was a game of place the shark.

About my process, creating drafts and going through ideas is one of the enjoyable aspects on creating art. Illustrating a cover artwork and going through this process will always strengthen the look of the finished artwork. Ideas can be tried out with a few well placed marks from a pencil and discarded or developed accordingly. Having creating hundreds of cover artworks over my professional career I have a good instinct for what works and my first sketch will often be close to what is needed. What follows is a refinement of that with the clients input.

Comic book layouts

Creating those first marks on a page is always an exciting time. Taking a story and visualising the characters telling an exciting tale is really a joy. This is my first draft at a new story, a Jacobite period tale of excitement and running! My inspiration to open the story was to have the main character running for his life, from this we flash back into what led him to this life threatening moment.

Upstairs Downstairs

A double page spread from my James Croll book, that tells the tales of a Perthshire scientist and his life and discoveries. This artwork details his time managing a hotel and each room represents different jobs needed to be done from day to day. A little ode to Wes Anderson films as I did a slice through the hotel to Show Croll and his wife doing chores and tending to guests. Artwork created totally by hand using colouring pencils.

My little Ode to Wes Anderson films in my treatment of this double page for James Croll Adventures in Time and Space storybook.

Casting your graphic novel

When I get a story to illustrate, I read through the story and my mind takes me places, I imagine the environment and characters form the text and start to populate that world with characters.

If designing the world is a mixture of research, location, set building, dressing and prop making. Then creating the people that live there is like casting, only you draw not chose your actors.

These are character designs first laid down in pencil and then inked to cast the young boy first at about 8 years old then as a young teen for a story set early 1800’s

Once the casting is in place then its a matter of getting them to act, as in when I draw the story panels that feature the character reacting to the world around them.

Plasto A New Character Design for The Sustainables Academy

This fellow is a happy chap and he’s also one of the Sustainables. This character forms part of a range of illustrated characters created for a exciting range school resources to educate on environmental issues and matters of responsible consuming. Plasto represents plastic use and recycling and as you can see has a bendable and stretchable physicality to him.

Clients wanting to commission usually present an idea and from that a conversation and then rough drafts follow to develop the idea further. I’ve attached a later pencil draft to show what a final concept looks like and how closely it looks to the final presented to the client.

Narrative Storytelling And Working With Schools

I’ve recently been working with secondary school pupils at St Brides School in East Kilbride with Magic Torch Comics. For this project we are taking excerpts from children that fled Germany in the 1930’s and relocated to the UK.

Key to the learning is to allow the pupils to find their own way through the story and share my experience of illustrating graphic novels. To get them infer from a story’s text, what else could be said and making their own choices in how to best visually tell the tale. .

The short version of Isi Metzstein’s account of how he experienced Kristallnacht was prepared to work with. The two pages you see here have been inspired in part from the classes own work. In my most recent session with the class my two pages inspired from the collaboration was presented to them for feedback.

As the project progresses I will be creating the full version of this story and a another by Dany Metzstein. These stories told as visual narratives will be an important part in telling these important stories to younger people.

Both will be available to read for free at Magic Torch Comics for schools and anyone else interested.

These interviews can be found here and tell of the horror inflicted on these young lives.

Four pages to tell a tale.

This nice little 4 page comic was commissioned by Magic Torch Comics. The story I illustrated, Calasraid was part of an anthology of tales. Colourful art, action with a bit of silliness masks a darker story that has brutal ending. Read this story and many more for free at Magic Torch Comics

Creating Graphic Novel Artwork

Telling a captivating story with pictures is a love of mine and I’m always thrilled when I get a commission to create illustrations for a new visual narrative. The draft and finished page below has been taken from Goliath a story set in 1967 and the year 2000.

As much as I hate to admit it the year 2000 is now firmly in the past and this novel is essentially two period pieces within one story! So the look of both times needs researched and delving into the past to get the look and feel right can be it’s own time consuming rabbit hole if you let it. You get an immediate satisfaction if you get it right. I think the trick is not to pick out too many obvious examples from the period as this especially in the case of fashions can make the feel characteristic.

First I start by reading the story, I let it percolate a bit in my mind and play it out in my imagination like a film, thinking composition, point of view and pacing. I try to trust my intuition and find that if it feels easy to draft down on the page then I’m doing it right. After I might go back into it and do a little refinement before illustrating the final page.

I still draft my rough pages by hand and you can see I have a love for using colour pencils. This draft stays very close to the final page, you will see a little refinement here and there only. The finished art is hand drawn in pen & ink then scanned. I use a layer with textured paper to help soften the shade I add to give it a wash, water coloured feel which I think helps adds to the period look.

I used greyscale with some colour to highlight elements for the 1967 time period and used colour for the year 2000 parts of the story so the reader knows when exactly they are at a glance.

Goliath. Draft page and Finished art comparison. All my illustrations are hand rendered in pen and ink.

KA-BOOM! Superhero Team Character Design!

Another of my character designs for Sustainables Academy, this character named Shatter is made from glass and she informs learners about glass, how its made our use of it and the importance of recycling and cutting down its use.

I wanted to avoid cracks or sharp or broken glass elements to her look, as you can imagine a broken glass look would not go down well in a classroom! When coming up with her I though more about glass and the shiny polished look of glass bottles. As with all the Sustainable characters they are guided by a nineties cartoon series look and hopefully that comes across in the style of Shatter.

Shatter in all her Nineties style glory! Original character created in pen in ink.

Shatter with The Sustainables Team.

Whats on the box

When we read our imagination takes us further, it will fill in and create extra depth and meaning to the story we're reading.  An illustrators job is to visualise those imagining and deduce what might be going on in a scene or character interaction that isn't described in the authors words.

When creating illustrations for a story, I very much focus on the process of developing what my imagination is telling me to the page.   I'm always keen to make suggestions and develop ideas that can help enrich what the author has written. 

This scene was created to show how the children in the story bond with the robot, originally it was supposed to be a dinner table scene, though as robots don't eat it highlighted the difference of him as a character and separated him from the kids in the story.  Instead I fleshed out this scene with them all watching something scary, so that a bond is created by their share experience.  

This artwork was created by hand using pencils, scanned and layered and painted on Photoshop