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.