It wasn’t enough to have drawn the damn thing in the first place, you then had to go over it again with a surgical scalpel and cut out masks. Once the masks were cut out, then and only then, could you start laying down the colour with the airbrush. A mask, is a stencil. Banksy…

The airbrush was the thing that got me interested in technical illustration. It had it all, a shiny little gun in the shape of a pen which when connected to an air compressor would fire out a fine spray of colour. If you had a dual action airbrush – and I did – you could…

These were a real gem of a find. Marker pens really came of age in the graphic and design studios of the 80s. They were a key visualisation tool and any graphic studio worth their salt wouldn’t be complete without a full set of these stubby little glass bottles. Their advantage over other rendering techniques…

A recent visit from my parents brought with it a load of goodies from the past, a box full of my old illustration tools. There is something important about tools, whether it is in the pursuit of creative work or just bashing down a wall. It is no exaggeration to describe tools as extensions of…

The river flows day and night. From high to low it makes its way through here and there, doing this and that. Sometimes a trickle, sometimes a torrent. The river rises and collects extra passengers. Unwanted passengers like farm waste, agricultural plastic wrap, bales of hay. Things we have discarded like plastic bottles, road cones,…

I used to read Asterix comics a lot. Despite being isolated, outnumbered and surrounded by Romans, there was just one thing this small community of Gauls feared – the sky falling on their heads. ‘What’s the worst that can happen’ is a question that hopefully we don’t need to ask ourselves too often. If we…

At some point in ancient history someone realised that a thin pliable material was much more convenient to carrying around than a heavy, brittle stone and stick of charcoal. The world moved on and we replaced our nice flexible, tactile paper notebooks with a heavy, brittle slab of electronics. People who regularly stash their phones…

Staying local has literally captivated me for so long that the thought of riding off into the sunset has felt like a naughty pleasure. In particular there’s one long distance trail that starts local to me and ventures off shamelessly beyond any confines, it was time to give in to temptation. Cycling the Pennine Bridleway…

I spent the day on the River Derwent. This lovely river flows right through the middle of the Derbyshire Dales from Ladybower, through Matlock, down to Belper and onwards to join the Trent. I am proud to say that it is my local river. Despite the river access issues that plague so many UK rivers…

I can’t have a packet of chocolate digestives in the house without eating them. It’s just one big biscuit. I need help and that’s by not having them in my house. Recently we had a little picnic in Oxford and because we were in a rush I popped into a Tesco Metro to pick up…