Humble Beginnings

My entry into commercial illustrating came about in the mid 90’s. This was after a few little club leaflet projects.These led to a commission to black and white line illustrate a series of angling instructional books for the Crowood press. The result of the hard work led to more and more commissions to illustrate angling books for a variety of publishers and authors and on into digital illustration.

The old black and white line art eventually led to a commission for a series colour illustrations. These were for one of my author clients John Wilson and his publisher Boxtree. That created a need to explore digital illustration options. This was needed to shorten the time of creation and prepare print ready artwork and the first step was taken into digital illustration.

Creating a Niche Position with Digital Illustration

Little did I realise that those difficult days creating artwork using what were then alien software would eventually place me in a very comfortable niche category as an angling illustrator. This all took a huge step when commissioned to create artwork for a monthly angling magazine Improve Your Coarse Fishing, followed by Sea Angler Magazine and Angling Times for whom I worked from 1998 until retiring in 2016. The huge library that was created in that period is still in use and has been used for a wide range of publications.

Further commissions from publishers continued to create some pleasant diversions from my day to day routines. I still receive enquiries to take on new commissions.