Illustration Friday - Intricate

I noticed that this week's Illustration Friday was "intricate" and I started to think about all the little detailed things that I could draw like lace, embroidery etc. But then I found this quote by Thomas Sowell, "A society, an institution, or even a single human being is an intricate system of fragile inter-relationships, whose complexities are little understood and easily destabilised." and I felt inspired to illustrate something to do with relationships instead. I wanted to get some idea of time passing so I included the sun and the moon; and things evolving, so I based the composition on the Ying & Yang shape, which represents things in balance.

Life Drawing - Francis

A few images from my life drawing class.


Tonal study with watercolour, 5 mins


Oil bar, acrylic paint, acrylic ink, charcoal, pencil & watercolour on paper, 40 mins


Acrylic paint + medium on wood, 40 mins

Edinburgh Castle

This will be a screen print eventually, I'm just trying out colour combinations digitally.


Today I finished the screen printed version, you can see it above. It came out much darker then the digital print so I might have to re-do it with more transparent colours. There are a couple spare available to buy, mounted, please contact me if you are interested. This print is also for sale in Just Scottish Gallery, WOOOOOOO!!!!!!! :D:D:D


I've done some more of this print based on a spring/summer colour scheme.

Eddie's Seafood Screen

This is a screen print of a fish monger's up the road from me, I wanted to do a few more but I ran out of time (the story of my life).

Book Covers

This is a book cover for "The Sight" by David Clement Davies. The book is about a wolf pack... I'm not so clear on the plot. There is a baby and another wolf pack and some of them have powers. Anyway, this was done with screen print, the shiny symbols on top were screen printed with varnish, then I put thermal embossing powder on top of the varnish and used a heat gun to melt it to get this glossy effect.

Of course I also forgot to put a spine on the book but the deadline is monday and I still have 2 book covers to go so let's not get picky.

The effect is much more subtle, unfortunately when I took the photograph it came out more shiny then in real life because of the overhead lights.

Editorial Illustration

This editorial was about how bad weather means bigger catches for fishermen a few years down the line because the storms pull up plankton from the bottom of the ocean which the fish then thrive on. I was inspired by the movie "the perfect storm" and the famous japanese wood block print, "Hokusai's Wave" (aka The Great Wave Off Kanagawa). I used monoprint and screen print to produce this image. And a little fine liner to touch up the boat.



This image is for an editorial about a fish that looked so different as a juvenile, or a male or female adult that for years scientists thought they were 3 different fish. The New Scientist article was called "Shape-shifting Fish Fools Scientists" so I illustrated it with a family at the beach; each of the family members looks like a totally different aquatic animal but they are still from the same family.


This was an editorial illustration for an article about how people you don't even know can affect your mood. I wanted to screen print it but I ran out of time so this was done digitally.

Sketchbook work