Machines of Love and Grace is a comic book scripted by my daughter, Izzy Barlow, that she’s been kind enough to let me have a go at illustrating. Izzy Barlow is an aspiring writer, and I’m a wannabe comic book illustrator who hasn’t illustrated much in the way of comics since I had Phoenix Square published by Slave […]

Free Range Crumpet is an illustration for a tee shirt. Based on a random conversation (and worked into a concept by Ian Longstaff and then a design by yours truly), this flour and yeast based character treads a fine line between fun and flirty and griddle cake. The line work was done in Manga Studio, […]

Not as jolly as the Easter Beagle, this is an illustration out of necessity. Lots of people have very cute dogs that can wear a hat. We have a dog that eats hats. And slippers… ..and here’s the film from last year’s present giving. Merry Christmas ginger-jammers.

Cooking with Witches would be an excellent idea for a Nigella/Vampirella cross-over book or tv series. For now, it’s just available as a print at Society 6. What’s for tea tonight? You don’t want to know what’s on the plate this Halloween. Don’t peak at the title of tonight’s frightful cook book. And don’t dare […]

Igor loves to dance is another experiment with Manga Studio. It’s such a great tool for inking. This is a pre-halloween treat too, with a tee-shirts and other goodies available on my society 6 page. Here’s a couple more daubs as I get to grips with Manga Studio. I’m at a stage with it where […]

Pumpkin Soup is an illustration based on one of my Spooky sketch-a-thon sketches from last October. It is really just a test piece for  Manga Studio, which I recently bought for my Mac. It’s an excellent programme for drawing (I use a Wacom tablet) and of all the illustration software I’ve tried this brings me closer […]

You may remember these characters from a previous post, the Power of Three  have been ripped and upgraded from the Showstoppers artwork and are available now as t-shirts and prints and many other things on my Society 6 page. Choose from Flapper, Phantom or Zombie to brighten your wardrobe, wall, laptop or iPod. I had a lot of fun designing these […]

The East Lancashire School of Dance’s Showstoppers 2013 is looking to be a really exciting show. I would normally shy away from combining too many elements into one poster. Two years ago I did a nice, minimal, Mary Poppins design for the show, but this year’s combination of Phantom of the Opera, Sound of Music, […]

The workplace is a dangerous environment and this set of health and safety posters are here to highlight the four major potential hazards of office life. Of course there are many more dangerous things in an office. There’s no protection from an overly sarcastic colleague, for instance. But that was outside my remit. These posters […]

I’ve been inspired by snow. It’s been a long winter* and I feel like my personal work has been under a blanket of the stuff. Certainly it’s been a very long time since I wrote anything, especially anything like a story. This week was the Artists’ Hangout, and I’d been inspired by the theme of […]

Council’s have a reputation for plugging health and safety. We’re no different at Burnley and I’m currently mid-way through a set of posters highlighting the hazards of trips and slips and what have you. One of the posters will be about electrical safety, and this is a spare drawing from my initial concepts which doesn’t […]

I started work on a series of illustrated posters last summer that, for one good reason or another, have yet to see the light of day. I’ve been anxious to post them here for ages, but have been waiting for them to be finished first. The posters will highlight security precautions we should take at […]