This award-winning British illustrator unravels the distinctive elements that paved the way for his success
I GRAVITATED TOWARDS DRAWING and painting animals as a child. But I’m ashamed to say I put the pencil and paintbrush down at 14 and didn’t pick them back up until eight years later. It probably sounds silly, but I genuinely had no comprehension that people made a living doing something creative until I was in my mid 20s. It just wasn’t part of my world back then.
So, a chunk of my creative practice today is about making up for that decade of lost time. I had to teach myself how to draw and paint, so I often feel like I ‘missed out’ on what would have been the time to experiment with art. Now, I try to keep my drawing as free and as unabashed as possible.
Before I graduated with a master’s from the Royal College of Art, I did a BSc in Natural Sciences, specialising in biology, conservation and statistics. The brilliant thing about biology is: the more you learn about it, the more you’ll marvel at its many wonders. This thought became the cornerstone of my creative practice; visualising little known biological phenomena and spinning them into fantasy narratives founded on various scientific truths.
I started my graduate job as a Business Analyst two weeks after sitting my finals. Three months into it, I remember questioning whether this was really the right environment for me. The answer was a firm no. With all this uncertainty, I turned to a distraction and picked up the pencil again. Straight away, I got the bug for illustration and began drawing every moment of my free time. Eventually, I posted my work online and received an influx of kind messages. I realised that connecting with someone I’ve never met and providing a moment of escapism for them meant more to me than the things I thought I was meant to care about.
Today, I��
