I did this 3 colour screen print design after a holiday staying in a grand little fishing village on the Yorkshire coast called Staithes. The gulls rule the roost there, think Hitchcock's The Birds. Once I'd finished I was approached by the card company Art Angels who wanted to use the illustration on a greeting card.

This fuchsia feline was a personal project. The classic Tenniel drawings for Alice in Wonderland are so widely known by readers that it makes for an interesting illustration challenge to work at the subject from a different angle.

I had a lot of fun with this two colour screen print design, pushing the dodo's anatomy as far as I could. I even managed to sneak the word dodo into the surroundings.

I love drawing apes so this picture was purely for the fun of it. The orangutan from this illustration went on to star as a 'T-shirt ambassador' for the charity Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.

There are countless variations on the leafy green man nature spirit fellow. I had no idea when I just started doodling around the subject that my green man would appear to be from the green fields of Albion by way of Easter Island.

I miss 35mm.

This illustration came out of an experiment in working with card cut outs to pose characters. Pushing the pieces about lead to this surprising scenario.

As soon as I heard the poem "The Siphonaptera" (a.k.a "Fleas") I was itching to illustrate it. I started out basing my design loosely on the famous Robert Hooke Micrographia flea engraving but things became more abstract and geometric as I went on, and on, and on...

One of the things that struck me most after visiting the Giant's Causeway were the abstract shapes and colours within the stone columns. After sketching I arrived at a kind of stone alphabet which I could use at different scales to build up the whole scene in this five colour screen print.

This started out as a scenic illustration of the famous rude giant chalk figure and ended up being all about the sheep.

When Shakespeare had his 400th anniversary it seemed like a perfect opportunity to hand letter something in 'f's' and sound like you're lisping.

Some tortured rhyme tomfoolery. There are still one or two more word play adventures I'd like to put Joseph into.

Being approached by Bloomsbury and the science and comedy writer Helen Pilcher to provide illustrations for her book "Bring Back the King" was nigh on the perfect project. Fascinating animal subjects that had to be depicted with a careful blend of scientific rigour and quirky humour, then throw in tubby Vegas Elvis too! Drawing dodos for a living 'aint half bad. A really fun and rewarding experience.

I don't know where this flamingo is flamingoing. Perhaps it's just trying to get away from the questionable word play.

Here's my four colour screen print take on William Blake's poem The Tyger, "burning bright in the forests of the night."

This is an ongoing personal project to illustrate our extended family tree. I end up drawing the great apes all the time so I thought it would be interesting to cast the net a little further afield. There is a long, long list of relatives still to go.

Storytime magazine commissioned me to illustrate the Aesop's fable of the dog and the bone. I provided several alternative designs for the titular pooch and the art director liked those so much they asked for a further illustration for a treasure hunt game.

As some argue that Isaac Newton's birthday is Christmas day I've contrarily opted to give out Newtonmas cards each year.

This was my entry for a mug design competition for an online retailer. I think I'll produce my own so I can have my "pick me up" coffee in the morning and a hot chocolate "nightcap."

It's good to try and remain optimistic, even in the face of fluid dynamics.

I felt like drawing a dinosaur then surprised myself with the doodled patterns that filled it in.

When the last pope quit I couldn't resist drawing up this 'surreal' little notion.

I was fortunate to win a cover design competition run by Penguin Books and the Guardian to illustrate The Master and Margarita. Penguin were so happy with the illustration that they reprinted it on a new edition and commissioned me to illustrate two further covers by the same author.

This multitasker illustration was selected to be included in the "They Draw & Cook" recipe book. I can heartily recommend the flapjacks.

These are three illustrations I worked up as an exercise in telling the story of Louis Bleriot's historic first flight across the English channel. If you look closely in the crowd scene you can see the Wright Brothers.

The original Fiji mermaid hoax was a star of P.T. Barnum's circus sideshow. I saw one years ago in Canada and it made quite an impression. When I needed to draw a mermaid I thought I'd concoct my own hoax assemblage, with a bit of scrimshaw decoration thrown in for good measure.
 

I worked very closely with the author to capture the right flavour for the cover of this historical novel. It was also fun researching Napoleon's appalling handwriting, playing the forger in order to create a legible title signature based on his scrawl.
 

The Wind In the Willows has to be one of my favourite stories from when I was a kid.

This was a great exercise in layout, both to show all those arms in an attractive composition and to get all the amazing facts in their appropriate places.

Beware those Greek gifts.

I enjoy the various incarnations of Batman in comics and films but my go to mental image of him is the tongue in cheek Adam West caped crusader. "Holy sucked in bat belly Batman."

"There's A Lion In My Bathroom" is a book of humorous poetry for which I provided the cover and fifteen greyscale illustrations. The author was great to work alongside and very receptive to the idea that the illustrations could read between the lines and suggest aspects of the characters not mentioned in the text.
 

Once I had this cover idea for metamorphosing into a different kind of beetle I had to see how it looked. This was also a good lesson in observational drawing as I drew the VW's upside down from the start rather than right way up then flipping them. Makes you look harder at things.

Oxford University Press commissioned this double page spread to illustrate the Lewis Carroll nonsense poem How Doth The Little Crocodile for their book “Jabberwocky and other poems.” I'm always very happy to spend time illustrating anything from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and, what is more, crocodiles are so much fun to draw!