Maddaddam

Here's an illustration from a few months ago. This was to accompany a review in Nature of Margaret Atwood's latest novel Maddaddam.

The piece went through a few changes as the art director, Barbara Izdebska, checked details against the review copy of the novel in the Nature offices.

I wasn't totally in the dark as Maddaddam is the third book in a trilogy and I had read the first novel in the series Oryx and Crake a few years ago and was able to speed-read the second book After the Flood while I was doing roughs for the illustration.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out in the end and Barbara very kindly sent me on the review copy so that I could finish the trilogy!

The trilogy is a captivating and terrifying depiction of a world after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity. A handful of human survivors manage to cling on to a perilous existence, along with the Crakers, a tribe of bio-engineered humanoids bred to populate this brave new world (on the left in my illustration). Both groups must contend with the pigoons, ferocious and intelligent creatures who are the descendants of genetically modified pigs bred as human organ farms.

The whole trilogy is great but Oryx and Crake remains my favourite. Start there and see how you get on.

HUMAN CELLS!

Just received my copy of Nature so I can put this bizarre illustration up now. It's for an article on IPS Cells, a new, fast-moving and ultra-competitive field in genetics/biology. Those are human cells that the intrepid scientists are driving - vrrrrm! This piece was great fun

NATURE ARTICLE

I have this illustration in the new issue of Nature. Quite unusual for me not too have a character of figure involved in the piece, but I'm pleased with how it came out.

LIZ

More sketches for Blake passengers - Queen Liz I and her main man, Bill Cecil.More sketches for Blake passengers - Queen Liz I and her main man, Bill Cecil.

In other news, the illustration for Nature (see below) is going to be reprinted in the Japanese version off Nature. Cool, my first time being published in Japan. 

The double-length Time Out 40th anniversary special of William Blake is up on the comix page of my website now - lies, damn lies and outright fibs.

YOU HIGGS BOSON!

Here's the big piece for this week's Nature magazine. It ties in with all the fascinating stuff going on at CERN - each superhero represents one approach to smash the Standard Model. Big guy at the back is the new LARGE HADRON COLLIDER ("LHC SMASH PROTONS!!!"), the others are (l-r) Tevatron, Cosmic Energy, Neutrino Gal and Dark Matter Man. You can probably tell that this job was great fun. Ah, Jack Kirby!

Just finished next week's William Blake strip, which is a Time Out 40th anniversary special.