medieval | this northern boy

November 11, 2015

Build! A Knight’s Castle.

Earlier this year I worked on the illustrations for a children’s activity book, published by Ivy Press, all about castles. It was a huge amount of fun, and allowed me to work on a real variety of subjects – skulls, castles, knights, medieval soldiers, siege engines…

A huge thank you to all the staff at Ivy Press that worked on this with me, and of course to the author – Annalie Seaman, and to Charlie Simpson who created an amazing paper craft castle. I’m really pleased with how the book turned out!

The official description…

Think like an archaeologist with this fun paper-craft title! Readers are given information about how archaeologists uncover remains, and use secondary sources. They are then given visual and textual clues about the site of a medieval castle, which was the location of a sieged battle. The final part of the book contains the press-out pieces to recreate a paper model of the castle and the historic battle, complete with siege engines and defending and attacking forces. The reader must use their new-found knowledge of how the castle was laid out, and what siege engines looked like to figure out how to piece the paper scene together.

Build! A Knight’s Castle is available in bookshops and Amazon now.

Here are a few of my illustrations from the book, all drawn by hand.

Cover.

Battle.

Heraldry.

Portcullis.

Siege Tower.

Trebuchet.

Skull.

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July 20, 2015

Imagined Places

I’ve drawn a fair few cityscapes and imaginary places over the last few months, some of them purely personal, some have been commissions, some have been posted here before, some haven’t, so here they are collected in one place.

The first, City on the Edge of Nowhere, is one of my favourites.

City on the edge of nowhere.

: Stilted City

: The City and the Tree

: The City and the Tree II

: The Light on the Rock

: Stilted City II

: Sky Town

: Two Sides of the Street

: Stilted City III

: Stilted City IV

: The Island. 4788 likes on Instagram.

: Sky Town II

: Nobody Gets off this Rock

: Fragment of Laputa

: The Giant’s Ring

: Slater’s Bridge

: Stilted City (coloured)

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May 18, 2014

Mountains, moors and make-believe

There is something magical about creating a place or a world that previously only existed inside your own head. It’s impossible to draw (at least it is for me) an imaginary landscape without wondering about the people who inhabit it, or the history of it, or the flora and fauna that fill it.

Some of my landscapes are very much rooted in the real world, the lake district is never far from the tip of my pen, while some have only the loosest foundations here on earth.

Only one of my landscapes exists as is, Slater’s Bridge in Little Langdale in the Lake District. I really must get back there with a sketchbook. It’s an amazingly beautiful place.

Slater’s Bridge

People are very rare in my drawings, partly because I’m pretty terrible at drawing them, but partly because I want to be the person in the picture. I don’t want to share these places with anyone else. Extreme escapism for me would be stepping into one of my illustrations and exploring what’s beyond the edge of the page.

: Walking City

: Doodle Street

: Tree and rock

: Shadow City

: Desert city

: Skull City

: Mount Doom

: Land of the crow

: Evelyn landscape

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February 26, 2014

Not a happy place to live…

Sometimes, not very often, a doodle becomes something surprising and cool. I started sketching the other day, with no particular aim in mind, and quickly roughed out the shape of a skull. A few minutes later, again with very little thought, a city began to grow…

I’m really pleased with what this little doodle became…

Skull City

December 4, 2013

Walking City

There’ll be a longer update (or updates) from me later this week, but for now here’s the latest illustration I’m working on.

It was inspired by thoughts of all the incredible buildings and settings in the Lord of the Rings, and also memories of reading Mervyn Peake‘s Gormenghast trilogy a few years ago. I love the messy, organic way that old medieval towns grow, so adding that to a stone mountain that walks didn’t seem like a big jump.

Walking City

A lot of people have said it reminds them of work by Hayao Miyazaki and the output of Studio Ghibli, the amazing Japanese animation studio. Oddly, although I know of Myazaki and Ghibli, I’ve only ever seen about five minutes of any of the films. I really should make an effort to see more.

UPDATE: Thursday 5th December.

I think I’m just about done colouring. I’ll step away for now and see how it looks in a few days.

Final (probably) coloured version of Walking City.

January 23, 2013

Building a city…

A few days ago I was idly doodling, probably while I was supposed to be doing something else, and I ended up with the beginnings of a medieval town. I worked on it for a couple more hours, and was pretty pleased. It’s wonky as hell, but it’s interesting I think.

A very wonky doodle

So I liked this, but it really was a bit slap-dash. So I decided to have another go at it, taking a bit more care and time. Over the next few days the drawing progressed…

I think it manages to keep the same feel as the first sketch, but it’s better balanced and more considered. I think maybe an extra layer of buildings could have worked, maybe next time.

The last thing I did was to have a go at colouring it. I’ve never used photoshop to colour one of my sketches before, so this was a bit hit and miss. I’m sure I went about it in an entirely inefficient way, but the result was OK. I like the colour palette, I’d like to get more texture into the next one though.

A coloured illustration of a city and castle

The final (for now) coloured illustration

So that’s The City & The Castle complete.

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Tag: medieval