mortal engines

I currently have a Kickstarter project live (it ends on Wednesday May 27th), for some enamel pin badges. I’ve worked on the project with Jeremy Levett – a writer of travelogues and collector of pins, who I also worked with on the Mortal Engines book.

We’ve designed a couple of different airship pins, each in a variety of colours. If you back the Kickstarter you can choose just the one badge or, if you’re really an airship fan, several. We’ve already reached, and surpassed, our funding goal so stretch goals are now in play.

If you’d like to have a look you can do so here.

November 28, 2018

Mortal Engines: Original Art Sale

If you’ve read my earlier post you’ll know that I worked on The Illustrated Guide to Mortal Engines during the summer. Now that the book is out, and the film has had its world premiere, I thought it would be good to make some of my original drawings available to buy.

The illustrations below all feature in the book, and are hand drawn in ink on cartridge paper. The size of the illustrations, and in some cases the paper varies as multiple illustrations were sometimes drawn on a single sheet. If you are interested in buying an illustration then you can message me on Twitter or Instagram, or drop me an email – rob [at] thisnorthernboy [dot] co [dot] uk

I’m happy to answer any questions you have about the illustrations.

: SOLD – Airships 2. £60

: SOLD – Bordeaux. £75

: SOLD – Kom Ombo. £75

: Piranha Fleet. £60

: SOLD – Boranski-Novi. £75

: Vyborg. £40

: City Cocoons. £75

: Anti-Traction League Fortress £50

: Sky Train. £40

: SOLD – Havercroft. £50

: SOLD – Caravanserais. £50

: SOLD – Northern Hunting Ground. £75

: SOLD – Marseille. £50

: SOLD – Venice. £75

: SOLD – Airship 4. £50

: SOLD – Landship and Ironclad. £75

: SOLD – Floemad 2. £60

: SOLD Paris. £75

: Sand Ship. £40

: SOLD – Nuevo Maya. £75

: SOLD – Runkelstein. £60

: SOLD – Floemad 1. £60

: SOLD – Airships 3. £60

: Water Carrier. £50

: City Cocoon – Ice. £50

: SOLD – Hamsterdam. £30

: SOLD – Traction Avant £60

: SOLD – Airships 1. £60

: SOLD – Alice Springs £60.

: SOLD – Snowmad Skate Town. £60

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November 13, 2018

I was asked earlier this year to work on some illustrations for The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines. The book is a visual guide of the world of Traction Cities, created by the author Philip Reeve, and written by Philip and Jeremy Levett. If you don’t know about Traction Cities, you should definitely check out Philip’s books. They’re a fantastic mix of science fiction, fantasy and steampunk.

The Illustrated World has work from seven different artists (including me, which I have to keep pinching myself to believe), and has been beautifully put together by Jamie Gregory over at Scholastic UK. The book, underneath its dust cover, is a beautiful, vibrant orange, embossed with a lovely motif of gears and cogs.

Philip and Jeremy have written a great A-Z of the book, which gives you a very good idea of the content.

The other artists in the book are: Aedel Fakhrie, Ian McQue, Maxime Plasse, Philip Varbanov, David Wyatt, and Amir Zand. I’ve been a massive fan of Ian and Amir’s work for bloody ages, and the other artists work a revelation! To be in the same book as them all is a huge honour.

You can buy the book here.

Lovely and metallic.

It’s only bloody orange!

Ian McQue.

Philip Varbanov.

Amir Zand.

One of Maxime’s beautiful maps.

David Wyatt’s gorgeous Brighton illustration.

Soon to be a major film.

All my illustrations are drawn with Copic SP Multiliners, Rotring Tikky, and Kuretake No.8 Brush Pen. Initial sketches are done with Palomino Blackwings and a Pentel Graphgear Mechanical Pencil.

You can find prints of my work here

I also have a Patreon page

And you can find more of my work online…
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August 14, 2018

Quiet, but not idle.

Well, I’ve been a bit quiet lately, sorry. I haven’t been idle though, I’ve been busy working on a couple of illustration projects.

I’ve just completed a tutorial for 3DTotal publishing. They have a new book coming out – Beginner’s Guide to Sketching: Robots, Vehicles & Sci-fi Concepts, and I was delighted to be asked to contribute a walk through of how I’d illustrate a sci-fi habitat in my isometric style. The book isn’t out until February next year, but you can pre-order it here.

The project that’s kept me very busy for the last couple of months has been a real thrill. Jamie Gregory, head of design at Scholastic UK, asked me if I’d be happy to do some illustrations for a new visual guide to the world of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines books. The book is to be an encyclopaedia of all the incredible things to be found in Philip’s books – the first of which is being turned in to a film by Peter Jackson. Other artists working on the book include Ian McQue and Amir Zand – both artists whose work I absolutely adore.

If you haven’t read any of Philip’s books – you really should have a look.
The description for Mortal Engines –

In a dangerous future, huge motorized cities hunt, attack and fight each other for survival. As London pursues a small town, young apprentice Tom is flung out into the wastelands, where a terrifying cyborg begins to hunt him down. MORTAL ENGINES launched Philip Reeve’s brilliantly-imagined creation, the world of the Traction Era, where mobile cities fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic future.

You can buy Mortal Engines here.

You can pre-order the Illustrated World of Mortal Engines here.

IWOME