Illustrating ‘Exploring’

Yesterday i shared a section from my auto-ethnographic work on ‘being an explorer’. I really rather enjoyed throwing myself into this, and today i’m illustrating the chapter. I wanted to make a physical illustration to go with it, and have settled on a lino print, but will have to see how it works out. It’s the largest one i’ve ever done, so it may be a challenge to print by hand.

I normally illustrate on the iPad, although for ‘The Humble Leader’ i did use pen and ink drawn leaves. Hand illustration, on real media, always feels somehow better, even though the challenge of successfully scanning to digital afterwards can be a pain, and frustrating.

I wanted the landscape here to represent the ‘ecosystem’ language that i’ve been exploring more recently, as well as the moon shining over it, in a nod to the Apollo book. I’ll share the final piece once done, if it works!