W is for Walk Available for Pre-order Now

The latest in the alphabet series is available for pre-order NOW by clicking THIS LINK. Please note that orders cannot be guaranteed for delivery before Christmas.

This print was inspired by the daily morning walks I take with my dog Mouse along the river near my house in York. It’s a popular route and excellent for people and pup watching. If you look carefully you can spot Mouse and her best pal Edgar, and I’ve included other favourite dog friends and family members past and present.

This year I worked with Rob Macfarlane and Johnny Flynn on a picture book called The World to Come, which features a river as a main character of sorts. I’ve included a few references to this project as it was very much on my mind whilst making the drawings- the houseboat, willow trees and little otter are all fun visual crossovers.

As with all my prints, this one began with a series of pencil roughs to work out the composition, followed by a colour study and then a full scale pencil drawing which I used as a guide to draw all of the films, one per colour. I used a combination of Indian ink, waxy black crayon, opaque markers and collaged black paper cuts to create a range of textures. Dan at The Penfold Press made me a test sheet showing how all of the 10 colours I’d selected would appear when layered in different combinations; we really embraced the transparency of the ink to give a slightly ethereal, misty feel that worked well for the crisp and bonfire-scented autumn/winter season that the print depicts.