These illustrations were made just over a year ago as part of a self-initiated project for university, a book I made called ‘A Briefer History of Time’. It was made to be a more condensed, illustrated version of Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ which I’d just finished reading. Using this book as a starting point was an obvious choice for me as space has played a huge part in my work over the past few years and is something that I’m constantly fascinated by.
Another thing I’m always inspired by is hands, and a lot of hands made their way into this project. When I feel a bit burnt out and don’t know what to draw that’s usually what I go back to. They can be incredibly expressive and having two of them means I always have a pretty good reference right here! So more or less all the hands in the book are based on my own. That was something that definitely helped me work out how to translate all these concepts from a bunch of words and scientific diagrams into the illustrations I made, I’m not exactly a scientist but living with a group of physics students meant I’d heard a few words and terms being thrown around before so some of them already felt kind of familiar.
My style has continued to evolve since these were made but it was a real turning point for the way I worked and my style and it’s something I come can back to and look at when I’m trying to push myself and my work further.