What’s your dream job?

One of mine was making the illustrations for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight…
So I just went ahead and did them.

With the trailer for the new film The Green Knight unveiled this week, it is the perfect moment to show you something very special.

At the beginning of 2020, I started daydreaming about what my ideal job would be. One of the first things that came to mind was the medieval poem of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I absolutely love it, particularly the versions of J.R.R. Tolkien and the one of Simon Armitage. In my head, I started imagining what it would look like with my illustrations.

But I didn’t just leave it at a wish. I really wanted to work those images. I started with sketches, quite loose either in paper or the iPad. But then, when the images stuck and they really deserved it, I went on to develop final illustrations mostly in graphite or acrylics but also digitally.

I have an incredible amount of preparatory drawings for each of the illustrations. I just could not stop.

Here is an example of the development of one of the illustrations: from the sketchbook to the final image.