Hello! At last I can post some of the illustrations I was doing over the summer for Funny Peculiar, Will Young’s autobiography. He gave me the chapters as he wrote them and I went through thinking up ideas, 2 per chapter. It was so much fun; the book is v amusing (as you’d expect) but sad too in parts, which I tried to reflect. We were going for a whimsical, stripped back look, though I did sneak in a bit of cross-hatching here and there. Other excitements have been an extract (including pics) being featured in Attitude magazine, and, wait for it, Eamonn Holmes doing THIS:
Anyway here are a couple of pictures….
Will talks in one chapter about how even once he’d come out, he was still being offered ideas for videos where he’s walking down a beach with a woman, Backstreet Boys-style. Crazy.
Smith, the champion belly-flopper of Will’s prep school, preparing for his high dive.
Will talks about his depression in the book.. this picture is about the struggle to get up and meet the day.
This silly bird is my favourite. It heads up the last chapter (involving the death of a pigeon) and it happens near me, so it’s a Hackney pigeon on a Hackney tree. Of course pigeons go to heaven too.
I think it’s brilliant, and speaks volumes, that Will wanted to do this instead of the usual photo insert. It was a fantastic project to work on and I’m so grateful to him for the opportunity.
At all good book stores now! (Waterstones/Amazon)