Book title: The Apollo 11 Moon Landing
Publisher: Raintree (UK)
Publisher Website: Capstone (US)

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing is part of a series of 5 fully illustrated books, each one focusing on a crucial day in history.   The book is written by Nel Yomtov and I supply the illustrations which cover the journey of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin in undertaking NASA's mission to land on the moon. The book is drawn in a graphic novel format and published in hardback by Heinemann Library, an imprint of US education publisher Capstone.

I was originally given the choice between illustrating 'The Attack on Pearl Harbour' and this book, but given my lack of interest in drawing anything to do with warfare (I'm a pacifist after all!),  the Apollo 11 story felt much more appealing to me.  I also thought I could get it illustrated quite quickly given the deadline, as the lunar landscape and 'black with stars' backdrop seemed much simpler to deal with than warships and fighter planes.  The finished artwork was completed using Microsoft Surface Pro and Manga Studio 5, with a bit of Adobe Photoshop CC thrown in.

Here is a video clip of the published book, and below that are some of the illustrated pages from it in pre-production format.

Work was quiet for a four week period over Christmas and New Year which was nice rest-wise but left a bit of a hole financially in my pocket!  Fortunately things have picked up nicely since mid-January, although it remains an ever present struggle as a freelance illustrator to feel confident that you can go on a lengthy run of constant work.  Of course doing something you love is a good trade-off and I certainly don't miss the challenges that I use to face as a manager in the public sector despite retaining a weakness for reading policy and strategy documents, and the need to design an excel spreadsheet for everything I do.   

I'm currently making good headway with the Football Factor children's book series I'm drawing for Wayland Books; the first book is nearly finished with some amendments to be made to the interior art and a cover to produce.  I've just completed pencilling the second book and awaiting comments before moving on to completing the finished artwork.  The stories written by Alan Durant work really well for its target audience, and I'm pleased with how the illustrations I'm producing are turning out in bringing them to life.  

I've also begun work on a children's graphic novel for Raintree of which very rough storyboards have been completed so far.  The next few weeks will be spent pencilling the book, whilst ensuring I keep on top of the work I'm doing for Wayland Books.  

In between times, I've managed to complete an educational comic strip for Benchmark Education - an American publisher, as well as a storyboard commission for Monitor - a creative design agency in Manchester.  I also had a rare private commission in producing a comic book for a client which was slightly easier said than done, given I rarely deal with needing to produce a 'physical' product these days.  Nevertheless, I'm pleased with how it turned out and I'll hopefully be able to post some of these pieces on my blog at a later date.  It's been cool being able to slot these interesting projects in between the children's book work.  The next few weeks will be pretty full on with the children's books but I remain on the look out for new commissions!

As a gear change, here's an illustration I drew for a text book for McGraw Hill last year. Not sure where or when it was published in America but it was one of two I produced to accompany the story of Orion the Hunter.