When my daughter was born, I had to turn our spare room into a nursery. This meant getting rid of my drawing board (with its beautiful cast iron base and solid wood top). I have since been unable to find the space (or time) to produce any of my 'brush and ink' illustrations. I decided that It might be possible to replicate my style digitally, by creating a range of 'art brushes' in Illustrator 10 which would emulate my brush strokes. I spent a long time making the custom brushes and eventually started my first project. Unfortunately I found that, although the results were adequate, it took me a lot longer to do. I also felt that I had more control over a real brush, particularly when it came to fine details. I aborted this image, and decided to create it in full colour using Photoshop 7 instead (the final version of which is posted in my gallery). I normally wouldn't bother posting an unfinished image, but this took so much effort and time to get this far, I felt it was a waste to leave it languishing on my Mac. Anyway, I'm sure those Illustrator brushes will come in useful at some point!