‘So, this is a jumbled collection of time-lapses for my illustrations. As you’ll soon see, I had an unusual art practice of duplicating canvases once my art program began to struggle with the amount of information on a single piece. This would, in turn, cause the video attached to that canvas to be duplicated as well, so you will see the same few pieces created at the start of each time-lapse.
Before I began drawing, I looked through magazines that contained pictures of the old tram conductor uniforms and even visited the Tramways Museum to get a better idea of the tram my grandfather drove.
When creating the illustrations for The Magical Tram, I had a style in mind. I wanted something you could look at and know it was from a children’s book, something rounded and cartoon-like. Of course, the style would evolve over time. Looking back on the first picture to the last, I can see how the way I drew 647 subtly changed, becoming fuller compared to my first illustration. I didn’t create the pieces in chronological order; instead, I worked on what I thought would be easiest to draw and built up to what would be the most difficult. This gave me a good amount of time to ‘warm up’ to the more difficult pieces.
The illustrations would begin with a sketch, then I would move on to line-art and then colouring – as can be seen in the video below.’