Luke Pearson

A drawing I did for the exhibition ‘Who is Rupert Ray?’, an exhibition for the launch of ‘Rupert Ray’, a new agency founded by Alex Maclean and Caroline Matthews, both previously of Airside. A bunch of artists answered that very question by doing portraits of said character, a bio of whom can be found in their ‘about’ section.

My Rupert is a kind of old eccentric, posing in his studio with all the cool stuff he’s acquired over the years. There were some real illustration badasses in the lineup including Jean Jullien, Adrian Johnson, Dick Hogg, Pete Fowler and tons more which you can see here.

Please click the picture for full size, because it looks a lot cooler that way.

A drawing I did for an exhibition of Midland’s based artists called ‘Once Upon a Time in The Midlands’. The theme was fairytales. I wanted to have a bit more of ‘The Midlands’ in there thematically, and was originally drawing a troll at a rusty Tamworth bus stop, but that picture went a bit long and I just did this instead.

Other artists in the exhibition were Lizz Lunney (who made a really cool Bogmen comic), James Bourne, Lee Crutchley, Herman Inclusus (Stuart Kolakovic), Mark Long, Mr Millerchip, Sarah Ray, Paul Roberts and Steven Silverwood.

You can see a few other pieces from the show here.

Cover design for the Penguin Essentials series. It’s actually a wraparound cover, but I’m not sure which version has ended up on the back yet so I’ll hold off from posting it. I was so pleased to get to do this as I’ve wanted to do a book cover for probably my whole life (I’ve done a couple more that should be out soon too). In taking on Lucky Jim, I’m also super proud to be following feebly in the footsteps of Edward Gorey and Quentin Blake.

Here’s the text from the back.

‘His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as a mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.’

Jix Dixon has a terrible job at a second-rate university. His life is full of things he could happily do without: the tedious and ridiculous Professor Welch, a neurotic and unstable girlfriend, Margaret, burnt sheets, medieval recorder music and over-enthusiastic students. If he can just deliver a lecture on ‘Merrie England’, a moderately successful career surely awaits him. But without luck, life is never simple . . .

This version is available now.

About a year ago I was very close to announcing a project entitled ’100 Horses’ or ‘The One Hundred Horses Project’, the aim of which would be to draw 100 wildly unique horses. I thought this would be a cool project, a challenge in variation and in mastering the depiction of an animal I’ve traditionally struggled to accurately portray. Thankfully however, I did not announce it, as I only got to six before realising it was a silly idea and that there are way better ways to spend your time than drawing 100 stupid horses.