Biography

I live just outside Brighton, East Sussex, England. My wife (Patricia MacCarthy) is an established illustrator, and my true best friend. We have two boys, Laurie and James who are brilliant and already love to draw and paint. My main hobby is music, I play guitar, piano, compose and record my own peices. I love to read and go walking on the nearby downland or by the sea.

I have included in my biography below (click on the pages) an extensive account of my life as in illustrator and how I work. This is largely due to the many questions I receive and I hope of interest to new artists out there!

Early Years

I was born in 1961 in Cardiff, South Wales UK- the same year Russian Yuri Gagarin went into space and the Cold war was at it’s height. My father William Avon was a building contractor and my mother Marion, were just about the best parents a kid could want. I had one sister Lydia and as a family were very close. Back then there were no home computers and hardly any gadgets for kids to play with, so it was a diet of soldiers, cycling, model kits and drawing that kept me sane. I remember sketching lots of boats, soon moving onto weird war machines bristling with guns and strange creatures that certainly were not human.

As I got older, at school, it soon became apparent that art was the only thing that I seemed any good at and my parents were keen for me to develop my skills. My father religiously kept all my paintings and drawings from this period, I still have all this stuff, going back to my 1st year on this crazy planet! Luckily my Art teachers were always superb and looking at my early paintings, they were very surreal,with strange bizarre combinations of subjects. I remember the first time I saw Salvador Dali - his ideas and technique blew me away and probably set me up for eternity as a realistic painter - but seeing the world in a far from ‘normal’ way.

Around the age of twelve, I was painting in oils and up to leaving school produced some substantially strange landscape paintings. Taking it all very seriously and going to great lengths to better my technique. I used to regularly just copy a photograph and saw detailed ‘tight’ painters as the best around, not that I do so now, but as a teenager it seemed a really cool thing to do.

Art College

Soon as I went to college it all was about to change: there was I wanting to just get a ‘better technique’ when suddenly I was being asked to use mediums like wax crayon or charcoal and learn to “see” things, initially I hated it! We had to draw what to me, were the most boring subjects - I can now see the importance of how we were guided, looking at basic form / lighting / composition / life drawing, all doing me good, but so limiting - all I wanted to do was paint fantasy!!!

Thinking about it now, art college, is so very valuable regarding looking at the basic elements, understanding simple rules and experimenting with materials, but even more essential- if your going to be a commercial artist, working to someone else’s brief, dealing with their opinion etc., is crucial to how it is as a professional.

In the UK you need to do a “Foundation Year” near to your home town, so I went to Cardiff Art College in 1979, then doing a degree in Graphic Design at Brighton Polytechnic, leaving to start work in 1983. Though I had some pretty negative teachers who did more bad than good, I had the great fortune of being taught by some great ‘outside’ artists- like Chris McEwan to name but one. These guys would not only help, but tell you what the big bad world was like, all with a veil of optimism and excitement- so essential to the insecure struggling student!

The last year at college were the most satisfying as we were required to produce work for our final degree. Though it sounds pompous now, I embarked on an epic series of four oil paintings- based on “The Transition of Mankind” big subjects... BUT for the first time I felt like I had done something, which to me was special. I was just about the only artist who painted realistically and a series of surreal fantasy spiritual paintings, must have been utterly un-fashionable back in the early 80’s, but with my boring haircut and terribly old fashioned record collection, it didn’t seem to matter. I went to hell and back painting them, but at the final degree show I got a respectable grade and perhaps a little respect from my colleagues.

Starting Professional Work

The first illustration I ever got paid for, was to draw an image of the local Bakers shop for a newspaper advert! I then moved onto more challenging architectural reconstruction's for brochures and within 6 months picked up my first (of what were to be many hundreds) of book covers. Getting started was damn hard. I would endlessly go round the publishing houses in London showing my paintings, but no one was taking the plunge of using me- as “I had not had any book covers in print!!!” So- how the hell do you get started??? Basically in the end you do find the right person / art director who will take the risk. I thankfully was given a thriller to illustrate by ‘Futura’ called “Waterhole” I was so damn excited and by the end of the week had painted a snake with bullets as markings on it’s body and a machine gun in it’s mouth!. Six months later there it was, on the shelves of W.H. Smiths, with my name on the back, WOW! I was so amazed and proud! I phoned my Mum and Dad, they walked up the high street and there it was in my local town in Penarth, South Wales!

After that I managed to concentrate on book covers. I artworked the odd local advertising job, but to me illustrating covers was a dream come true. Soon I got to work on a regular basis for certain art directors, who became friends and would trust me with whole series of books. These were mostly thrillers, horror and crime novels. It was always great to get a series booked in- it meant some kind of security and often my diary was booked ahead for many months. The only problem was trying to paint 3 covers in 4 weeks (this I had to, to pay the bills) and keep the standard high. There always were more artists looking for work, than there were jobs and the pressure was tough.I found after a while that I got some fantasy / sci-fi work and realized this was were my heart lay. The heavy subjects of death inherent in Crime and Horror novels was relentlessly negative to me- so to paint images that were “off world” just better suited my temperament.

The first really famous author I illustrated was Stephen King. It was nerve racking as I wanted to not let down my new client Peter Cotton at Sphere books, and saw the potential exposure really good for my career. After painting “The Dark Tower vol2” and vol3 I seemed to be on a roll, doing covers for Harry Harrison, Terry Pratchett, John Brunner, and Cordwainer Smith, to mention just a few. I also painted for the Horror author Peter James and repackaged the entire works of crime novelist Dorothy Simpson. The late 80’s early 90’s was a mad productive time for me and I used to read many spiritual books. So I literally rang up the main ‘mind body spirit’ publishers and soon ended illustrating over a hundred covers for subjects like: Meditation, yoga, dreams, Psychosynthesis, Yin & Yang, The new age, plus the good fortune painting new covers for spiritual books I was actually reading by choice at the time! This was very amazing and I felt like there was a real point to my career, not only as an artist, but for the whole self help area, just fantastic...

Advertising

Basically anyone will tell you: Advertising is where the big money is, and like all my painter friends, I tried to get in with some good packaging clients. Overall I did some pretty exciting jobs, especially in the corporate financing world, and worked on Adverts that appeared in the national press and classy brochures for big London firms. It was quite fun and certainly paid much more than publishing. The hours were pretty tough, sometimes working through the night to finish a image to go to press the next day. But emotionally it all left me cold, you never really get any acknowledgment for the work and some of the guys I met could be great or ruthlessly rude, especially in the music industry. Compared with Publishing the packaging people I met doing the few CD covers I did, could sometimes be just awful and it was a relief to be out of that :/

Magic The Gathering (card game) and a changing industry

People to this day (like myself at the time) ask ‘what the hell is this game Magic you illustrate for?’ well before I started working for the game, I had no idea either.In the Brighton art studio where I used to work with my mates, an American art director called Sue Anne Harley was looking at a friends work, under recommendation from the illustrator Ian Miller. I just happened to be in that day and she also looked at my stuff. So I got to do some cards as well- the Mirage mountains and little did I know what this was the start of...:0

Basically right up to the present day, Wizards of the coast have been and still are my biggest long-standing clients, enabled me to paint some incredibly inspiring worlds and concepts, I have had what is some kind of steady income, traveled literally around the world to places like Japan, South Africa, Australia, Russia, Malaysia and all over Europe, had worldwide exposure, but last and not least met some brilliant people who have become great friends!

When I began illustrating the game, I still was churning out the book covers and was heavily into advertising. Gradually as the years went by, the book covers stopped coming to me- why, you might ask? About 10 years back, the whole publishing industry changed with the onset on computers and great software. Companies now found that they could cut costs by getting ‘in house’ designers to do the covers themselves, which simultaneously created a more photographic / typographical look. Probably within 2-3 years many of us illustrators were ‘out’ and retouched photography was ‘in’ with the emphasis on design and graphical lettering being king. I must admit, to me I broadly liked the direction (said through gritted teeth!!!) yes it put allot of us out of work, but nice lettering and great photography seemed to look just as good, if not better. The advertising I was doing was exciting but it felt more like I was part of a machine than a creative individual. I worked as a retoucher on the ‘Lowenbrau’ beer commercials and yes it had to be done well, the money was good, but really any person with advanced Photoshop skills could have done it. So gradually I did more and more Magic cards and it always felt like the ‘perfect’ job to me.

The Magic style guide and how we are commissioned

Basically every year a new expansion of the game comes out. Research and development (R&D) together with the Art department create a new ‘world’ environment and three times in 12 months we get to paint that place. The game is always fresh as each year we the artists are literally in a new place, with new characters and a new style guide to look at. A frequent question I am asked is about the general look and who decides what? Basically, we are sent a visual guide with images and notes, this is so we get to (as a team) provide a unified look / vibe / feel. The individual cards seen in the shops originate as it’s game function with an assignment, art brief, sent to us via the art director. This is text only, but we are often referred to the style guide for the look and feel. For instance when ‘Mirrodin’ came out (still my favorite expansion) I got to do some of the basic lands for that set, so when designing my forests for instance, I would be guided by Mark Tedins sketches in the style guide. This is great as we are given a direction, but how we actually paint , render, see it, is up to us. This is essential for the whole set to have continuity.

Fantasy Art and Magic

Magic the gathering has evolved in look, but still represents a wonderful outlet for Fantasy artists like myself to work their skills. The whole Fantasy /sci-fi industry still need illustrators to do the creative bit. Photography and clever design lettering does work on some book covers / game box covers in this genre, but nothing beats an artist sitting there coming up with new weird and wonderful images. As in Star Trek we can “boldly go where no man has gone before” that is why give me a Fantasy art commission before an advertising job anytime. The money may not be as good (unless you one of the lucky few working on major motion pictures) but for me I am every day “off on a journey of discovery” truly a wonderful way to earn a living. These days I do take on other jobs when they crop up, but, at the moment, magic literally for me is ‘Magic’ and i’m privileged to be involved.