PRINT SPREADS:


SELECT ROUGHS & Work in Progress:

MONSTERS OF THE DEEP, for What on Earth! Magazine

The front cover wrap, and 4 double page spreads of internal illustrations, for the special summer 2026 issue of What on Earth! Magazine. 

The magazine audience is typically 7-9 year olds, so the aim from the team was to make the artwork and pages really bold and colourful, and to loosely mirror the Clash of the Dinosaurs issue we did in 2025.

I provided the scenes and individuals as layered compositions, that could be easily moved and scaled by the art directors, to best acccommodate the design features and copy (which is why the artwork and spreads differ slightly).

Cover image

In response to one of the early pitch suggestions about showing a big dramatic Mosasaur, and having found some interesting articles about what Mosasaurs were understood to eat, I suggested we show a fish, being hunted by a shark, being hunted by a Mosasaurus, with a few other creatures surrounding. This would hopefully convey the scale of everything in an exciting way for kids, and add some compelling drama for the cover.

The idea almost certainly came to mind because of the line “there’s always a bigger fish”, said by Qui-Gon Jinn, in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

BIG FIGHT

A titanic struggle between two prehistoric creatures who could potentially have battled each other in real life: Tylosaurus vs Tusoteuthis.

OCEAN GIANTS

Individuals to be compared in scale to well-known, modern equivalents (rather than each other). We settled on:

Ammonite
Archelon

Megalodon
Nanaimoteuthis Haggarti
Temnodontosaurus

BENEATH THE WAVES

A selection of bizarre-looking sea creatures plucked from any era but placed together in a single ocean scene. Featured is: 

Dunkleosteus
Tanystropheus
Wiwaxia
Doryaspis
Trilobite
Anomalocaris
Dickinsonia
Eurypterid

WEIRD CREATURES

A selection of some of the most ‘weird andd wonderful’ prehistoric sea creatures, ranging in size from 1.3mm to 12m long (not to scale). Featured is:

Saccorhytus
Opabinia
Stethacanthus
Marella
Sacabambaspis

Helicoprion
Hallucigenia
Tully Monster

Art directors: Andrew Pettie & Mark Hickling
Designers: Mark Hickling & Susanna Hickling


︎︎︎Buy the issue here︎︎︎ 
 
   

Click the image(s) to VIEW in full screen, or YOUR arrow keys to navigate to other projects.