DIATOMS - secret life

Almost

It almost looks real

The ‘The Secret Life of Diatoms’ is a book I am working on with Prof. Sinead Collins from the University of Edinburgh. At the beginning of October I declared that I would finish the artwork for it by the end of the month. I made a valiant if misguided attempt. Suffice to say, I failed. But all failure is a learning opportunity and thankfully Sinead doesn’t have a strict deadline. Perhaps it is this lack of deadline that has prolonged the process. I don’t know. But I am glad I have been given the time to get this right. I have never done this before. There are many things I would do differently if I were to do it again. Like write a script before I attempt to make finished artwork. I did a lot of work before we had a clear idea of what the book was trying to say and most of it was scrapped. That is a good thing, I didn’t like it anyway.

Anyway. despite not achieving my stated aim, I did manage to complete about 60% of the finished art. It’s not a big book. Maybe only 44 pages. But it will be my first one. I can feel it. It feels like it is actually becoming a book. It’s almost real.

Here are a few selected pages to prove it.

Endpaper artwork

These are some of the drawings from the beginning of the project. I’m glad I was able to use them somewhere in the book.

Cold open

This is an introduction to the character before the introduction of the actual book. In some ways, the book can be seen as two stories. Sinead has written all the clever scientific stuff and I have written a comic odyssey that weaves around it. Two books in one.

The eukaryotic tree of life

Need to change the text. Note that, we, and all other animals, are more closely related to mushrooms than anything else on this tree. Also note, how mind bogglingly diverse these tiny creatures are (can I call them creatures?).

Sunshine - photosynthesis

Not quite finished. Basically, phytoplankton like diatoms, use photosynthesis to grow just like plants. Also, this page shows the magic microscope in action. The main character shrinks to the scale of whatever she is looking at through the microscope.

Food web

The bloom

Diatom blooms can be pretty impressive. Sometimes the bloom can be so vast that it can be seen from space.

Mid point

A few tweaks to do here. This basically shows the map through the rest of the book. The next pages take a closer look at diatoms in different environments, from tropical to temperate to polar.

Tropical

Got a few things to add here but I’m happy with it so far.

Thank you for looking. I am enjoying making this but I have to be honest, I can’t wait to get this monkey off my back. A few more pushes and we should be able to publish it next year. I will keep posting bits and pieces about it on here so you will probably be the first to know when it is available.

Peace