Mr Punch

My first real piece of artwork, this adaptation of the graphic novel was my first introduction to Neil Gaiman and, more importantly, my artistic hero, Dave McKean (a large selection of his artwork can be seen here). The image was based on one of those in the graphic novel, but it took on a life of its own.

This was my first real piece of image construction in Photoshop and was done before I had discovered masking, or the image blending modes that made Romeo and Juliet such a pleasure to work on. Mr Punch was, by contrast, rewarding but horribly slow work (especially given the power of my 7300 Mac with its 166MHz processor and 2.1GB hard drive!).

It is still a striking image and perfectly represented the atmosphere of the production, which sold out every night; one person remarked to me (some years' later when I had got to know him) that he had only come to see the show "because the poster was so terribly beautiful."