These illustrations were to accompany an article about buying antiques abroad, for Homes & Antiques August 2024 issue.

I did very rough roughs for the airport baggage claim scene and US label, but once those and the general concept were approved, I drew the rest of the scenes on the fly. That’s not to say I didn’t rework or redraw bits that weren’t working - but it was a chance to embrace the energy you get when not drawing over a rough. Drawing that way, particularly when there is a lot of detail of real world objects involved, requires quite a bit of preparation. For each scene, I collated loads of research images and printed out big A3 sheets of photos that I could reference whilst drawing. It feels a bit wasteful - I’ve ended up with a huge pile of printouts, but I think it helps the drawing immeasurably; otherwise I know I’d just be drawing ‘a bowl’ and ‘a cupboard’, etc, and the result would be generic and boring.