This is my recent illustration inspired by Tim Burtons The Nightmare Before Christmas! I created the print as something that I could exclusively reveal for the first time at Vice Press Open House 2026, and now in the aftermath of the show I’m very happy to be sharing the full illustration online.

I produced a limited run of 40 prints, and there are still a few left if you want to head over to my shop to pick one up!




As an illustration, this ended up being put together very, very quickly. I’m used to my deadlines being fairly lax and spaced out, given the fact that my illustrations can take months to create. But as destiny would have it I was staring down the barrel of 4 different deadlines by the first week of September, and I was still yet to start any work on my Nightmare illustration.


As such, I tried my best to work as efficiently as possible. I had the general concept in my head, town square in the foreground, staggered landscape with various buildings and details, big moon. I felt like the initial sketches I did [above] proved that the concept would work, and so the next step was planning out the specifics.

Usually, this is a bit of a back-and-forth process. Add a building, remove a tree etc. But without the luxury of time, I pretty much took my first pass as final. Looking back, there’s a few things I would change, but the majority of it I’m very pleasantly surprised by.



Building on what I learnt with my Muppet Show illustration, I sketched the characters separately and then composited them into the drawing. Had I more time, I think I would have been more purposeful with where they are all placed, but as is I think it works fine.




Tried something a little different when it came to inking this one. Not for the first time, but a method still new to me.

Anybody familiar with digital colouring software will know you most likely access to a paint bucket tool, or a magic wand tool for selecting an area. If you draw a  circle, you can select or fill the inside of the circle with the click of a button. Very handy I’ve never been able to work this way for a couple of reasons:

• I have dots everywhere. I use my dots for shading, which makes it impossible for any software to detect what sort of shape I want to be filled. Software doesn’t differentiate between dots and lines.

• If I were to draw a circle with no dots, there’s a high chance that I’d probably put a few breaks in the lines. No particular reason, I just think it looks better. But again, if the circle isn’t completely enclosed, then the magic wand tool or fill bucket isn’t going to be able to detect the area accurately.

So, something I’ve started trying to do in aide of speed, is to leave all of my dotting and shading to the end of the drawing process. Rather than do them as I go along, I now aim to have a completed illustration featuring just lines. I scan this in, go back to add all of the dots and shading, and then scan in the final drawing again. The purpose being that, if I align them well enough, I can now toggle the dots on/off when working, and give myself the freedom to use the magic wand and fill bucket tools.


It requires me to use more brain power when I’m drawing. For instance, beyond just dots, there are also a number of lines missing. None of the bricks or the roof tiles have been drawn in. Neither have the cobblestones or the curtains of the car. This is because I know that when I colour the illustration, these areas will mostly be one colour. If I can flood select an entire wall at once, rather than flood select a building brick by brick, it should be quicker.

This proved massively beneficial, even if it was a slightly less enjoyable process for drawing. It required me to have a bit more trust in myself that things were going to turn out okay, and not to be put off by the bareness of the blank drawing.

Due to the speed with which I had to pull this project together, I’m a little disappointed in my linework. I like the black and white drawings to stand on their own two feet, aside from the final coloured illustration. I don’t think I quite achieved that here. It’s not a dreadful drawing by any means, but I think the middle section is slightly muddled and busy, something I would have avoided had I more time to be careful.

That said, I don’t think it is a problem in the coloured version of the artwork, and I’m very happy with how it came together.




I’ll be honest, this part of the process was a bit of a blur. Since I was aiming to get it printed in time for Open House, I had to pull a lot of late ones trying to get it finished, the last stretch of which was done from 9am Wednesday morning all the way through to 9am Thursday morning, at which point I had to go into work. So, as I said, a blur.



Like my other recent illustrations, there’s a variety of coloured linework within the piece. With more time I would have combed over this more finely, but broadly speaking I think it works, especially when I compare it to a version of the artwork featuring entirely black lines.



Overall, I’m super delighted with how this one looks. It looks fantastic printed, and all copies for sale have been signed and numbered, so be sure to pick up a print from my shop whilst they’re still available!