Robert M. Ball

Some pencil drawings from a trip to Suffolk last year. I like the landscape there, it’s very flat and objects have a sudden power and presence.

I have become pretty much a book cover illustrator over the last couple of years. Here’s a recent example, Return of the Champion. I’m always trying to get a bold graphic shape for an easy visual ‘read’ when people are browsing – particularly online – but the same principle would apply on the groaning shelves of a book shop. The colours are not subtle, this scene could be taking place on the…

This is the second image I’ve done for the game Fortnite. It’s a great job because the Art Director basically gave me carte blanche to muck around with the character ‘Silent Tempo’ I wish I’d put more leaves in now 😦

Fairly recently I made some posters for my friend Alisdair Wood’s Hammer fanzine Claret. I watched a ton of Hammer films in quick succession which was no hardship. Even the ropiest Hammer film has something to enjoy, even if it’s for purely nostalgic reasons. She, for example – once you get past the colonial context- is an absolute ripsnorter. I have never had any discipline with colours, so my…

Having neglected my blog for a couple of years (sorry blog) there is a wee bit of a backlog to get through. This is a big project from 2021, a picture book for Dorling Kindersley. I’ve used their reference books for years so this was a bit of a dream. The task was to draw a selection of castles from around the world, some of which are still pretty much pristine, many more half crumbled away and a…

I was asked to create some backgrounds for a company called Moonfire that could be used for digital presentations (PowerPoint and whatnot) with a red dot/planet as a consistent element. I guess these images fall somewhere between Roger Dean and Wile E. Coyote. I have zero discipline when it comes to colours but I tried to make them consistent.

Diabolik and Kant

A cover for the first ever Icelandic translation of Dune by Frank Herbert

A cover I made last year for the novel ‘Questland’ which is set on a secret island which is governed by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons (this is horribly reductive for the sake of brevity).