Small proof prints of a series I did for my sister. Actual size of finished prints: around 50cm x 20cm, digital inking and colouring, printed onto parchment (so these pictures are not very representative, unfortunately).

I left my camera in my check-in luggage, and couldn’t take photos of this extraordinary scenery. I did some quick sketches and tried to memorize the colours and stuff, and later I did this print series (really one big drawing divided up into a triptych), but I don’t think I came anywhere near capturing the sheer size and bleakness and awe-inspiring grandeur of the environment. Click images for (slightly) bigger versions.

So this is Dubai, grey and hazy and rising straight out of the desert, total architectural and historical jumble.

Closeup crop of some of the city: hard brushes and high contrast, trying to get a feel for that starkness of architecture, but with the hint of something very ancient underneath.

Flying north over iraq, it was just sand-dunes and rock formations for miles, then suddenly these great, bare, brown mountains appeared. No green or living things at all, though sometimes you could some kind of building or structure.

After that, snow covered mountains and glacial lakes, still almost totally devoid of life. There was one town, on the edge of a lake, ridiculously high up – you could see this enormous plume of pollution stretching out into the pristine stillness of the water. Simultaneously amazing and depressing.