Museum Kittens Research

Tasha’s Egyptian Dream

Digitally Coloured Illustration from Holly Webb’s The Pharaoh’s Curse

I couldn’t resist colouring my black and white illustration from Holly’s second Museum Kittens book, The Pharaoh’s Curse. I spent a lot of time at the British Museum in London, doing research for these books. In the above illustration, Tasha the tabby cat has an Egyptian inspired dream of rising flood waters and a mysterious dark-furred cat goddess. I needed to find a different visual language to show this was a dream sequence and came up with the idea of a fragment of plaster fresco - directly inspired by tomb paintings from the Tomb of Nebamum, on display at the museum.

Tasha and Peter Chatting

Digitally Coloured Illustration from The Midnight Visitor

This illustration is from Holly Webb’s first Museum Kittens book, The Midnight Visitor, and is directly based on the Prudhoe Lions in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery at the British Museum.

I’m lucky enough to live in London, home to some amazing museums, and I did a fair bit of observational drawing at several of them. I based my museum display cabinets on the Victorian cabinets in use at the Horniman Museum in South London, and the suits of armour in Boris’ favourite; the Weapons and Armoury Gallery, on the armour displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington.

Here’s a few sketchbook pages…