Alastair Graham, artist par excellence, unleashed himself on London in the early 1970s. After a brief and riotous spell as an advertising copywriter, he became commercials producer at TVC London, the studio that made the Beatles’ film Yellow Submarine and Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, with David Bowie.

 

In 1975, he began a career as a freelance illustrator and in the mid 1980s, illustrated the successful series of Whichway books for Walker Books: Jungle of Peril; Planet of Terror; Castle of Fear; and, Funfair of Evil.

 

Early in the 1990s Alastair created the captivating Full Moon Soup (1991) and Full Moon Afloat (1995), published by David Bennett Books, followed by Big Bell, Little Bell (2008) for Boxer Books. In 1997 he provided inspirational art for the Disney feature film Mulan, and later that year was production designer for John Cary Films on the second Captain Pugwash TV series.

 

As passionate about music (as is writer Andrew) as he is animated about art, Alastair published Impressions: Jazz Masters in Black and White (2001), receiving an enthusiastic reception from featured musicians, including American jazz-rock guitarist John Scofield. The drawings were exhibited at Cheltenham, Novi Sad (Serbia), Vitoria (Spain) London, Cork (Ireland) to critical acclaim.

 

Alastair is also the originator, designer, and director of a 30-minute ITV animated special, Katya and the Nutcracker (2000), a four-minute animated music video, Suba (2005), plus Kron, a music short made in 2010.

 

Since 2012, he has marshalled his diverse talents and singular imagination to create phantasmagorical characters for the dark corners and stairways of the new universe that is Doom and Gloom at the Last Chance Saloon.