World Book Day and encyclopaedic memories…

Growing up, it was unusual not to find a full set of encyclopaedia in a friend’s house I was visiting.

Years later I learned that if they did have the full set, then that family were probably on a subscription. People went door to door selling subscriptions. A subscription meant when the encyclopaedia company felt like they needed to update the information, they would send the customer a new complete set of the latest edition – A to Z. This meant that customers were left with a full set of superceded, outdated, hardback encyclopaedias burning a hole in their spare room or garage.

On world book day, I want to remember the many sets of encyclopeadia and the stalled subscriptions, and the school fetes unable to sell old sets on. But it’s not all bad memories because I had two volumes (D and K, 1965) which I salvaged parts from for collages.

World Book Day illustration by David Mackintosh

Volume K, circa 1965.

Thanks Nico…

Thank you to Nico in Poland for his nice card and drawing. I like your confident use of black, and how you aren’t governed by the dictates of lines to colour between. Keep it up.

david mackintosh drawing nico

Spring has sprung.

Scale matters…

Finally, the Apollo lunar module I made eleven years ago has a purpose. This 1/72 scale model of the LEM really gives the viewer a good feel for the size of the book Hello Space.

Hello Space by David Mackintosh

Objects may be closer than they appear.

Hello Space: A new picture book for the Natural History Museum…

Today, my picture book Hello Space: Is Anybody Out There? is published.

The book is published to coincide with the opening of the Natural History Museum’s exhibition SPACE.

But this time, the subject isn’t something big, prehistoric and lumbering that once lived here on earth and then died from an asteroid to its cranium. It deals with the idea of how life exists beyond our planet Earth and how we know about it.

The book features Waterhouse, the mouse that lives in the Museum and has investigated the sauropods Diplodocus and Titanosaur in my previous books. Asteroids play a big part in what we know about life beyond our planet, and this time the mouse ventures beyond the Museum to see for itself. The Natural History Museum has examples of meteorites, which are an asteroid’s way of getting closer to us.

This book is a little presentational (there’s a lot of big ideas that need to be explained on a grain of rice), and a little philosophical, too. I don’t think the Museum experts – who have to authorise the text – will ever be completely satisfied with my glossing over subjects that they’ve spent a career investigating in-depth. But then… they probably can’t even draw. That’s what I reckon.

The pictures in my book are made with ink, oil pencil, kraft paper and watercolour. There’s a lot of drawing going on, and this book is printed in two colours: black and a nice Mars red.

These books don’t just appear out of the sky in a streak of bright light. You can get one at the exhibition, or through the NHM online shop.

Hello Space is out now.

Hello Space: picture book promo trailer © David Mackintosh, 2025

Asteroid spread from Hello Space by David Mackintosh
Astronomers spread from Hello Space by David Mackintosh
preliminary drawings for Hello Space by david mackintosh

Early stages. Some ideas made it into the book.

Hello Space Re-entry book trailer © david mackintosh. 2025.

Paris by Tuesday…

On a sunny day in Paris, on the only day nearly everything is closed to the public. Tuesday.

Fragment of drawing made en face Notre Dame.

Hotel de Ville.

bear in musee de la chasse by david mackintosh

French window avec Ourse Grizzly.

J. Doyne Farmer Wilderness mapped…

J. Doyne Farmer commissioned me to imagine the economic concept of The Wilderness of Bounded Rationality for his new book Making Sense of Chaos.

I was unaware of bounded rationality until I illustrated this. But it isn’t my own work. Doyne suggested his idea of the gates in a simple drawing and I took it from there.

All images shown © David Mackintosh. 2023. Not for reproduction of duplication without permission.

The Wilderness of Bounded Rationality by David Mackintosh

Illustration and animation © David Mackintosh 2023.

The Intelligence Gate (detail). © David Mackintosh 2023.

Wilderness (detail). © David Mackintosh 2023.

Behind the banner (detail). © David Mackintosh 2023.

The Rationality Gate (detail). © David Mackintosh 2023.

The Rationality Gate (detail). © David Mackintosh 2023.

Illustration awards night of nights…

Thank you to the organisers of the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustration Awards for the awards party the other night. A good night was had by all, especially the winners. The runners up got a mention too. A mention was made of the creator of the awards who wasn’t there and several other people who weren’t there. The audio in the photography gallery was terrible and I didn’t understand much of the speeches, but I figured that the smiles belonged to the winners. The canapés were excellent. Didn’t get to see the exhibition because of the slow moving queue, but went back the following day for a proper look.

drawing by david mackintosh V&A illustration awards

Inaudible and invisible: the awards presentation.