David Mackintosh

I am a graphic designer, illustrator and author of illustrated and picture books. I’ve worked with photographers and illustrators, making illustrated books for many publishers over thirty years.

I’ve always been interested in drawing and it is fundamental in all my work– from illustrating a manuscript to designing the layout of a printed book. From school, I studied to be a mechanical draughtsman, working for an engineering firm for four years before enrolling at art school.

My idea of the heath is of a natural sanctuary inside the dense urban sprawl of modern London. So I see the recreational side of it, and also the tension with the buildings on its perimeter. I wanted to do something figurative, showing people and how they used the heath, and maybe say something about the romantic idea of man versus nature.

So I visited on a hot Saturday morning, and walked around and took some photos of my friend on top of Parliament Hill, and we admired the view looking over to Highgate and when I got home I made drawings just to get me thinking.

Then I recalled that Keats wrote his poem about a nightingale when living on the heath and I got a little caught up in this poem and the words and the type. And I thought about how colourful and resonant the black and white type of the poem on the page has been for 200 years.

My drawings are in charcoal and graphite, but are impressions of a very green and vibrant natural space, on a sunny day. I took some of Keats’s own words from his ‘black and white’ poem and added them in dayglo paper.

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