Graphic Design + Illustration /// Selected Work
The Wilderness and Wildlife Conservation Trust (2007—2020)
If you right-click and open the image below in a new tab, it becomes much easier to read. Best viewed on a large screen since it’s a large poster, has useful maps, and some lovely portraits.
ABOVE: Summarised in a poster, this is part of Kittle & Watson’s Sri Lankan Leopard Census, which formed part of the IUCN Red List (2014). I loved working on this mostly because I got to sift through camera-trap photographs. There’s a startling intensity to camera-trap pictures, no?
The poster is about 1.5m tall and 1m wide. It’s printed on PVC flex so it can be rolled up and taken to talks, and cleaned easily. Largest poster I’ve ever made. Terrifying stuff.
Kittle & Watson began their research in Sri Lanka with work on Lankan leopard, and macaque, c.2000. Their earlier (non-Sri Lankan) work includes studies of primates, sloths, martens, wolves, lions, and hyenas.
I’ve had the good fortune to work with these two (a zoologist & an ecologist) since 2007 and every project has been a learning experience for me.
Their Lankan work has mostly been under the aegis of the Wilderness and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which they established in 2004.
As of 2022, they’re studying the travel networks that Lankan leopards use, as they move between the disparate forestlands that form their range.
I’ll post more work commissioned by the WWCT as I dig it up. In the meantime, if you’re interested in leopard zoology and ecology – as a student, researcher, journalist, funding agency, naturalist, or conservationist, may I recommend their website? www.wwct.org
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BELOW: These stickers are part of a larger set and they’ve been used in school programs conducted by the Trust, since 2019. We included as many camera-trap pictures as possible, and I edited very little, to retain the charm of an animal (inadvertently) making its own portrait.
For me, Arnold’s self-portrait is the finest – seeing tea fields as part of a Lankan leopard’s range really elevates the image. I think Arnold has a promising career as a photographer.
KUBUTU: adult female, Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka.
IVAN: adult female, Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka.
MEGHA: adult male, Gal Oya National Park, Sri Lanka.
ARNOLD: adult male, Central Highlands, Sri Lanka.
DARIA: adult female, Sigiriya, Sri Lanka.
OZZY: adult male, Central Highlands, Sri Lanka.
Mind Adventures Theatre Co. (Selected work: 2013—2021)
Disclaimer: Mind Adventures Theatre Company was co-founded in 1999 by the amazing human who would one day, inexplicably, agree to marry me.
I started working with the Company in 2003 as photographer and designer, on one of their darker plays — an adaptation of Senaka Abeyratne’s Three Star K. Over the next two decades, I had the rare opportunity to work with an ever-evolving group of actors and crew.
Mind Adventures’ work is experimental — there are wild, joyful shifts between productions in tone, structure, story, cast, and crew. Being involved in the trip has been gift.
ABOVE: Publicity images for Mind Adventures’ first audio drama: They’ve made Episode 01 available here, for free. It’s trippy, politically charged, and funny. This is the first of an 8-part serial and they’re hoping that when you listen to it, you might like it enough to sling some coins in the crowdfunding hat. More on that here.
Mind Adventures has been making theatre for 20 years (as at 2019). Given that it thrives on experiment, the company embraced audio drama during the pandemic. Radio’s been part of their toolkit since 1999, and this show is excellent. The audio production is lush and humour is jet black. Give it a go and tell them what you think.
BELOW: Posters for three productions by Mind Adventures.
MAYA (2019): An adaptation of a comic book script I'm working on. The version devised by Mind Adventures is a dark folktale of marriage, power, duty and sacrifice. The portrait in the poster is of the extraordinary lead actor and model, Shala Amarasuriya. Here is a link to some of my pictures of opening night. It was a visually rich production and it had such clever soundscapes.
ARCADIA by Tom Stoppard (performed in 2017). This was a full-cast, dramatised reading at the Lionel Wendt Gallery. The watercolour portrait in the poster is of Ada Lovelace, painted (possibly) by A. E. Chalon, c.1840. Here are a few of my pictures of opening night.
PARAYA (2013): A devised work by Mind Adventures, directed by Arun Welandawe-Prematilleke. This one was a harrowing near-future political tale. Here is a thoughtful review of the production and the impact on actors and audience. The collage in the main disc was made by artist, model, cousin and good-egg, Mika Tennekoon. I need to find and upload my photographs for this, but here’s one that will give you a broad impression — it’s from a rehearsal at the Rio, where the play was performed -- a hotel with a violent, tragic history, that was a much a character in the play as any of the actors.
Stages Theatre Group
CAST AS MOTHER (2012): By Stages Theatre Group, which is run by Eisenhower Fellow, playwright, director, and superb human, Ruwanthie de Chickera. This production was based on anonymously written texts created by 13 mothers working in the arts, writing about motherhood for the production. More about it here.
A free, illustrated book about protest and civic education for children, which provides information in an accessible manner, about the current crisis in Sri Lanka -- how we got here, why people are protesting and what children can do.
Kaputu Kaak
Written by Amal de Chickera — dear friend, solid fellow, and Co-director of The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. Illustrated by me. I went back to meddling with absurdist digital collage, but this time, I did not use my powers for evil (compare Wait Non Anon in the Comics section).
Kaputu Kaak is one of the most nerve-wracking books I’ve worked on.
Partly, because I’m not a trained illustrator — I usually write the books.
Partly, because we built it from scratch in seven weeks, leaning on friends and colleagues, while we were in the middle of the people’s uprising of 2022.
Mainly, I was nervous because of the readers we had in mind: kids living through the Sri Lankan crisis, trying to process the collapse.
The link below is to the English, Sinhala, and Tamil editions. For a teacher/librarian-friendly summary of the book, here is Amal’s Tweet-thread.
Love, hope, and strength, from us to you,
Deshan and Amal
A NOTE ON PRINTING YOUR OWN COPY: The book is 92-pages but you can use half the paper: the printable PDF lets you do two pages on a single side of A4 paper (46 sheets). If your printer can do double-sided prints, you can print the whole book on 23 sheets of A4.
The Brass Monkey Band
Now defunct, this was a lovely band, made mostly of old friends. They were overachievers, the lot of them and count among their number a Booker Prize winner and two medical doctors (one of whom I think was also a concert pianist).
This album artwork was for 2006’s Monsoon Sunday 1: Warning Signs. It featured a stupidly complex, folded poster that functioned as the cover (the optimism of the young designer...). Many of the striped black and white elements are buildings from Colombo I photographed and warped using Photoshop. I think this was my first attempt at digital collage. You can still find the album on Spotify and Apple Music.