The Nurdle Project: Bringing the Drawings to Life

In my last post, I shared the beginnings of the Nurdle Project — the research, the ideas and, most recently, the hand-drawn line art for the six oracle cards.

At that stage, everything was still black and white.

Just lines on paper, slowly revealing what was beginning to form in my head.

Now, finally, I can share the finished colour artworks.

From line to colour

There is always a slightly magical moment when I begin adding colour to an illustration.

The drawing that has been sitting in front of me for days suddenly starts to become something else.

For this project, I wanted the colour palette to feel as though it belonged to an old, slightly mysterious world. Something botanical and apothecary-like, rather than bright or obviously contemporary.

I've used the colours to help create that feeling of something discovered rather than something newly made.

And I've deliberately allowed some of the imagery to feel beautiful.

That might sound strange for a project about plastic pollution, but that contrast is important to me.

Plastic is incredibly seductive.

It is colourful, versatile, cheap and capable of being transformed into almost anything. It is also persistent, pervasive and extraordinarily difficult to get rid of once it enters the environment.

I wanted the artwork to reflect some of that contradiction.

Beauty with something uncomfortable underneath

As the illustrations developed, I found myself returning again and again to the idea of consequence.

Something can look beautiful and still be harmful.

Something tiny can have a huge impact.

Something designed to be useful can become a problem when it escapes the system it was created for.

Those ideas have gradually woven themselves into the imagery.

The six illustrations are now finished, and seeing them together has made the project feel much more real.

Until this point, I've mostly been working with individual ideas.

Now there is a collection.

And I'm starting to see how all the different pieces of the project might eventually sit together.

And perhaps... colouring pages?

One question I've been asking myself while looking at the finished illustrations is whether I should also turn the line drawings into colouring pages.

There is something I really like about the idea of taking these illustrations — which are part of a project about pollution and environmental consequences — and allowing someone else to interact with them in a completely different way.

To slow down.

To look closely.

To choose their own colours.

Perhaps even to discover some of the details that might otherwise be missed.

I'm still deciding… Would you like to colour these and make them your own finished artworks?

For now, though, I'm enjoying seeing the finished artworks together.

And these are only one part of the story.

Because the illustrations were never intended to exist entirely on their own.

They are becoming something else.

Something that I will share in the next part of this project.