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 never had any ambition to read the collected works of Shakespeare. My exposure to Shakespeare in the 30 years since 'doing' him at school was limited to seeing a couple of films, a touring production of A Midsummer Night's Dream outdoors, and my two children performing in Twelfth Night as their school play. But since starting work on the Shakespeare covers in June 2004, I have read 20 of the plays and find myself really enjoying them. I've also managed to see eight of the plays on stage, despite living deep in the Scottish countryside: a visit to the Edinburgh Fringe netted five, very mixed, shows in a day; the RSC touring to Dumfries; and two roaming bands of players performing in the grounds of our local castle at Drumlanrig.
 Ideally I would have started this project by reading all the plays, making copious notes and planning out all the covers as a set. But the designers needed covers to start appearing immediately, so I read the first three plays on their list, illustrated those, then read the next three. I read Lamb's Tales and Shakespeare for Dummies for the plot outline, so that I can then read the actual text fluently without getting bogged down in the politics of Denmark but concentrating on scenes, images and characters.
Some themes recur in several plays, such as shipwrecks, twins, mistaken identity, bloody murders and severed heads. But in each play I was looking for some nugget, the image that would sum up the unique atmosphere of that particular play. This wouldn't necessarily be the most significant scene from a literary point of view. The banquet consisting of hot water is a powerful moment in Timon of Athens but wouldn't work as an illustration. In Richard III I chose the scene of the princes in the Tower that isn't part of the on-stage action at all. In A Midsummer Night's Dream I could show the fairies tiny as they can never appear on stage.
My initial idea goes to the art director at Penguin as a pencil drawing for discussion or approval. I also need to collaborate with the cover designer on how the image and text are to fit together, as each cover is different.
 My illustrations are lino-cut prints. Each image uses two separate blocks of lino. The first is a line block printed mostly in blue; the second for background colour. Each block carries several different colours, the inks being rolled or dabbed on by hand. This gives something of the feel of Elizabethan woodcuts from when  printing in England was in its early primitive days. But I also indulge in 21st-century use of texture and multiple colours, without pretending to be antique.
I'm now more than half way through the plays, and looking forward to another few months immersed in the 17th Century. I find William Shakespeare a gripping read: rich and passionate and deeply felt. I go into my workroom and disappear into Elizabethan London, Athens, Illyria, Sicily, Venice, Ancient Egypt, or the Forest of Arden.
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