Back in the early 2000s, ChemScrapes was in its infancy. The current style had yet to be developed and the drawings were messy, as opposed to scrappy. By messy I mean there was no concept of how to frame a cartoon. Early drawings suffered a lot from trying to put in too much detail, or none at all. Some examples below are illustrative of these early days.

Sometimes I tried too hard to make a play on words work (I still suffer from this). Even the cartoons with molecules tried to be too “comical” – big hands and feet! Expression were either surprised or angry, there was really nothing in between.

Within a year, I had learned the importance of the horizon line and shadow as a way of adding depth to the cartoons (below).

Over the course of about another year or two, the ChemScrapes style came more into focus. I learned to nuance expressions, and that it didn’t really matter how many fingers anybody in the cartoons had.

By 2004, the ChemScrapes style had essentially arrived to it’s current form. In those days everything was still pen or pencil on paper, so I became more proficient with line work.

The ChemScrapes style is now fairly recognisable. So much so that when I was approached by a company to use one of my cartoons, I was denied permission by c&en. The reason? ChemScrapes’s brand was associated with Sketch Chemistry, and placement in a company’s publication could be interpreted as endorsement by c&en.

Fair enough. I wasn’t displeased. I was stoked to be considered as having a brand!