![](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/fullsizeoutput_13b-750x1024.jpeg)
It’s taken me a while to get these up on my website but that’s no reflection about how I feel about them – these weird smeary monochrome images helped me show who I was and where I was going.
I’d started an MA because I knew my illustration work could be so much more than it was, and I hadn’t quite found out what I wanted to do with it. The curse of being able to draw well means that I could create with pencil, brush pen, dip pen, acrylics and oil paints but none quite gave the feel that I was trying to reach – until I tried Pfeil woodcutting tools on lino and something exploded.
![](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/fullsizeoutput_186-674x1024.jpeg)
The book itself is 33 passages, each of 333 words, around identity, being trans, the blurry nature of the self, magic and grief. It’s a book about losing my mother, coming out, and the impossibility of representing a personality through words. The illustrations were a third oil paint, a third linoprint and a third oils over lino print. Each passage runs over a double-page spread and the illustration is printed onto tracing paper which allows some of the words to show through, and there is a playfulness there. I successfully crowdfunded to have the pages professionally printed and I hand-bound 50 copies (I must have been mad to decide to do this!) and sold them all.
![image of cover of Being Frank book by south Wales illustrator Frank Duffy, with macbook, ruler, pencil, pfeil lino tool and cup of tea](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/12D1166B-2337-4DD2-BAF9-6E5194B3F5F8-1024x1024.jpg)
![Lino print oil paint and collage illustration of a bear and a lion-headed person meeting by illustrator Frank Duffy in South Wales](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/AEA44A22-3A4A-4FAA-ABED-B385CCAD6C23-1024x1024.jpg)
![oil painting illustration portrait of Marsha P Johnson in book by illustrator Frank Duffy](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/63615365-9A05-4365-8615-A66025F9D7D5-1024x1024.jpg)
![oil painting illustration of helicopter in smeary sky in book by Carmarthen illustrator Frank Duffy](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/8F8FF1BF-8436-4CC2-B62C-014CCDD6D3E9-1024x1024.jpg)
![oil painting illustration of Garth Mountain Cardiff south Wales in book by illustrator Frank Duffy](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/57D7E31B-A2FF-4FE7-B786-4F3BC5DEC41D-1024x1024.jpg)
I won the course’s creative writing award (no small thing – there were some excellent writers on the degree) and was awarded an MA with Distinction in September 2018.
![linocut illustration of lion and god, black and white, in book](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/E24184F1-A94F-4738-AD9C-4AF4B34208CA-1024x1024.jpg)
![oil painting illustration of sunrise in book](https://frankduffy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/272EF169-4884-4B8C-9273-9A03E2DE8AF8-1024x1024.jpg)