Glad to see I’ve encouraged some spirited debate! To clarify, I’m near London and had hoped to find someone reasonably local to me…..however it’s becoming clear to me now that I shouldn’t limit myself in that way with such an important decision. While taking multiple flights out to California is probably always going to be out of scope (!), elsewhere in the UK or (at a stretch) Europe would be a possibility….

Yoda, love to see your friend’s dragon when it’s done.. Tool, thanks for the tip, I will check out Kamil.

And I hope we can all avoid any snarkiness…..liking that word though 😉

Thanks Yoda, I guess I was mostly aiming to give an indication of the content and style I had in mind so that people were able to make informed suggestions on possible artists, but you make a good point about not asking for random design pointers, it should be something between myself and the artist. Tbh I’m pretty happy with the general concept and elements I’ve outlined, and it feels like the next stage for me should be to find the artist to flesh out my ideas…..any and all advice very much appreciated though, I do appreciate you guys taking the time to respond 😉

Thanks for the feedback Arni….I do realise I’m going into this with high expectations, but with only one back to give I’d rather take my time and find the right person than settle for something less than ideal just because it’s convenient. I might find myself regretting that convenient option for years to come! Ideally it’d be somewhere close to home, but thinking about what you say I guess I should just work on finding the right artist and see where that leads me. So, broadening the geographic scale, any suggestions? !!