Hello and welcome to the hand page! This is essentially my portfolio displaying some of my more recent illustration work. I love to experiment with style, medium and techniques so If you'd like to see any more of specific types of my work or discuss any of it with me, please email me at vakilnuria@gmail.com or DM me on instagram at @flyingsnail_art.
A comic I created for a personal short comics anthology during my Illustration BA. An exploration of my mental state at the time.
A personal comic made for practice and experimentation.
Extract of a comic adaptation of du Maurier's 'The Blue Lenses' I made during my Children's Book Illustration and Graphic Novels MA.
Another comic from my BA comics anthology project. This one was the only one drawn traditionally and coloured digitally, the others were entirely digitally drawn.
The first page of a comic submitted to a competition as part of my BA. It didn't win but is personal and still means a lot to me.
A poster I made as tribute for a twitch streamer and the community he has created that I am part of, inspired by inside jokes and old sci-fi film posters.
Around 2024, after watching Transformers One twice, my transformers hyperfixation took over my wrestling one. I still love wrestling but the online community could get really aggressive and toxic and taking space from it has been really helpful for my mental health. This was one of the earliest pieces of transformers fanart I did, I still love Starscream very much.
Fanart of Chromedome and Rewind from the IDW More than Meets the Eye comics. These comics are so cleverly written and the artstyle(s) are so distinctive it was such a joy to read and really got me engaged in comics again. Chromedome and Rewind are the first queer rep in those comics and allowed for so much more to come after them and I will always love them for that.
I thought it might be neat to see the progress from the sketch from my sketchbook (right) to the digital design (left). This is my DnD character Ratt and it was very fun to design.
I like to make cards for the baristas at the cafe I draw in. These are fun to make and I hope it shows them my appreciation for their hard work, I know retail is not easy and have seen some of the customers and problems they have had to deal with. These are just a few examples as I usually do not remember to photograph them.
Again a comic from my BA comics anthology, this one more purposefully abstract and focused on grief.
An extract from a comic I made for a competition during my Illustration BA.
A second extract of the blue lenses comic I made for my MA which was drawn in A6 size with fineliner.
Drafts of a figure comissioned for a scientific presentation and included in a published scientific article
A final example of one of the comics I made for my BA comics anthology, I had a lot of fun with limited colour palletes and layouts with these. I wanted to test how expressive I could be while still trying to give an impression of an experience and/or emotion.
A piece of fanart of two wrestlers I like, I am proud of the atmosphere my use of colour created here. Drawing fanart can allow a lot of self expression as well as comfort and I like to play with that.
Fanart of El Desperado and his rival Hiromu Takahashi. I like to use fanart to explore new styles and techniques and this one was inspired by their use of flowers in matches and storytelling as well as Hiromu's colourful ring gear.
Transformers fanart I did of Cyclonus and Tailgate for Pride 2025. I'm still very proud of this piece and how it came together. These two mean a lot to me as I relate to them both a lot, Cyclonus's arc of working on himself - particularly his anger and self-destructive tendencies - with the help of his friendship with Whirl is very important to me. Tailgate's arc of being taken advantage of hits close to home for me too. I'm glad they were shown to find happiness and strength in each other.
Another streamer's community I'm in encouraged me to draw a pinup of the cryptid the Loveland Frogman. I had never drawn anything like this before, it was great fun.
This drawing is a tribute to my mum. It was the 10 year anniversary of her death on the 27th June 2026. This is what I had by the end of the day. It was difficult to work on but I think she would have been proud.
As June drew to a close I wanted to draw something lighthearted and fun and thought another transformers drawing for Pride could be nice. I see this as an unofficial sequel to my 2025 Pride drawing. I also hadn't drawn many women or sapphic relationships for some time so it seemed like a good idea and I'm really happy with how colourful it turned out. It's exactly what I wanted it to be. The VA for both Elita-1 and Airachnid in Cyberworld even commented on it on instagram and it brightened my day.
Another experimental piece of fanart, this time of the horror game 'Darkwood'. For this one I tried to translate my more detailed traditional art style to my digital work as inspired by the games textured artwork.
A drawing based on a photograph I took of wrestlers Spike Trivet and Kid Lykos during their recent cage match. I enjoyed playing with their animal inspired monikers of 'vulture' and 'wolf'.
More game fanart, this time of Olivia and Abella from 'Fear and Hunger: Termina', another horror game. This style was more inspired by 1900's/200's colourful web and video game aesthetics.
The style I used for this piece of animorphs fanart wasn't really inspired by anything in particular but the layout draws from sci-fi posters as much as it draws from the iconic style of the original book covers.
My earliest complete drawing of El Desperado and one of my personal favourites. The stained glass imagery was both inspired by El Desperado's various masks and a comment he made comparing his broken jaw (and the recovery he had to undergo because of it) to 'kintsugi' - the practice of fixing broken ceramics with gold. It really resonated with my personal experience with chronic pain, disability and internalised ableism.
I realised I should showcase more of my traditional artwork so here is a birthday card I made for a friend who loves the Beatles. She says I gave them each the perfect beetle, I can't say I know the Beatles as well as I know my beetles so I'll take her word for it!
In early 2026 I finally finished reading all of the first IDW run of Transformers. Ultra Magnus' story really struck me hard. He feels very representative of masking and when he allows his inner self to be seen more and even makes friends because of it, it made me very emotional.
I had been playing the game OFF when I found out my great aunt passed away, this was June 2026. I drew this OFF fanart over the next few days and poured all of my grief into it. It feels like a part of me I'm putting out here. I tried to be very thoughtful with every detail, texture and colour I included.
I've been enjoying working on comics again, most of them are still in the draft phases so I thought I would share an example here. I hope to submit this one to a competition in November when it is complete.
The very first sketch I did for the comic draft shown above. It started off filled with text but ended up being a silent comic with only sound effects and one word total.