The scene
Sepia and iron-gall ink on aged paper, like a page from a naturalist's own sketchbook. The tree of life branches across the sheet, with a few of the creatures that taught Darwin how it worked drawn around it. Underneath, the closing words of the book.
The style
A naturalist's notebook in pen and ink: quick, sure line on worn, ruled paper, the way Darwin sketched his first tree of life.
The inspiration
From On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1859), the final paragraph: from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
How it's made
A print of a digital artwork in the style of a nineteenth-century naturalist's sketchbook plate, not an original. Each carries my printed Chapter & Scene signature.