Portfolio

In Autumn 2023 I was approached about creating a piece of Manchester artwork for Chanel's Metier D'art Fashion Show that was taking place in the Northern Quarter in December.

I was asked to create a Manchester design that would be printed across 3 panels and embroidered on at the Manchester Modern exhibition at Victoria Baths post show.

This was obviously a massive opportunity for me which I jumped at immediately . I spent many hours working on the design and illustrating a pop up Chanel runway in the middle of the Northern Quarter. I also dotted places of cultural significance around the design such as art galleries and centres for minority groups. 

In the week before the fashion show I had the opportunity to go to Paris for 24 hours with fellow artist Sarah Joy-Ford and poet Lemn Sissay. Together we visited Chanel's famous offices in central Paris and had the privilege of being shown around Coco Chanel's private apartment which was an amazing experience.

After that we visited Le19m on the outskirts of Paris which houses the various workshops and artisans which produces Chanel's clothes for their shows. Whilst at Le19m I saw my artwork being worked on, with sequins and textures being added to the map. This was an amazing experience seeing my work being worked on by such talented people for such an exciting project.

Back in Manchester I had the opportunity to attend the fashion show, which despite the Manchester rain was an amazing experience with celebrities such as Hugh Grant, Tilda Swinton and Kristen Stewart in attendance. 

Chanel's Manchester Modern exhibition launched the next day at Victoria Baths and it was great to see my Manchester map displayed across all 3 boards. Over the course of the weekend thousands of visitors added embroidery, beads and sequins to the map which was amazing to see.

This project and the experiences it gifted me was a real career highlight and one that made me hungry for many more!

In late 2022 I was commissioned to create a piece for the Nike section of the new Sports Direct store in Manchester's Arndale Shopping Centre. I usually prefer to hand paint my artworks but this one was created digitally in my studio and then printed onto the wall on a vinyl.

This piece was quite a challenging one to work on as there were lots of pipes and obstructions to work around on the wall.

As a result of this the size of the design kept on having to be changed fairly regularly so that it could be scaled to fit the size of the wall.

Design wise this piece focused on Manchester landmarks as well as the sport and music venues around the city. I incorporated some of the older Manchester spots into the design such as the Hacienda and Factory Records but I also added some more modern spots, such as Warehouse Project and the White Hotel.

I always get a buzz when I walk through the Arndale Centre and see this piece on the wall, it's great to have a permanent piece in such a prominent spot!

In the summer of 2023 I collaborated with local Manchester business the Naked Candle Company on a unique 'Manchester' doodle candle. I had wanted to collaborate with Naked Candle for a few years so I was really excited when the opportunity came up.

We decided that the scent for the candle would be Tobacco and Honey and there would be a focus on Manchester's industrial heritage in the design. 

This design was quite small but I managed to fit lots of major Manchester landmarks into the design as well as lots of the industrial mills that you see around Manchester.

This candle was launched in Autumn 2023 and has been selling well ever since with £3.00 from every sale going towards supporting homeless charities. 

In late 2022 I was approached by Red Bull about working with them on their 'Doodle Art' project that they were working on with various universities in early 2023. We exchanged emails for a while and in the end it was decided that I would work with them and Falmouth University to create a doodle piece in February 2023.

I would be working with the illustration students to create a Falmouth doodle map in their student union cafe.

This project was slightly different as I worked with the illustration students at Falmouth University to create this piece. Prior to me heading down to Falmouth the students sent over their favourite place in Falmouth that they would like to illustrate on the design. I worked out the layout of the design and which buildings I would illustrate alongside the ones the students would draw. 

We created this piece over two days with students coming for half hour slots where they would add their illustrations to the map under my guidance. Once all the illustrations from myself and the students were on the map I joined the design together with roads and doodles.

I found this project really inspiring and it was great seeing the students amazing work, hearing stories about their work and lives and also seeing their excitement at being able to contribute to the mural. Hopefully they all go on to have long careers in the arts!

In February of 2023 I was commissioned to create some live artwork at an event organised by END Clothing and North Face at the Parthian Climbing Centre in Manchester. At the event their would be an exhibition, a clothing range launch, climbing demonstrations and I would also be there creating some live Manchester artwork.

Attendees at the event were able to suggest their favourite Manchester businesses and landmarks to me and I was able to add them to the map on the night.

I always enjoy drawing live at events as it gives you a buzz you don't get when you are working in your studio. You get to see peoples reaction to your work live and feel their excitement about it.

Once this piece was done it was shipped to END Clothings store in Manchester where it was displayed for a few months with a video from the exhibition. Once this was over it was shipped to their offices to be displayed there.

Attendees at the event also received a print of the design which was great as the print featured their suggestions for the map!

In May 2024 I had a call from Co-op Live asking me if I could create some 'Pink Friday' bespoke doodle trainers that were to be gifted to Nicki Minaj before her shows at their arena that weekend.

They were after two pairs, one pair for her and one for her young son and both would be covered with pink doodles. Remarkably I had a day free to work on this so once they had dropped off the trainers to me I created doodle pieces on all 4 shoes in one day.

I was really excited to create these trainers as Nicki Minaj is a massive celebrity so working on these for her was a great opportunity.

For the design I doodled bright pink Co-op Lives as well as getting references to Nicki's songs and background into the pieces. I also added some Manchester references and landmarks into the design.

Doodling on trainers is fun but it can sometimes be tricky when you have to doodle around the laces, straps etc. I was pretty happy with how these turned out though and hopefully Nicki and her son liked them as well! 

In January of 2024 I was commissioned by the Westcord Art Hotel in Amsterdam to create an Amsterdam map artwork for them, this was then going to be printed onto the inside of the elevators in their hotel. So that when you got in the lift you were surrounded by the map with all the landmarks and doodles

A mixture of canals and iconic landmarks.

I had only drawn Amsterdam once before and that was on a much smaller scale so doodling this piece was quite challenging at first. I had to get the map drawn to the exact spec of the lift and also work around metal strips in the wall. Amsterdam as a city is challenging to draw as well as you have to doodle their network of canals and make sure they are in the right place which can be pretty tricky. 

Although it was tricky in places it was also a really fun piece to create as Amsterdam has loads of really unique and iconic landmarks, I really enjoyed drawing buildings such as Rijksmuseum and the Royal Palace, they were both stunning places to draw.

Once the design was done it was printed onto the elevators in Summer 2024 and I went over to visit and take some of my own pictures in November 2024. I was really happy with how the design looked and it is great to think hotel guests see my artwork every day.

I was approached in Summer 2023 about creating a Berlin doodle map mural at the Innside by Melia Berlin Mitte hotel. As I had lived in Berlin for a short time 10 years earlier and as it is the place that I consider my art career to have started, I was very excited about this opportunity.

Berlin is a truly unique place to draw as no city in the world has history quite like it.

When I was doing my research for this piece I was excited to go through the variety of buildings that were going to be illustrated on the map. Berlin has had so many historic and memorable events in its unique history and the mix of landmarks to illustrate on the map really highlighted that.

This mural took me around 4 and a half days to complete, which surprised me a bit as it was a big wall and I am usually done quite a bit quicker. But I think it was just down to the amount of detail that was required on the buildings on the design. I loved drawing Berlin and I hope to have an opportunity to do so again in the future!

In June of 2023 I was commissioned to create two murals in the completely new Accident and Emergency area of Chesterfield Royal Hospital. One was to be a Chesterfield map featuring local landmarks and also showing the hospital and its location within the town. Then the other one as a Derbyshire map showing the broader area, this map featured well known landmarks as well as NHS sites around the county.

This was my first time creating a Derbyshire map mural and it was really enjoyable having the opportunity to draw iconic landmarks such as Chatsworth House and Buxton Opera House.

These two murals took me around two weeks to complete as there were a lot of landmarks to add to both maps. Some splashes of NHS blue were added to both maps as well just so that the NHS sites on the map stood out against the busy black and white of the design.

In July of that year Princess Anne officially opened the new hospital buildings, as part of the opening I got to meet her and talk her through my process when creating the maps. This was a real unique opportunity and one you don't get to experience every day!

In August 2023 I was commissioned to create a large scale doodle map of Liverpool at Tate Liverpool in their public exhibition area.

In the weeks prior to me coming, members of the public had anonymously been putting their suggestions for the map in a suggestion box at the gallery. 

Liverpool is an amazing city to draw as there are loads of amazing landmarks and the variety of them is breathtaking. From the Albert Dock's to St George's Hall to both cathedrals the amount of innovative architecture makes it such an amazing place to draw.

This piece took me four full days to complete and and I really enjoyed the sense of ownership that the people of Liverpool had over the piece with their suggestions being on the mural!

In spring 2019 I spent 8 days at Innside Paris Charles De Gaulle hotel creating some mural work around the hotel for them. This work came as a result of one of the managers from the hotel seeing the work I had done at the Innside Prague hotel and wanting something similar and inviting me over.

It was quite a big job at this hotel as they wanted a large Paris mural on the wall in reception opposite the lifts and then a small piece of artwork on each of the 7 floors with Paris landmarks and the floor number surrounded by doodles.

It took me 4 days to do the main Paris map mural, the wall was not painted and was stone similar to a wall you would paint on outside so it wasn’t the easiest surface but it still created a great effect in the end.

Paris is also obviously an amazing city with loads of landmarks so that was lots of fun to draw.

My artwork on the other floors took another 3 days and there were a few splashes of colours on these to highlight the melia hotels in Paris. All this work was done again using my trusty posca pens!

I was approached in February 2019 about doing some artwork at the newly opened Innside Prague Old Town. A month later I was on a very bumpy flight to Prague ready to doodle on their walls.

Compared to some of my projects this was quite a small one and not actually a map. This was to be a landmarks mural of Prague at the main entrance to the hotels reception.A detailed drawing of the hotel would be at the front of the design and then well known Prague landmarks would underlap behind it to create a 3D effect.

This was one of my favourite murals to work on purely because the buildings were so beautiful and such fun to draw.

Once the buildings were all drawn on the hotel management decided they would like some of my trademark doodles and roads around the piece to fill the wall out a bit more which I was more than happy to do.

So after I had already done mural work for Innside Manchester and Innside Hamburg Hafen I started looking at other Innside by Melia hotels to approach re work. One that stood out massively was Innside New York Nomad so I gave them an email and was really excited when they emailed back and said that they wanted to work with me.

We spoke about artwork for a few different areas for the hotel but in the end we settled on a digital design that would be printed onto vinyl and would go on all four walls of the four lifts in the hotel creating an immersive map experience.

I received a brief from them of places that they wanted to go onto the map and I got to work. New York is one of my favourite cities to draw, the shape of it makes it quite difficult but there are just so many iconic landmarks and fun places to draw that it is always going to look good.

I finished the map got it digitised and send over to them. In late 2017 I got the first pictures of the map printed onto the walls of the lifts and was blown away with how it looked.

At the hotel they run a competition for guest where if you take a picture in the lift and put it on Instagram with the hashtag #innsidethemap you can win a prize. Its always good fun looking at the latest additions to this.

I was able to visit the hotel in 2018  and see if for myself, whilst I was there I did a second mural in the hotel. This was of the Chelsea area of Manhattan and is in one of their meeting rooms.

In the Autumn of 2019, Marks and Spencers approached by to create a mural in their flagship store, found on Manchester’s bustling Market Street. The experience not only introduced my work to millions of shoppers but also allowed me to develop my ideas with local communities. 

At the time, the store was going through a major refurbishment and my work would be a focal point of that. Over several meetings my ideas were fleshed out and the piece began to take shape, but there was something missing. 

We needed a local touch, something that made the artwork a true Manchester original.

That meant speaking with the store’s longest serving staff members who suggested new additions and personal touches to the map, from landmarks which survived the IRA bomb in 1996 to the Mitre pub where staff meet for after work drinks.

This all culminated in a map that was close to 20 metres long, took a full week to complete and spanned the length and breadth of Greater Manchester, from the suburbs of Stockport and Bury to Tameside and Salford. Looking back, this piece was a testament to a city that is as diverse as it is inspiring.

In Autumn 2024, I was approached by the Co-op Live to create some unique Manchester 'Bratchester' doodle knee high boots that would be gifted to Charli XCX before her gig at their venue in November of that year.

This was a really exciting opportunity for me as Charli's latest album Brat had been a massive hit and had felt like a bit of a cultural moment of the year. 

I worked on the black knee high boots using neon green Posca pens and although they were a bit of a tricky surface to work on initially I was really happy with the results. I felt like the green really popped against the black and made them a stand out feature piece. 

For the design itself I had Manchester references and of course Co-op Live. But I also dotted references to Charli's songs and her own history and career around the design. I also added music references such as DJ decks, microphones and vinyl.

This was my first time doodling on knee high boots and I was really pleased with the results, hopefully I get more opportunities in the future!

In the winter months of 2024 I was commissioned to create artwork at the Edinburgh offices of KJ Tait, a property company with offices across the UK. Edinburgh was an amazing place to draw and was probably one of the murals I looked forward to most last year – I thought its gothic skyline and rich history made it an interesting subject. 

I wasn’t disappointed. On a large white wall near the entrance I was able to recreate the Edinburgh castle and the Scott Monument in black pen which really made the mural pop. 

This mural took me four full days to complete using my trusty Posca pens, I added as many landmarks as I could to the map but I felt like I could have kept on drawing for a week and wouldn't have been able to draw all the amazing buildings there are to draw in Edinburgh.

For those unable to take the trip across the border this mural is available to buy through my store.

Bee in the City was a city-wide art trail that took over the streets and shopping centres of Manchester. The project brought together 120 artists and challenged them to create their own interpretation of the famous Manchester worker bee, a symbol of Manchester’s resilience and independent spirit. 

Each artist was given a large bee sculpture to decorate with a design of their choosing. For me, I decided to do what I do best and created a Manchester doodle bee, but the challenge was harder than expected. Firstly, I’m used to drawing on walls and paper, not five-foot tall plastic sculptures, and doodling a map of Manchester on gigantic wings is a surprisingly difficult task.

After two days of work with my trusty black Posca Pens the work was complete and off it went to be varnished and put in place. The next time I saw it was upon its unveiling outside Manchester Piccadilly Train Station, an ideal location that I frankly lucked out on how many people pass through on a daily basis.

Easily the most rewarding part of this project was in how much money this project raised for local charities. In total, £1.1 million was raised for the We Love MCR Charity, with my piece alone selling at auction for £16,000. 

A mural commissioned by the Lexicon Shopping Centre in September 2018 proved to be the biggest piece I’ve ever done, a 20m wide, 18m tall work all hand drawn in black and green pens.

My largest piece to date at 20 metres wide and 18 metres tall.

The brief was to create a piece of work dedicated to the area around Bracknell and its many landmarks, from the hallowed turf of Ascot and Legoland to the royal houses of Sandhurst and Windsor Castle. 

There were some difficult times during this project, namely the cherry picker breaking on my third day leaving me stranded 10 metres in the air for several hours. But everyone has to suffer for their art...

I was first approached about doing a mural down in Brighton at Unity 3D’s offices back in 2017. After several discussions I thought it wasn’t to be until I was approached again in spring 2018.

Not one to pass up a week at the beach I had no hesitations in jumping on a train for my first ever visit.

Over three days, as I doodled everything from the Brighton Pavilion to the pier on the Unity 3D walls, I found that Brighton is a city of endless colour which, naturally, made it a dream to draw (even in black and white).

Aside from my beloved Manchester the city I’ve doodled the most is London. Over the years I’ve drawn the city’s skyscrapers on many walls across the capital but my favourite came in February 2022. 

At Maylim's offices in Angel I was given the opportunity to recreate the entire city in black posca pen.

From the gates of Buckingham Palace and the towers of Canary Wharf to the bustling St Pancras Station and the bumping Ministry of Sound nightclub, I was able to showcase all of London’s eccentricities in what was previously a blank wall.

Back in October 2015, a staff member from Channel 4’s sales office in Manchester Tweeted that they were looking for an artist to create a mural.

Through a fortunate twist of fate the manager of Ziferblat, a pay as you go café in Manchester where I was displaying my work at the time, recommended to them that I was the man for the job.

Thankfully, after a few meetings, Channel 4 agreed.

It was a daunting experience at first. I only had a handful of murals under my belt at the time and here I was putting my stamp on a British institution. It wasn’t long before those initial nerves turned to excitement, though.

Channel 4 wanted a piece that was fun and paid homage to their longstanding legacy in producing cutting-edge and forward-thinking television, featuring nods to modern classics like Peep Show and Black Mirror to the much-loved Shameless and Countdown.

After three days the piece was finished and was later unveiled at a launch party for the office attended by the head of Channel 4. The project was also the excuse I needed to include a Mark Corrigan quote in my work...

This design was not intended to be on a football shirt. In spring 2018, I was approached by the O Genesis record label and the famed Manchester band The Charlatans. They wanted me to create a map of their beloved Northwich, one that depicted the town’s landmarks, but also the venues that were hosting taking part in North by Northwich music festival that coming May.

Based on the success of this original piece I was approached by Northwich Victoria football club

Fast-forward to spring 2020, and based on the success of this original piece I was approached by Northwich Victoria football club about the design being printed onto their football shirts.

The project took a few months in total and involved many tweaks and changes, but the final product was better than any of us expected. Others seemed to agree with us, too.

For a while it was displayed in the window of Manchester’s Classic Football Shirts store and was voted in the top 10 coolest football shirts of 2020 by the influential fan site Footy.com.

In 2017 I was approached by Preston based design agency Wash Design to help them with a rebrand for Lancashire Tea, a local business who’ve spent years finessing their recipe for the perfect cuppa.

My job was to create a modern design that would pop on the supermarket shelves while being as classically Lancastrian as potted shrimp.

Over time, myself and the Lancashire Tea team worked together to create a design that represented Lancashire’s famous faces and its many iconic landmarks, from Eric Morecambe frollicking on Morcambe beach to the charming (if equally annoying) Blackpool seagulls. It wasn’t a simple process – the design took several attempts to perfect as the packaging dimensions were strict – but it was all worth it when I started receiving messages from friends who’d seen my work on the Tesco shelves.

To this day this artwork remains one of my most popular pieces of work, and I couldn’t be happier to be associated with the north’s best brew.

Ahead of Manchester City’s FA Cup final game against Watford in 2019 I was approached by BBC Sport about creating a piece of artwork based on the achievements of the then Watford manager Javi Gracia.

This opportunity came about as quite others do: from the fact that one of the BBC Sport staff had seen my mural at RPB barbershop in the Northern Quarter and decided that they wanted to work with me.

BBC Sport’s brief was to create a time-lapse video of me drawing key moments from Gracia’s career that led to him on the road to Wembley. Once the video had been edited it would then be narrated by journalist and Sky Sports pundit Guillem Balague.

On a stifling hot day in my central Manchester studio we spent three hours creating the time lapse creation, only to find out the next day that it hadn’t been filmed correctly.

No matter, we did it again, and fortunately were successful the second time around. Sadly, the piece didn’t help Gracia in his efforts to lift the FA Cup that year – Watford lost 6-0 – but for me it was a dream to see my work played live on BBC1. It’s not every day you appear in the FA Cup final, after all.

I first met with the team behind Salford Rum in early 2018. They had noticed a gap in the market for bespoke rum and wanted to create something really tasty and cool.

Hailing from Salford the two founders spoke of how important it was to pay homage to the history of the Salford Docks into the design, the famous thoroughfare where spices used to make their rum would have landed in the early 1900’s.

I could almost smell the smog of industrial Manchester

To create the design I used vintage maps and pictures of the Salford area from that period. In these images I could almost smell the smog of industrial Manchester, something I wanted to recreate on a rum bottle.

Since the release of their first spiced rum in Summer 2018 both the rum and the design on the bottle has resonated with consumers – Salford Rum is now stocked in John Lewis, Harvey Nichols and many independent shops and bars. The project also kickstarted a lasting relationship between me and the Salford Rum boys that will see us collaborate again over the coming years.