On The Trading Floor

I recently illustrated the London Stock Exchange's book '1000 Companies To Inspire' for my old college-mate, art director Rob Patterson at Wardour Communications.

The cover was a bit of old-school Molework - all fineliners and simple but busy-busy detail on paper, inspired by my 50-something illustrations for Ernst & Young - hinting at all of the UK's countries and their biggest industries. Drawn on an A2 sheet, it was scanned and given a careful vectorisation so that Rob could suggest myriad colour combinations to the LSE team.

The book turned out really well - however, the extra-exciting bit came next! Rob and his team decided to curate a live drawing event to celebrate the day of publication. Deep in the Stock Exchange building in Paternoster Square, London (home to the London publishing trade, prior to it being destroyed in WW2), and right in the shadow of St Paul's cathedral, the trading floor opens every day at 7am...which is when our event was set to start. Not my usual start time - unless I am on a Virtuous Gym Day - but I was willing to give it a go!

The idea was that some of the 1000 companies listed in the book - all firms who've done exceptionally well, created significant numbers of jobs and contributed heavily towards an overall growth in British revenue - would be invited to attend on the morning of the book launch. And I would be there, pens in hand, already busy adding their companies' names to the board in brightly-coloured inks.

There were a few things to work out - what to draw on, how big it could go, would I have time to create an entire piece, how long would it take. Rob worked out that a large, robust paper-based print with some of the book's cover illustration already present would provide an immediate focus for guests, and it would look like I'd been working on it all night.

Into gaps in the illustration carefully edited in by Rob I would write the company names, in trusty Poscas pre-bought by Rob in a frenzy of pen-buying not seen since his college days! Poscas are renowned for their 'every-surface' reliability and nicely opaque ink, and a bagful of yellows, blues and whites was duly thrust into my palm on arrival at the Stock Exchange at 6.30am.

There was a lot to like about this event. First, staying in a 4-star just down the road from the venue meant a delightful 5.30am walk with commuters, cyclists and paper deliverers through historic London, over the Blackfriars Bridge and past Amen Corner with its ancient, monastical roots. Buildings I'd seen more recently in pictures towered over me, a foot-based rather than the usual engine-powered journey allowing me time to stare up at them. The weather was beautiful. Second, having a big pile of pens handed to you, along with a hand waved in the direction of financially-important selection of breakfast treats, certainly took the edge off any tiredness.

I'd visited the LSE the night before as I treated myself to a solo dinner at the famous Paternoster Chop House, next door to the Stock Exchange. (I'd taken a sketchbook and drawn the diners between courses, and while sipping the eye-wideningly delicious coffee; none of them knew, and some of them (the Boris vs Hunt arguing ones to my right) turned up at the event the next morning, not showing the slightest sign of the 4 bottles of red that came to the table.) I'd seen my work dressing the LSE columns - one of those times you suddenly get all bothered about your 'idiosyncratic line quality'...

Inside, the building was festooned with my art, piles of books ready to give out. Jessica at another fave client of mine, Premm Design, had created all of the huge boards and posters in the building - no mean feat as it was splashed on a real variety of screens, boards, windows and walls.

Female staff arrived in Pantone-correct green dresses and heels, while smartly-suited men walked in with excited faces - all of them looking as if the most studious class in school had just been told a special school outing had been organised for the day. An animation had been made from the work too; everyone paused to watch as the sound boomed and the animation played across the floor-to-ceiling void, all while the Nikkei, Dow Jones and FTSEs flashed green and red in a rapid-fire succession of results. Cue: applause!

Work had begun and needed to continue at a cracking pace - 50 names to add, by 10.30. Jennifer from Wardour read them out to me replete with correct (and sometimes stylistically incorrect) spellings, a colour was chosen, a position for it, and a lettering style. Sometimes with little illustrations, sometimes not! Everyone was keen to know where their name was, and could they please pose with it??

The event was over in a flash. Happy traders and company directors mixed with creatives and watched drawing possibly for the first time since school; they ate posh snacks, drank coffee and biggedr up their own incredibly impressive achievements. Warmth and good feeling filled the building, but it was suddenly time to go and eat/sleep/sit down/rest.

Since I was working most of the time it was hard to take photographs, but thanks go to Rob for some of these and this one in particular taken by an LSE staff member - Jennifer from Wardour (hours away from heading to Glastonbury), and me and Rob about to catch up on our 25 years on the planet since we graduated together in 1993!

Thanks also to the staff who made me very welcome, and gifted me this beautiful metal official Stock Exchange pin. I had to swear to imbue the virtues and values of British industry and trade...or something...which I did, and duly pinned the glittering crest onto my shirt.

Now who's boss.

BRING THE PAINT!

Our home city of Leicester's banged itself right on the map lately. 

We won the snooker championship in 2016; the same year that Leicester City rose from the dusty levels of Third Division football to win the Premier League against all the odds, and only a year after the city's magnificent reburial of King Richard III, whose body had been found right where the chairwoman of the Richard III Society had always believed he was, under the letter R in a city centre car park (that car park now turned into the King Richard III Visitor Centre, which I worked on with Studio MB).

The city has always been my closest, and its transformation began in earnest 20 years ago when major work began to expand the three universities there. Alongside De Montfort University's soon-to-be halls of residence ran the river, Western Boulevard, and a row of buildings about to be demolished, behind a mile-long stretch of hoardings.

It was these hoardings that graffiti artist and long-time mate Solo One gained permission and funding from the council to paint, end to end, creating the largest piece of continuous graf created to date (over a mile). 1996 did indeed see Solo work himself to a husk, recruiting artists from around the world to come and throw paint at white spaces. The energy was big, the colour bigger, and the art was destroyed, as all street art must ultimately be, when the development was finished.

Here's a great little film by Solo One of the original Western Boulevard event, cut with May's event 21 years later:

Twenty-one years later, the energy returned with Solo's Return of the Macks, part of the larger, council-supported Bring The Paint Festival, organised by Leicester's paint-and-pen lovers' cave Graff HQ, from whence I buy my Poscas and Grog. As soon as I heard Boyd had set it up, I asked for a spot, no matter how small, as we wanted to part of this anniversary extravaganza.

We had a modest space alongside the towpath at Frog Island, on a sunny but windy day, and stood next to 'real' graffers working at lightning speed with the kind of casual experience and confidence acquired through years of midnight throw-ups, hitting two cities in one day and climbing to precarious spots to get a chroma up. All were welcoming and just as accepting of my slow spraying and help from a brush as they were the schoolkid next to me working on his first big piece, supervised by his Dad, clearly an experienced graffer - yes we're getting to that age now - and the atmosphere was one of calm, shared productivity, someone's system blasting the perfect drum'n'bass mix at the end of the towpath.

Live footage!! Proof I put paint on the wall myself:





Look at these guys, embodying the spirit of 80s graf!
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Think this leaf had the painting blues...

The work along the towpath was breathtaking enough, but meanwhile in the city centre gigantic pieces were being finished by the infamous, incredible Smug, Boogie, Cantwo, Hombre, N4t4, Inkie, Philth, Voyder, Zomby and loads more. I'll let the pictures do the talking, as it were (bearing in mind we worked till very late, and it was dark by the time we hit the big stuff!)

(How did he get it so SHARP??)

The work will remaining place for as along as the elements allow it to.

If you love large-scale work, murals or graf, Leicester's the place to visit right now - and you can pack your day in the city centre with more delicious food, good ales, galleries and shops than at any time in the city's history.

Thanks Solo One for letting us be part of this inspiring event!

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