Windows, Walls, A-Boards and Displays

Advertising boards, window displays and murals had never occurred to me as vehicles for my illustrations but have recently become a core part of my offering. I created my first A-board for the local art shop and I still hear passers-by reading out the jokes on either side.
​If I only had a pound for every comment…

​I love the imagery of Halloween and so when the local art shop wanted a seasonal window display, I wanted to draw on the actual glass as well as arrange the products within.
The acrylic pens I'd used on the A-board would also work on the glass but be removable when the season was over. The first brand used was Posterman and then I moved on to the brand leader, Posca.

Obviously, when you start something new, you make mistakes. So it was that in late October I took my pens out into the street and spent several hours over a couple of days, freezing my fingers, drawing on the outside of the window. ​The design mashed up the themes of Halloween and the Mexican Day Of The Dead (Dia De Les Muertos).

It took me far too long to realise that the acrylic paint would stay in place longer if I drew on the INSIDE of the window. And as entertaining as it was for the passers-by, I would also be more comfortable and warmer if I stood within the window display and did it from there.

​The only downside of being inside is that everything you draw has be a mirror image of how you want it to appear on the outside. This is especially problematic with lettering. What helps is to draw up a grid on the other side of the glass and use an inverted printout of your image with a scaled down grid as reference. Then you can easily remove the grid from the outside glass once you’ve got the foundations of your drawing in place.

​Each year, the Halloween window became more elaborate and I think it peaked with the ‘shattering’ of the glass in The Little Art Shop Of Horrors of 2022. This led onto further windows for the art shop commemorating Royal events, which caught the attention of other shop owners in Oxford who approached me for window designs. 

​So far, I’ve created Christmas, Coronation and other windows promoting the product ranges sold inside the shop. 

​When these were complete, the second shop owner wanted me to draw images directly onto the inside walls.
​At last I could stop drawing in mirror image.

​These huge murals, created in simple poster paint, have included: students standing outside Exeter College, a red British telephone box, a view of St. Mary’s Church, Oxford and a scene of people punting along the Thames. This last one had to be painted as I stood on a wobbly stepladder in front of a large glass window, a position I don’t want to be placed in again. There are more murals to come, the next one being a view of the picturesque Oxford skyline, drawn on panels near the ceiling. I’m hoping I can do these with printed vinyl panels and not spend hours up a ladder again.

Another A-board for an Oxford shop.

After this I was whisked off to London to make some display cabinets look more like London buses. They were already red but they needed windows and passengers to add some interest and life. ​

To hand paint these three large cabinets in the centre of a London shop packed with customers was impossible. There was never a quiet period, no matter when I turned up to paint so another solution needed to be found.

​I drew the designs at home and had self-adhesive vinyl panels made which I applied to the front, back and sides of the cabinets. This saved time and created a more durable, professional finish.

From there it was back to Oxford where I was ushered inside a shop that was still being fitted out and in the darkness and dust from the builders, there was the glare from the headlights of a full size London double decker bus, created entirely from wood. ​

Instead of being a single display cabinet like the buses in the other shop, this took up the whole wall and required branding on the side – a 3 metre long reproduction of the shop sign – and a decal to replicate the destination window on the front. This wasn't easy because once that vinyl is stuck down, it's very difficult to remove if it's in the wrong place. Again, these were done from the top of a wobbly ladder.

There are more murals in the pipeline and lots of exciting projects to come in both Oxford and London. Watch this space.