The Centre, Livingston
Mural
To mark the reopening of Livingston shopping centre after Covid, I was commissioned to produce a large scale digital mural, which would celebrate ‘The Centre’. It was also a chance to celebrate the town of Livingston itself with all its history with the shopping centre at the heart and soul.
The Centre has been around for almost as long as the new town itself and has gone through many iterations and developments. With the mural, I wanted to try to tell its story.
After a few ideas and sketches which I shared with the client, we decided to go with the original concept of having the mural like a giant map which would show where The Centre sat within the town. Hence the caption, “All Roads Lead To The Centre”.
As well as going on numerous visits to areas of Livingston, I also compiled as much reference imagery as I could find…
…next step, numerous illustrations of the Livingston environment. The older buildings were my favourites to draw…
…and of course, I couldn’t not include the place where I probably spent the most time of my childhood, the world famous Livi skatepark.
Being a child of the eighties, I decided to sneak in a tribute to my childhood hero, Optimus Prime. Because? Well, why not.
And there it was, from initial sketch to final mural. In the end, I didn’t really deviate from the original sketch too much.
Almost like a bonus project, we also did a limited edition run of postcards for charity, featuring the original illustrations that I had done for the mural.
