Creators of stunning giant artwork depicting Manchester want the drawing back on display in the city

The creators of a stunning giant sketch showing Manchester in amazing artistic detail are hoping to get the artwork back on display in the city.

Sketch artist Carl Lavia and photographer Lorna Le Bredonchel completed the piece in 2017 and it spent around a year on display in Manchester’s Central Library.

Now the duo, who are in the process of completing similar artworks for all 69 UK cities, would like to see the two-metre sketch put up once more in a public place for people to enjoy.

Sketching the city

The duo started their project to create a portrait of the United Kingdom through doing large-scale sketching of all its cities in 2016.

Manchester was the second they completed, with the large artwork being finished in October 2017.

The sketch covers the area from Manchester Piccadilly station to Oxford Road to the Mancunian Way to MediaCity and Old Trafford.

Although from a distance the finished pieces look like maps, closer inspection shows how Carl sketches in an impressionistic style.

Carl started sketching aged just five and initially created imaginary pieces based on fictional cities before it was suggested to him that he could also applying his talent with a pen to real places.

An artwork of ‘my second home’

Both Carl and Lorna are based in London but he explained that Manchester was a particularly special place for him to sketch.

He said: “Manchester has a real pull for me because I lived there.

“I spent about a year and a half there, living in Whalley Range.

“I’ve been going to Manchester for pretty much the last 20 years. I used to be a DJ and would go regularly to the Northern Quarter record shops.

“It’s my second home.”

Returning the piece to public view

Having already had the drawing hung in a prominent public location in the city, Carl says he and Lorna are very keen to see it displayed once more where it is easy for Mancunians to view.

He said: “We want to get it back on public display. At the library it was in a prominent place downstairs and lots of people had the opportunity to see it.

“We want to make sure the public can come and view it. That was one of the positive things about having it at the library, it was in the heart of Manchester.

“The most important thing for us is that local people are able to see the artwork, because it’s their city.”

A painstaking process and an impressive large-scale project

Each of the city sketches takes Carl and Lorna up to six months to produce.

Lorna begins by creating the basic pencil scaffolding of the buildings on the paper before Carl adds the layers of pencil forms to give each artwork its finished look.

Even before that, though, there is a lengthy research process to go through.

Carl said: “I have to go to most of the areas to keep up to date. Before I start I watch videos on YouTube, read books and walk around the city for a couple of weeks.

“There’s a lot of research that goes in before I start sketching and that can take a month or two.”

Once sketching, Carl uses his talents to create a particular feel which he hopes mirrors the rhythms of the city he is capturing using pen and paper.

He said: “Having lived in Manchester I knew about the passion for football but I had to do an artistic impression of the stadium because it’s so big.

“I have to use a bit of artistic licence otherwise some areas wouldn’t be represented.”

Carl and Lorna are currently working on their seventh city, Aberdeen, having decided to do all their Scottish sketches in one go.

After completing their tour north of Hadrian’s Wall with Glasgow, they will then return to putting down on paper the other UK cities they are yet to tackle.

More information about their project is available on the website.