Brief:  To create a presentation pack of postage stamps depicting two opposing themes within London.

Response:  In London rich and poor live side by side, creating the tension and ambition implicit in London life. It is a city of contrasts. There is huge wealth and there is great poverty and homelessness. Londoners regularly see people sleeping on the streets, whilst in the background stand London’s Palaces – never changing cultural monuments, recording the privilege of Royal life throughout the ages. That said, the two worlds do also collide: Prince William left St. James’s Palace to sleep rough on the streets of London for a night in order to raise awareness of the increasing homelessness problem in the capital.

When creating artwork for the stamps, I took inspiration from the London I saw around me, as well as doing more research online and in books. I sketched or photographed four of London’s Palaces – Buckingham Palace, St. James’s, Hampton Court and The Tower of London – plus Royal insignia and other subjects or objects closely associated with Royal life. I also sketched or photographed homeless life on the street. The ethics of this type of project are complicated. It felt wrong creating artwork from someone’s experience of sleeping rough if the project itself was not commissioned in order to offer help to homeless people. For this reason, I sketched many of the images of homelessness from photographic images found online.

I also drew inspiration from the layers of graffiti covering the walls of the Old Vic Tunnels. This provided inspiration for the collage style in which I created the artwork and added a London grit to the designs. Although it created the desired effect, it is worth noting that this style could create illustration too complicated for such a small canvas.