'Putting on the Ritz'

This illustration depicts a street scene from Manchester city centre. It shows music venue The Ritz on Whitworth Street West; as seen from the underpass that leads onto Great Marlborough Street. The archway is sometimes closed off for street festivals such as Eurocultured, and it also provides an entrance for another of Manchester's popular music venues; Gorilla. The advertisement board to the right vaguely references a gig that I attended here featuring Claudio Simonetti's band Goblin, and as a result this dates the piece back to 2014.

To anyone who has spent some time in and around Manchester; this area should be familiar, it is often very populated but after dark can be quite a scary place to walk by. My idea for the illustration is based on a panel from the popular manga series Berserk, in which a silhouetted character passes a dark archway. I had been reading the first book at the time, and I liked the mood of the drawing alongside its simplicity. I wanted to try doing an illustration that captured a similar feeling, and my mind instantly wandered to this location; where I can easily imagine that strange characters lurk in the dark.