Artistic makeover for eyesore Willenhall alleyway

Stuart Bone from Great Wyrley, Jason Slade from Cannock and Duncan Taylor from Burntwood brightened up the walls to the pathway in Willenhall.

They were asked to carry out the work to the alleyway between the Allens Rough and Beacon housing estates in New Invention by resident Stuart Hodges.

The walls had previously been daubed with expletives by vandals.

Mr Bone said: "We're always looking for wall space, the guy who lives there got in touch with us and asked to do something for him.

"There was people going in the alley a lot of the time, I think it was a bit of a hangout, and had sprayed graffiti which had ruined the wall.

"The three of us did the work, we didn't ask for any funding, we were just happy to have the wall space because it's few and far between really."

Stuart Bone, aged 31, Jason Slade and Duncan Taylor, both 43, have done various unique and colourful works in the area, including at Heath Town's Duke of York site.

The group all work full-time. Mr Bone works in overhead electricity, Jason runs his own sign writing and graphics business, while Mr Taylor works for Lichfield-based company Hexis.

"We purely do classic graffiti style artwork, which originated in New York, and we like to do stuff that's public friendly," added Mr Bone.

"For this design we just altogether agreed we needed to do a cartoon, we usually do abstract kind of stuff.

"A lot of graffiti classically is just letter form, but people recognise art through faces and characters so that's what we've tried to do.

"If we would have gone for what we wanted to do at first, I don't think we would have had the same response."

Mr Hodges said he was delighted with the outcome.

The 60 year-old grandfather-of-eight said: "We have ended up with a very attractive looking piece of artwork which has had universal approval from people who have been walking down the alley.

"We were suffering from graffiti before. Some of the language and pictures have been quite rude and abusive."