Meet the Shawlands artist whose graffiti has brought new life to Clydeside walkway

With magnetic eyes and snarling teeth, you can almost feel its whiskers bristling as the giant feline grows to take over part of the wall on the Clyde Walkway spanning more than four metres.

This is the latest piece of work by 31-year-old graffiti artist Klingatron, the Shawlands-based master of stencils and spray paint who is behind the docile panda snoozing on a wall in Mitchell Lane in the city centre and a Glasgow cityscape in the Saltmarket.

It was in his final year studying illustration at Duncan of Jordonstone College of Art and Design in Dundee when the young artist discovered the book Stencil Graffiti and his work headed off on a completely different path.

"I always liked creating portraits and I could see the detail you could capture with stencil graffiti. I just taught myself and I've been cutting stencils for the past 10 years," he explains.

"There was a tiger here before on the Clyde Walkway so I wanted to do another tiger. The wall suffers from water ingress coming through the brickwork and you can see various drips, it was really affecting the artwork that was here before.

"My style of work is to create drips in my artwork so I'm really trying to create an image that will work well with the environment. I'll be doing some drips freehand with brush strokes."

West End based gallery Art Pistol is behind many of the murals that have sprung up around the city in recent years, from the view of the river on Clyde Street, with an underwater dalek and swimming elephant, to giant Commonwealth Games badminton players on a gable end wall in the Merchant City and shadow puppets playing along the walls of a pedestrian tunnel in Cowcaddens.

Art Pistol approached Klingatron to submit an idea for the wall on the Clyde Walkway and his original sketches have transformed into the impressive piece of art after he hand-cut 180 stencils on A0 sheets of card.

The painstaking effort took the best part of three weeks, before Klingatron could even think about picking up a can of spray paint.

With work on walls in Nottingham and Bristol, Klingatron is a well-known name in the world of graffiti art. He says he enjoys every part of the process, from cutting the stencils to layering the paint and the final freehand flourishes.

"For the past three days I've had so many people coming up to talk to me," he says. "It has been great, some people are really loving what's going on. Some were sad to see the previous mural go but then they have seen this grow.

"I met someone who has passed by every day I've been here and seen the progression. That's what's nice about seeing these murals come up - you get to see how it grows and changes.

"I like working with stencils because I can capture details I might struggle to with a paintbrush. You can get the minutest detail. Every little brown dot, every whisker, every hair, they have all been hand-cut with a scalpel blade."

Art fans don't have to go to a gallery to appreciate Klingatron's work and that is all part of the appeal to him.

"Here they can see the work on the walls," he says. "Glasgow is a beautiful city and it is great to take this void space of just a black wall and put something where people might come here and sit for lunch or just hang out in a really nice space."

With private collectors and regular commissions, Klingatron's work is receiving wider recognition. He has just been asked to submit pieces for an exhibition in Australia.

I did a picture of my dog and posted that on my website and on social media and when people see that they say, 'Oh my goodness, that was created with stencils? I think I want one of those on my wall,'" he says.

The artform made famous by Banksy has grown dramatically in recent years and Ali Smith of Cresswell Lane gallery Art Pistrol says he started working with graffiti artists four years ago and there is now rarely a month when they don't have a new mural going up in the city.

Private clients approach Art Pistol if they have a wall they want painted, alternatively city council regeneration projects have created much work.

The distinctive murals take on all shapes and forms, from a black taxi carried off by a bunch of coloured balloons in Mitchell Street to a green and yellow snake slithering around the corner of a building in the Gorbals.

A recently finished gable end in Cowlairs celebrates the railway heritage of the district.

"We have done the tiger's share of work recently," admits Ali. "If artists were just given the walls to paint the work would maybe happen but not on this scale.

"There are massive costs, with access and permits. As long as people are on board with the project, the popularity, the exposure of every wall, everyone talks about it and it goes viral online.

"It's interesting for street artists because they're so exposed with the work they do: everyone sees it as opposed to a gallery artist whose work is hanging on a wall."

He adds: "There aren't many artists in Glasgow who can do work like this. There are about four at the moment we work with.

"There are a few more keen to get a shot but it's just finding the right wall because you need to start small and work up to it. There's lots of great talent just waiting to come out."