graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
Continuing with the nascent project of drawings processed from the source of photographic images contained within the recently-acquired small collection of late 1960s – early 1970s football annuals, but, on this occasion & intending to attempt a series as a specific & discrete sub-section of the general body of work as it might develop, diversifying into portraiture, at least on a surface level.
As with the match action images, the annuals are a rich source of suitable period pictures of the players themselves (note those sideburns, for example), often, as might be expected, the higher profile ones of the day whose names and faces are recognizable to me either because their careers endured into the years I began taking an interest in the game or otherwise I’ve come to know of from historical research in the service of general interest. Others, however, seem to have been those who spent their days in the more obscure reaches of the lower divisions (although it must be stated at this point that such an environment has been where my own supporter’s heart lies, having followed Wrexham since 1977), mostly untouched by all but the most local of celebrity, & one of the annuals, over the course of a four-page gallery spread, features a selection of such players, journeymen or stalwarts, of whom I had no previous knowledge in amongst the familiar ‘stars’: these, intrinsically, often appear more interesting characters somehow, perhaps their very anonymity lends a certain inverted exoticism & glamour, also linked to some of the clubs they might be representing (please see this archive post for something more along the lines of this thinking).
The first subject, chosen for no other reason than his was the first image to be represented within the design layout of the page(s) of portraits, top left in the grid format, happens thus to be Graham French, one of those names previously unknown to me, even during the process of drawing but, it transpires in the subsequent course of a little light research, the owner of a most intriguingly colouful playing background & character, & a bona fide legend of Luton Town, featuring in their supporters' all-time greatest team, where he clearly saw his best days among his travels & various clubs, to boot.
There's some classic black & white TV footage of a rather finely executed goal scored by the talented Mr French here: lovely stuff, & we at TOoT fully approve of the application of the phrase 'Godlike genius' too.
In technical terms, the appearance if not necessarily the form of the drawing is partly explicable to its being processed from immediate reference to a somewhat washed-out looking photocopy of the original image in the annual (the 1970-vintage print resolution of which being of a lower standard than contemporary publications), increased in size by approximately 350% & further degrading the quality of the reproduction, hence distancing itself some way from source, adding to the levels of ‘de-photography’ & also ‘re-mediation’. It’s interesting to note too that many of such portraits or pen pictures of footballers would have been taken during the ‘pre-season’ period, i.e. in July or August, thus often drenched in bright sunlight into which the subjects are squinting, the images displaying a characteristic high contrast & loss of detail to shadow which all contribute to the particular aesthetic of the genre. Such source material also allows for the indulgence in the representation of some lettering/text too.
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