Print Drop – Benfica
New licensed print celebrating ten of the club’s legendary players over their 120 year history.
It was an absolute pleasure to work with Historiart and S.L. Benfica on this licensed print featuring ten legends who played the most games for the club during their careers, as they celebrate their 120th anniversary.
The print is available as a timed edition A2 sized print until the end of February from Historiart, and as an open edition at A3 and A4 sizes.
It’s also currently on display in the entrance of the Estádio da Luz along with several other prints by talented posters artists, and part of the official club tour for the time being, which is quite an honour. You can read more about the opening reception here (please note that this is only available in Portuguese and you may need to translate it).
Planning a print like this was a very interesting and ultimately rewarding process. As well as the ten players I also wanted to include the bald eagle mascot of the club, Vitória, with his wings spanning the width of the print, and effectively embracing the players. Then it was about finding a set of references for the players that would all work together compositionally, picked from the archives by the team at Benfica, and combined with a concentric rings theme, which emanate from the torso of the eagle, which are placed where each player touches the ground in golden light.
It’s probably fair to say that Eusébio is their most legendary player of all time, so depicting him larger and barrelling towards us in the centre, as if he’s causing the ripple effect of the concentric rings, felt like the right focal point to have. Each iconic player is also given their chance to shine however, and I deliberately didn’t overlap them too much in order to give them the kind of space they would often have had on the pitch.
It also made sense to integrate the player stats of the number of games played by each within the composition itself, rather than having that important info on the back of the print or on a separate insert, again utilising the accent colour of the gold (which comes from the 120 years anniversary logo).
Given the historical theme, having the kit in colour but the players themselves in black and white just felt apt. Not least because they are from different decades where the reference material changed, as well as of course the kits, and this also helped to unify everything. One of the final details that made it all come together was tinting the white accents on the kit subtly towards blue. Because it’s always the little things.
Huge thanks to Vincent at Historiart and to the team at Benfica for the opportunity to collaborate on this print, which I really hope will resonate with the fans as a fitting tribute to such legends.
All painted by hand and designed in Photoshop on my Wacom Cintiq and a Mac Studio.
Also just to say, this is my first newsletter post of the year, and while it’s still early days for this Substack and I don’t make resolutions as such, I am resolved (!) to posting more often about my work here, and giving additional info and context beyond what I’m sharing on social media elsewhere. Thanks for subscribing if you already have, and I hope you’ll consider doing so if you haven’t yet. Even though I’ll be upping the frequency, it won’t ever be spam, and will simply be announcing new prints like this, and/or shedding more light on projects.
