Mud, football and Readers Digest

I just illustrated this entertaining piece for Readers Digest by James Brown about the perils of the football pitch in your late forties. I was commissioned by Martin Colyer, who was a pleasure to work with from start to finish.

This commission presented two problems: 1) the unusual shape, across two pages of text, 2) I don't know the first thing about football. However, the closest I ever got to an interest in the beautiful game was reading my brother's Roy of the Rovers comics when I was a kid, so I hit upon the idea of contrasting James' youthful footballing dreams with muddy, squelchy reality.

Thanks to Matt Dooley for the lend of the football comics book.

Below is my original sketch and how the final piece looked in the mag.