From derby days to cup triumphs: Illustrator spends 750 hours drawing entire history of Everton Artist Alex Bennett, who has been drawing football ‘mishmashes’ for several years, has now sketched an epic history of all things Everton

Most of us have never spent 750 hours on a single task in our lives, let alone on illustrating the entire history of a football club. In an age when our attention spans have been zapped, fried and frazzled by lightspeed advances in technology, the idea of spending 750 hours on something is enough to melt the average human brain into a puddle of fluorescent green goo. The film ‘127 Hours’ has a run time of one hour and 55 minutes, meaning that you could watch ‘127 Hours’ just over 391 times in the same time it took Alex Bennett to illustrate the history of Everton. ‘127 Hours’ is literally a film about an incredible feat of human endurance, and you would have to watch it for 31 days on repeat to even come close to understanding how much work Bennett had to do.

While illustrating the history of football clubs may require serious stamina, for Bennett it is far from an ordeal. He first found fame for his football ‘mishmashes’ back in 2013, having drawn a brief history of football itself which featured over 2,000 individually sketched characters and took an incredible 1,800 hours to complete. Since then, he has assembled similar club-specific illustrations and seen his work appear in matchday programmes and even at stadiums. A Watford supporter himself, his Hornets-themed mishmash is now a sizeable mural in the Family Stand at Vicarage Road.

Having been commissioned by independent Everton fan site GrandOldTeam to draw them a mishmash of their own, Bennett opened up the floor to fans as to which incidents and iconic moments from their history should be included in the artwork. “It took a lot of research, but Twitter and Facebook have helped massively,” Bennett tells i. “I always ask for suggestions, things that stick in fans’ minds. There are obvious things like players lifting cups and stuff, but it’s the little details that if you weren’t an Everton fan you wouldn’t even know about it – it’s that stuff which really gets people going.”

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Derby days and FA Cup triumphs

So Bennett’s Everton mishmash features Gary Lineker and Trevor Steven lifting the 1985 FA Charity Shield, Dave Watson and Kevin Ratcliffe popping champagne alongside the First Division trophy and the FA Cup triumphs of the eighties and nineties, as well as an assortment of the most memorable Merseyside derby goals.

It also contains moments of surrealism, little known references and in-jokes, from a disembodied Howard Kendall offering up wisdom from the heavens, Muhammad Ali shadow boxing with Everton fans in Hyde Park and even the infamous Transfer Deadline Day dildo incident at Goodison…

Bennett draws each individual character separately by hand before scanning his illustrations and colouring them in Photoshop, hence the massive investment of time but also the incredible amount of detail in his mishmashes. With the illustration “99 per cent there” according to GrandOldTeam, the feedback from Everton fans has been glowing. “You do get a few negative comments,” Bennett says. “With this one, it’s mainly been Liverpool fans asking: ‘What’s the point?’”

The point, of course, is that fans are bound to love an illustration which shows such a close appreciation what their club is about. “After seeing Bennett’s previous work, we knew Everton fans would enjoy helping to build such an incredible piece of art,” one of the supporters behind GrandOldTeam tells i. “The interest in the piece has been unbelievable, over 30,000 Evertonians gave us their ideas.

“The response to the end result has been overwhelming… a fan on our Facebook page commented: ‘Sod the TV, this can be the focal point of the living room.’”

More mishmashes to come

Once the Everton mishmash is finally completed, it’ll be on to the next illustration. Bennett has already made a start on an Arsenal version, while he has at least six other illustrations on the go as things stand. While he has also drawn wrestling, rugby and American football mishmashes, football fans are consistently his most enthusiastic backers.

While it’s yet to be seen whether Bennett’s latest artwork ends up gracing a mural at Goodison, the initial response from Everton fans suggests it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. Having spent 750 hours charting the club’s history, the least they could do would be to give him some wall space.

Alex Bennett’s Everton mishmash is available to pre-order from GrandOldTeam