I spent a lot of hours on the net looking for the best Subbuteo creations, from stadiums to football goals, from customized footballs to painted teams.
As soon as I discovered Westwood Table Soccer I fell in love with his works, they are incredibly well made and I started fancying to have a personalized team.
The person behind the great works that you can find by clicking HERE is Calum Westwood: he loves Subbuteo since he was very young thanks to the passion transmitted by his dad Jim and flicking enabled him to be known also for his wonderful painted teams.
Here is the interview he left to MyFootbalLand where he speaks of all his career in painting figures, his idols, Subbuteopia and much more!!
Hi Calum, how and when did you start painting Subbuteo figures?
I started painting Subbuteo figures when I was little, about 7 or 8 maybe, I started with goalkeepers, their kits were always boring, and I was inspired by the Goalkeeper from the R720 England 2ND my dad had painted for me for a birthday or Christmas, gloss purple shirts with equally shiny and spectacular purple lightening bolts.
So one afternoon whilst my dad was out working on the farm, my brother and I got creative, plastering paint onto every goalkeeper we could find, orange kits, blue, red, yellow; every color under the sun, unfortunately I sold most of my lightweight teams about 5 years ago and these goalkeepers are long since gone, I do however have a few HW keepers I did at a similar time and still have and use today in my Subbuteo league and needless to say my dad wasn't pleased that we'd been at his paints, probably leaving lids off and not cleaning the brushes properly, the sort of thing that nowadays really bothers me!
Anyway back then I painted anything I could get my hands on. I used to have LW teams that I used in my league but quickly found these teams to be inferior in terms of their playing ability and I was better with HW players, so I used to sneak players from my dads spares box and use them in matches, usually in centre forward as they had a better shot! And it wasn't long before I started painting them too and eventually my dad resisted and painted an old R2 lightweight team into a Leicester City kit for me and added two Brazil HW players into the mix, I was Delighted! as I had the brand new Leicester Kit in Subbuteo, I never thought this was possible, and I guess I was inspired from there to continue to try and create teams for myself using anything I could get.
It was early 2000's when my Dad moved house and got a computer and discovered eBay and his Subbuteo buying went mad, he was picking up all sorts and back then it wasn't as expensive as it can be now, we also got involved in the Subbuteo club and there were regular swap meets around the country, this is where the bug really took over! It was around this time that I expanded my Subbuteo League from just 1 Division to 4, and I needed teams to fill it. So I started really attacking my Dad's spares, he had more now as he'd got quite a lot more stuff since buying on the internet, I'd prize players from bases, swap combinations and even flip discs upside down because the was paint on the other side. I did not even bother to strip them down, just layer the paint over the top until you can't see what's underneath any more, my earliest works are Burnley and the Scunthorpe United, two sides which have been ever present in my Subbuteo league. The Burnley was intended to be an Aston Villa but so bad was my painting it became a Burnley (Notice that different shades of blue on the players collars)
and the Scunthorpe United which has actually been painted twice, originally it was claret and sky stripes but when they changed their kit, I changed with it, and painted this newer version.
As I grew older I realised that painting over old colors was not a good option, the players looked messy and overweight and some of the colour was changed due to the color coming through underneath, it was then that I discovered R21 Leeds United, a blank canvas, and relatively cheap so without further a do I got hold of two R21's and thought about what kits I could do, I decided that I needed a Northampton Town as I was born there and the other choice was Darlington, for no other reason that my Dad had an old football card of a player wearing the home shirt with red shorts and I thought it looked good!
And you'll notice that the Northampton has also been rebased and embarrassingly enough the kit is actually painted wrong, the hoops shouldn't be on the sleeves but I didn't use reference material much back then, one look and I was away with the brushes.
Later that year whilst travelling the country with my Dad: Wakefield, Welwyn Garden City, Leicester and Manchester as well as picking the odd bits up from free ads and an old antique shop in Sherbourne (the scene of perhaps the greatest Subbuteo HW haul in Westwood history) Anyway, I think it was the first meet we'd been too, we arrived 2 hours early at the venue, having left early as we had no idea where we were going and these were the days before SatNav. I discovered that you could buy blank teams, with bases in all different colors and you could do virtually anything with them, I was like a kid in a sweet shop - except I didn't have a lot of money back then, but I was able to use that to my advantage picking up teams on the cheap because I 'was only a lad' (at a Knutsford swap meet I was handed a team for free in the car park before we'd even gone in with the words 'you can have that now don't pester me all day' it was a R27 Hearts that someone had painted sky collars on but I've since painted over those and it's a very nice looking side now) The parts were made by Zeugo and they also had already painted kits, they were beautiful, I'd never seen anything like it, I came home with an AC Milan Away, Aston Villa Away, Manchester United Home and a Napoli that I used as Leicester in my league because it was a little bit like R192. I also picked up some blanks that would really start the Westwood Painting revolution.
That team was Real Betis: Betis had always been my favorite Spanish team, I think because they wore Green and White stripes and I liked the way it looked, they didn't have any white bases so I ended up buying black as I didn't want to wait to do it, I was so into it at this point that I did different Skin tones for the team, even looking up what they looked like, different boots and hair colours, I was in heaven, I now had the freedom to create without ruining teams or having to find enough of the same colour parts to make the teams. The Painting was my oyster I could do what I wanted, that doesn't mean that I didn't still take old teams and paint them, however we'd discovered Mr Muscle oven cleaner and it's paint stripping abilities by then!
In terms of Subbuteo, things dried up from here, I was at college and had less time on my hands, and my league stopped, all around the same time that I met my now wife and my Mum and Dad got back together and he moved back in at home, the trouble was where he was before there was a dedicated room for Subbuteo so you could play whenever you wished, now there was just the garage and it was freezing, a few games got played that year but the league was put on the longest winter break in history.It wasn't until the last few months of University that I thought about Subbuteo again, the painting to sell fad had just kicked in an people were making lots of money from it, and knowing that I'd be leaving Uni with masses of debt it was something that me and my dad spoke about. My mum had already been painting kits for my dad, now that Santiago players were easily available and were a great resemblance to the HW style player my dad and I love. My Dad had also got into Dutch football from the 70's and decided that he needed a collection so I had much to do when I returned, I wasn't the only person to paint teams for him, a think the dutch team collection contains work from around 5-6 different people.
I did this for a while and eventually people started asking for individual teams as one offs etc, so I now had some demand for my supply, I didn't get many orders so I had to continue painting, the trouble was I also had to work a normal job and it made my life fairly boring and monotonous, I feel out of love from time to time and sometimes didn't paint for weeks, I just didn't want to, I felt like I was doing it because I had too and not because I loved it any more, as time has gone by and my life and changed I still find myself going through these periods where I hate painting, where I just don't want to do it, but after a few weeks I'll be ok again. As I've got older and started working as a football coach I've had more time to paint and have really worked on improving my work, I thought to myself, I can't compete with the volume that my rivals are producing but I can make sure that my work is the best it can be, and I strive with every team to make it better than the last, added badges and pinstripes around broad stripes like this Gremio, Real Betis Away and AS Roma Home kit that is painted on 2K4 figures.
Since the start of Westwood Table Soccer I have produced hundreds of teams for sale, my own collection, my dads collections, presents, former footballers, professional football teams and even as a decoration for a wedding. I've loved every team I've produced and continue to enjoy it today and still look for the right opportunity to turn my art into something real and into something that can earn me the money that I planned when I was at university.
What do you think is the best work you have ever done?
My favorite piece, I don't really have one, I have a massive love for the things I did when I was younger, when it was just for me, just so I could play with it, but then I am so proud of some of the other things I have done, Like the Leicester City team that I presented to the Football Club on my birthday in 2013 and was able to take the team onto the pitch and was featured in the program with an interview.
Then there is the Leicester City Coca Cola Cup final kit that I produced for my Footballing hero Steve Walsh last year.
In teams of complexity and the one that most people have said 'wow that's amazing. to would be the Team GB kits, the two shades of blue are custom mixes so you have to get that colour onto every single player before it dries out else you end up with different colours.
Which is the kit you like most and the most difficult kit you have ever painted?
The Kit I like the most is usually the last one I finish, I fall in love with kits that I paint and sometimes don't want to give them away to people, even though it was their money that paid for it! I guess my favorite team that I've done would be one of my Leicester City kits, there mean lots to me and the newest one I've done has connected me with a football hero and and a potential new business idea.
The hardest piece to paint, that varies to be honest, I'm not a big fan of painting hoops, or anything that requires custom colours as you know that you only get one shot to get it spot on else your starting all over again, so with that I guess it would be the Sporting Lisbon I mentioned earlier and the Team GB Kits, including the Away kit as the shades of grey are all different.
You had to paint a lot of figures for the film "Subbuteopia". How was this work?
Subbuteopia, I'll start by saying that I only had to paint the logo on the shirt for these, the skin, hair and boots were all done by Mark and Mary Parker and they deserve a lot of credit for that. It all came about becuase of my Mum's knitting of Subbuteo Players, and Subbuteopia got wind of it and came round to interview her as well as my dad who has been Subbuteo mad since he was a child. I wanted in as a painter but they had already interviewed and used Mark and Mary but whilst they were round I said I could paint the badge from the Subbuteopia kit, and they asked me to show them, They said that my work was excellent but I'd painted the badge too well and too small and they wanted it bigger so that's how that came about, it wasn't until all the players arrived that I realised what I'd said yes too, there were hundreds. I broke them down and set daily targets and just pushed through to finish them, I was relieved at the end but also proud that I'd had something to do with the amazing project that the documentary was.
Is there a football player you'd like to dedicate a spare?
If I could dedicate a spare to anyone, well I kind of already have with Steve Walsh, infact he had a whole team, so I would say him for sure, but if you wanted me to produce a player for someone who I have never met or spoken too it would be Gabriel 'Batigol' Batistuta or David Beckham, two world class players who I'd love to make player for.
Anyway back then I painted anything I could get my hands on. I used to have LW teams that I used in my league but quickly found these teams to be inferior in terms of their playing ability and I was better with HW players, so I used to sneak players from my dads spares box and use them in matches, usually in centre forward as they had a better shot! And it wasn't long before I started painting them too and eventually my dad resisted and painted an old R2 lightweight team into a Leicester City kit for me and added two Brazil HW players into the mix, I was Delighted! as I had the brand new Leicester Kit in Subbuteo, I never thought this was possible, and I guess I was inspired from there to continue to try and create teams for myself using anything I could get.
It was early 2000's when my Dad moved house and got a computer and discovered eBay and his Subbuteo buying went mad, he was picking up all sorts and back then it wasn't as expensive as it can be now, we also got involved in the Subbuteo club and there were regular swap meets around the country, this is where the bug really took over! It was around this time that I expanded my Subbuteo League from just 1 Division to 4, and I needed teams to fill it. So I started really attacking my Dad's spares, he had more now as he'd got quite a lot more stuff since buying on the internet, I'd prize players from bases, swap combinations and even flip discs upside down because the was paint on the other side. I did not even bother to strip them down, just layer the paint over the top until you can't see what's underneath any more, my earliest works are Burnley and the Scunthorpe United, two sides which have been ever present in my Subbuteo league. The Burnley was intended to be an Aston Villa but so bad was my painting it became a Burnley (Notice that different shades of blue on the players collars)
and the Scunthorpe United which has actually been painted twice, originally it was claret and sky stripes but when they changed their kit, I changed with it, and painted this newer version.
As I grew older I realised that painting over old colors was not a good option, the players looked messy and overweight and some of the colour was changed due to the color coming through underneath, it was then that I discovered R21 Leeds United, a blank canvas, and relatively cheap so without further a do I got hold of two R21's and thought about what kits I could do, I decided that I needed a Northampton Town as I was born there and the other choice was Darlington, for no other reason that my Dad had an old football card of a player wearing the home shirt with red shorts and I thought it looked good!
And you'll notice that the Northampton has also been rebased and embarrassingly enough the kit is actually painted wrong, the hoops shouldn't be on the sleeves but I didn't use reference material much back then, one look and I was away with the brushes.
Later that year whilst travelling the country with my Dad: Wakefield, Welwyn Garden City, Leicester and Manchester as well as picking the odd bits up from free ads and an old antique shop in Sherbourne (the scene of perhaps the greatest Subbuteo HW haul in Westwood history) Anyway, I think it was the first meet we'd been too, we arrived 2 hours early at the venue, having left early as we had no idea where we were going and these were the days before SatNav. I discovered that you could buy blank teams, with bases in all different colors and you could do virtually anything with them, I was like a kid in a sweet shop - except I didn't have a lot of money back then, but I was able to use that to my advantage picking up teams on the cheap because I 'was only a lad' (at a Knutsford swap meet I was handed a team for free in the car park before we'd even gone in with the words 'you can have that now don't pester me all day' it was a R27 Hearts that someone had painted sky collars on but I've since painted over those and it's a very nice looking side now) The parts were made by Zeugo and they also had already painted kits, they were beautiful, I'd never seen anything like it, I came home with an AC Milan Away, Aston Villa Away, Manchester United Home and a Napoli that I used as Leicester in my league because it was a little bit like R192. I also picked up some blanks that would really start the Westwood Painting revolution.
That team was Real Betis: Betis had always been my favorite Spanish team, I think because they wore Green and White stripes and I liked the way it looked, they didn't have any white bases so I ended up buying black as I didn't want to wait to do it, I was so into it at this point that I did different Skin tones for the team, even looking up what they looked like, different boots and hair colours, I was in heaven, I now had the freedom to create without ruining teams or having to find enough of the same colour parts to make the teams. The Painting was my oyster I could do what I wanted, that doesn't mean that I didn't still take old teams and paint them, however we'd discovered Mr Muscle oven cleaner and it's paint stripping abilities by then!
I don't remember when it was but a 'Green Plymouth' Sold on eBay for over £300 and I was amazed, one because of how much money it went for and two because I thought the green one looked way better than the white version! Inspired, I had to have one (image attached), again raiding old players, even bases from old referee figures bit the dust this team as I needed 10 all green bases to create my own £300 masterpiece.
I guess this was when my painting ability took an upturn, that team was incredible for me and at about 12-13 years old I thought I was amazing, looking back at it now, it's good but not amazing, but for me it doesn't matter, it didn't matter, I wasn't painting these teams with anyone else in mind, I wanted them to play with and that's exactly what I did. (Although it turns out that the Green Plymouth didn't play that well and lost every game they played, probably down to the fact that they were all mismatched bases and again I'd painted the kit wrong, the band should have gone all the way around, I've since changed back to my original white one who are much better.)
Over the course of that first year or two in the Subbuteo club I picked up all sorts of bits and pieces, teams to paint, teams just for my collection, it was a real golden age, but even though I was getting teams I'd never thought I'd own like an original R36 and a proper R192 on Navy Bases I still wanted to paint kits, mostly Leicester City Kits, and I knocked up numerous away kits, The first on a Zeugo paint-your-own option, the classic Black with Sky Sash that the club wore on the 120 year anniversary of its formation, and the second the White with Sky and Black Sash that we wore in around 2006-07, I bought an old R5 Man City and striped it to paint this Leicester Kit, as I'd become frustrated the the Zeugo 'Flesh' plastic looked more like a ghost.I guess this was when my painting ability took an upturn, that team was incredible for me and at about 12-13 years old I thought I was amazing, looking back at it now, it's good but not amazing, but for me it doesn't matter, it didn't matter, I wasn't painting these teams with anyone else in mind, I wanted them to play with and that's exactly what I did. (Although it turns out that the Green Plymouth didn't play that well and lost every game they played, probably down to the fact that they were all mismatched bases and again I'd painted the kit wrong, the band should have gone all the way around, I've since changed back to my original white one who are much better.)
In terms of Subbuteo, things dried up from here, I was at college and had less time on my hands, and my league stopped, all around the same time that I met my now wife and my Mum and Dad got back together and he moved back in at home, the trouble was where he was before there was a dedicated room for Subbuteo so you could play whenever you wished, now there was just the garage and it was freezing, a few games got played that year but the league was put on the longest winter break in history.It wasn't until the last few months of University that I thought about Subbuteo again, the painting to sell fad had just kicked in an people were making lots of money from it, and knowing that I'd be leaving Uni with masses of debt it was something that me and my dad spoke about. My mum had already been painting kits for my dad, now that Santiago players were easily available and were a great resemblance to the HW style player my dad and I love. My Dad had also got into Dutch football from the 70's and decided that he needed a collection so I had much to do when I returned, I wasn't the only person to paint teams for him, a think the dutch team collection contains work from around 5-6 different people.
So I got back from University and started painting again, looking up kits and researching, and just throwing them through eBay to see how they did,
I made some good money but nothing major, but I wasn't detered I loved creating teams and enjoyed the challenge and perhaps my biggest success was Sporting Lisbon that I think sold for £30 on eBay, each shirt alone took more 20 Minutes to finish so in all the team took me well over 6 hours to complete.
Since the start of Westwood Table Soccer I have produced hundreds of teams for sale, my own collection, my dads collections, presents, former footballers, professional football teams and even as a decoration for a wedding. I've loved every team I've produced and continue to enjoy it today and still look for the right opportunity to turn my art into something real and into something that can earn me the money that I planned when I was at university.
What do you think is the best work you have ever done?
My favorite piece, I don't really have one, I have a massive love for the things I did when I was younger, when it was just for me, just so I could play with it, but then I am so proud of some of the other things I have done, Like the Leicester City team that I presented to the Football Club on my birthday in 2013 and was able to take the team onto the pitch and was featured in the program with an interview.
Then there is the Leicester City Coca Cola Cup final kit that I produced for my Footballing hero Steve Walsh last year.
In teams of complexity and the one that most people have said 'wow that's amazing. to would be the Team GB kits, the two shades of blue are custom mixes so you have to get that colour onto every single player before it dries out else you end up with different colours.
Which is the kit you like most and the most difficult kit you have ever painted?
The Kit I like the most is usually the last one I finish, I fall in love with kits that I paint and sometimes don't want to give them away to people, even though it was their money that paid for it! I guess my favorite team that I've done would be one of my Leicester City kits, there mean lots to me and the newest one I've done has connected me with a football hero and and a potential new business idea.
The hardest piece to paint, that varies to be honest, I'm not a big fan of painting hoops, or anything that requires custom colours as you know that you only get one shot to get it spot on else your starting all over again, so with that I guess it would be the Sporting Lisbon I mentioned earlier and the Team GB Kits, including the Away kit as the shades of grey are all different.
You had to paint a lot of figures for the film "Subbuteopia". How was this work?
Subbuteopia, I'll start by saying that I only had to paint the logo on the shirt for these, the skin, hair and boots were all done by Mark and Mary Parker and they deserve a lot of credit for that. It all came about becuase of my Mum's knitting of Subbuteo Players, and Subbuteopia got wind of it and came round to interview her as well as my dad who has been Subbuteo mad since he was a child. I wanted in as a painter but they had already interviewed and used Mark and Mary but whilst they were round I said I could paint the badge from the Subbuteopia kit, and they asked me to show them, They said that my work was excellent but I'd painted the badge too well and too small and they wanted it bigger so that's how that came about, it wasn't until all the players arrived that I realised what I'd said yes too, there were hundreds. I broke them down and set daily targets and just pushed through to finish them, I was relieved at the end but also proud that I'd had something to do with the amazing project that the documentary was.
Is there a football player you'd like to dedicate a spare?
If I could dedicate a spare to anyone, well I kind of already have with Steve Walsh, infact he had a whole team, so I would say him for sure, but if you wanted me to produce a player for someone who I have never met or spoken too it would be Gabriel 'Batigol' Batistuta or David Beckham, two world class players who I'd love to make player for.
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