Georgia football mural captures history in insane detail: WATCH
Carleigh Hyser had to give Georgia football one last hurrah.
The recent UGA grad and Dawgs photographer / graphic designer spent part of her college career with a camera in hand, taking photos of the Georgia Bulldogs.
She spent other parts of it creating detailed graphics for Georgia football on social media.
Hyser had to answer a question for her capstone project at UGA’s Lamar Dodd School of Art:
‘How can one convey the raw emotion of sports through design?’
She had thousand of frames to choose from during her time with a camera, and obviously knew her way around Photoshop. Those skills collided with her original artistic passion in an amazing display of all things Dawg.
“I really wanted to drive this question home the only way I knew how, Hyser told me.
“Painting!”
Hyser’s love for Georgia football leapt off the screen, and onto her canvas
Hyser compiled the current photos of Georgia’s National Championship run, along with all of the Bulldogs’ historic moments before it. Then she went to work.
Hours and hours of work. The Georgia grad says it took her over 250 hours all told – between research, design, and painting, not to mention the time she invested in games taking photos – to bring this piece into the world.
From Larry Munson to Kirby Smart, Vince Dooley and Herschel Walker to Sony Michel – Hyser accounted for all the hits.
“I wanted to paint (the players’) bodies with less detail & looser brushstrokes to show movement. But I wanted their faces to be hyper realistic to show the emotion, struggle, and passion of the game,” Hyser said.
“Since I already know how to paint, I used a projector to help me lay out these loose brushstrokes in a process I call color mapping. Then I went back in and made the faces super realistic.”
What’s next for the art, and the artist?
Hyser covered some incredible Georgia football careers during her time in Athens. It’s difficult to imagine a more meaningful tribute as her own Dawgs career comes to a close.
Her mural was on display earlier in May, but now it’s no longer available to the public. So where will it pop up next?
“The primary purpose of this painting from the very start was to use it as a photo backdrop for recruiting photoshoots,” Hyser said.
“At recruiting photoshoots, we photograph recruits in Georgia gear at stations / backdrops we set up, this backdrop I created being one of them.”
So don’t be surprised if you see it show up other places on your timeline, like Hyser’s other handiwork certainly has. She says her best graphics are yet to come – you’ll have to wait until Georgia’s 2023 signing class to see those.
As for Hyser’s immediate plans, she’s headed west to continue her graphic illustration skills for Athletes First, a sports agency that primarily represents NFL players and coaches.
Hyser told me her favorite photos among the ones she took at Georgia were Brock Bowers‘s National Championship touchdown:
Stetson Bennett in the Natty confetti:
and Ladd McConkey‘s celebration:
She also took these haunting photos from an early Sanford Stadium workout in the weeks following the Dawgs’ title.
You don’t see Sanford Stadium like this very often, unless you’re running sprints before the sun comes up.
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