An artist has scored the dream job of painting portraits of some of the country's top footballers.

Darren Baker, of Saltaire, has been asked by the Professional Football Association (PFA) to portray the players' player of the year Teddy Sheringham of Manchester United and Liverpool's Steven Gerrard, the players' young player of the year.

The paintings will be handed over to the players at their respective home games at the start of the new season.

Darren, 25, who has also completed portraits of former featherweight champion Prince Naseem Hamed and top jockey Frankie Dettori, was signed up as the PFA's official artist in September last year.

"I'd done a painting of the PFA's chief executive Gordon Taylor and they were so impressed they asked me to be their official artist," he said. "I'm a keen football fan. I support Manchester United and Huddersfield Town, as Huddersfield is where I'm from, and for me this job is a dream job."

Darren, who studied portraiture at Bradford College and displays his work at Massarella art gallery in Victoria Road, Saltaire, said he does a lot of his work from photographs.

"When you're working with people like professional footballers it's difficult getting them to sit for you as they lead such busy lives so I have to rely a lot on good photos," he added.

He is now working on a painting of five times Olympic gold-winning rower Sir Steve Redgrave and said he would love to paint the Queen and the Pope.

"There is so much scope when you do portraits and I've built up quite a large client base over the last couple of years," said Darren.

Sue Walsh, media executive of the PFA, said it had signed Darren up after seeing examples of his paintings. She said: "He's a very talented young man and he catches the players so incredibly well. He did a portrait of Manchester United's Ryan Giggs and it was so good that it looked like a photograph.

"When we saw his work we knew we just had to snap him up."