Louis Santos is a resident artist at Odin’s Eye Tattoo Collective on Bolton Street.
He was born in Olinda, Brazil and moved to Heywood when he was 17 years old.
The artist has created a bespoke oil painting of former football manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, on a Manchester United shirt backdrop, which was then signed by the footballing legend himself.
The framed artwork was auctioned off on January 17, raising £2,800 for charity Cancer Research UK.
Louis said: “I’ve been painting for about 20 years and I’m a big football fan. I am a City fan, but I just all love football and watching all matches and have watched United play.
“With this painting, I jumped in whenever I got spare time, but I think it took around six or seven hours to complete.
“I’ve done around 20 of these pieces now and am so grateful that this has helped to support a good cause.”
He added that his art is inspired by 80s cartoons, classic video games and heavy metal music, after he grew up watching He-Man and Thunder Cats, and playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Louis said: “I remember the first time I saw Conan the Barbarian. It was the first time I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger, riding a horse as Conan, and that’s where my passion for fantasy art began.
“My gramma used to take me to a bakery shop to buy bread in the morning, and the guy who owned the bakery used to draw Conan on the paper he used to wrap the bread with.
“I remember as a child, I couldn’t take my eyes off that drawing. I couldn’t believe how such a good image could be on a piece of paper.”