Giant and Yankee Art Sale

Now, that all the craziness of moving the studio and prepping for that Giants show is over, I'm finally getting down to the business of business. The new CM Studios Facebook page is up, I've got the Twitter feed rolling, and, soon, I'll even have the new website up and running as well. You'll also notice the look of this blog changing (if you haven't already). The groundwork is being laid for a long, successful run here @ CMS, but, this being the real world and all, I gots to pay me some bills to keep it rolling. So, the following is a quick inventory of all original artwork still in my possession and up for sale (and, whaddaya know, it's all Yankee and Giant stuff). If interested, e-mail cm@craigmahoney.com.

I'm also going through a lot of my "lesser" drawings, basically anything I did in the sketchbook that only took a few hours, and I'm going to choose the best pieces for a "Sketchbook Sale" at some point in the next month. So, keep coming back, kids.

"Eli's Escape" autographed by
Super Bowl 42 MVP Eli Manning
36"x24" acrylic on canvas

"Pinstriped Dreams"
17"x14" pencil on paper

"Simm-ply Great" autographed by
Super Bowl XXI MVP Phil Simms
14"x11" colored pencil on paper

"DJ's HR" autographed by
Derek Jeter
36"x24" acrylic on canvas

"Brandon the Battering Ram"
11"x14" colored pencil on paper

"A Bad Break"
11"x14" pencil on paper

Eli's Big Day and Yankee News

Holy ChristOnACracker! Three posts in one day?!?! What has come over me?

Anyway, here's a few pics on two works in progress, both of your reigning Super Bowl MVP: one Mr. Eli Manning. I'm working on a 36"x24" painting of Eli's Great Escape and an 11"x14" colored pencil drawing of a Eli letting out a celebratory shout during the game. Unfortunately, the pencils I use for my initial sketches are very light and are tough to photograph, but you folks are just so damned good to me I figured I needed to give you something.

So, here's a half done background and a very light sketch followed by some cool news, so keep reading.








Tomorrow I begin a little experiment which I hope will last well into October. The night of or morning after every Yankees game I will not only post my thoughts/analysis on each and every game, but I will also post a sketch relevant to every game. That means at least 162 new posts and sketches over the next few months. I figure it'll be a great way to keep me writing and drawing, and should bring some more eyeballs to the site. So, be sure to swing by here the day after every Yankees game. Let's see how this thing turns out.

Football, Baby! - Big Ben & SB 42 Giants Art

I finally finished that Roethlisberger piece I've been posting about for the last month, and, I must say, I'm more pleased with it than any other painting I've done. In most of my previous works, I concentrated solely on the subject; the main figure of interest. I generally blew it on the backgrounds. What I ended up with was a pile of canvases that showed I could render the human form well enough, but hadn't a clue as to how to compose a finished painting.

Which is why I'm so happy with this one. It's the first that fully occupies the canvas and doesn't seem half finished or not-thought-out.

One of the first things I thought about when applying the paint was how I would use color, and, very early on, I decided to use a very muted color scheme for the background, while going with a bright, slightly saturated look for the foreground. Essentially, my thought process was that the background was a painted landscape and the main figure was on HDTV. Also, as I moved further from the main subject I became less interested in accurately depicting details and took a more expressionist approach to the painting.

You'll notice the defenders arm rendered in complete detail because that is a part of the main center of action, but, the further the figure is away from the center of the action, the darker the color scheme gets and the looser the painting technique is.

Below, are a couple of diagrams to show my thinking about the composition. The two most important things to me when doing a piece, especially a sports one, are line of action and composition in the frame. Doing a scene with multiple figures I wanted to make sure that the composition of the piece was balanced, that the figures in the fore, middle, and background all complimented each other and helped to emphasize the main subject, and that the painting gave you a good sense of the action and kinetic movement going on.

The first pic shows the two competing lines of action and the second blocks out the composition to show you the balance amog the fore, middle, and background. I don't know if I've gone on too long. I just hope that some people might find it interesting getting a li'l behind-the-scenes on the thought process that goes into a piece like this, and maybe somebody starting in art might learn something.

I plan on writing up something on my feelings about the Giants perfect Super Bowl win, but, for right now, I just wanted to give a little sneak preview into what i'll be doing the next month and a half. The short version of the story is that I'll be doing a lot of Giants Super Bowl stuff, and I thought one way to make it interesting for myself, and to learn something, would be to do a few of them in some different mediums; including some I've never tried before. Below is a color test for an illustration I'll be doing in marker of Osi Yumeniora sacking Mr. Bundchen.