Eli's Escape Thus Far

Now, that I'm pretty much at or past the halfway point on this thing and making progress, I thought it would be fun to re-post the pics documenting the entire process to this point. Especially since it seems like so long since I started the damn thing. I'm really hoping to have the thing done by the end of the week, but there's just so much going on it'll be tough. Enjoy what's been done so far, though:

Eli's Escape, pt. 6

Eli's Escape pt.5

Eli's Escape pt. 4

Finally making progress on this MF'er. I'm really looking forward to finishing this and moving on to something where I won't be spending hours with a tiny detailing brush on 5 different guys. It's gonna be such a relief just to be able to paint a guy's face again instead of a facemask. By the way, I already have a few people that have expressed interest in buying this, if you want to be added to that list, just e-mail me or leave a comment.

Eli's Escape pt. 3

After blocking the colors out for the figures, I went in today to block out most of the line work so that when I start going into the serious detail tonight and this weekend it'll all hang together. I want to make sure everything lines up where it's supposed to and that it all works together, so I don't get burned when I put in the fine detail work.

Eli's Escape pt. 2

I've been working on my website for the past two days (you can see most of it now), but I finally got a chance to get back to work on the Eli Manning painting. The background is finished, and I got the first layer of color down on the players. Now, comes the hard part: all the meticulous, goddamned details.

Eli's Escape Update

I was hoping to make a little more progress on this yesterday than I did, but I got caught up in cleaning and re-organizing the studio for most of the day. I'm just about done on the background, though.

For those of you that remember the Roethlisberger piece I did earlier this year, I'm going for that same muted tone, and rough look to the background in order to clash with the Hi-Def color and detail of the main figures. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish the right side of the background up when I get back from my nephew's little league game today. Then, I'm hoping to log some serious hours this week to finally finish the bastard. I'll post updates as I go.

Eli's Great Escape

This is the first step for one of two Eli Manning Super Bowl pieces I'll be working on in the next two weeks. It's the rough for a 36"x24" painting of Manning escaping all those Pats defenders before making the pass to Tyree, now known as "The Greatest Play In Super Bowl History". The other is going to be a colored pencil job of Eli pumping his fists and screaming in triumph, very similar to the Tyree piece that I did. It's a nice pose and a rare bit of heated emotion from Easy E.

I'll be posting updates as I go. Also stay tuned for some pics of a nice Irish mural I'll be doing this week as well.

Autographed Giants Super Bowl Art

I finally got those Tuck and Tyree pieces autographed this Sunday. They're currently up for sale at my Etsy.com shop. Throughout the next week or so, I'll be putting all kinds of artwork up for sale there. Some of them will be quick sketches that'll go for about $10, and on the other end of the spectrum you'll have some large paintings autographed by famous people that could go for as much as $1500. There'll also be plenty of stuff in between. If I think it's good enough to hang on someone's wall, and I don't mind parting with it, I'll put it out there. Beer ain't free, you know.

Please, head on over for a look-see. Even if you have no intention of buying anything you might see something a friend would like, and then you can do your old pal Craig a favor and e-mail that friend a link to the product. Your friend gets a nice piece of art to hang on his/her wall, you get praise for thinking of your friend, and I get money. It's win-win-win.

Below are pics of those two Giants pieces with details of the autographs and pics of them signing.

Down Goes Brady

Here's the "Justin Tuck sacking Tom Brady" piece I posted the rough of earlier this week. I finished it off in oil pastels. On Sunday I'll be heading up to Rahway to get this and a "Tyree's Catch" piece I'm currently working on autographed by both players. The two autographed pieces will then go on sale at my new Etsy.com shop.

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.

Big Ben III

Here's another update on that Roethlisberger painting. I'm hoping to have it done by late tonight or early tomorrow. I'll expound upon it a bit more then.

Big Ben pt. 2

Got back to work on the Ben Roethlisberger painting from a few posts ago. I've pretty much laid in the whole background. Normally I try to shy away from a background that's too busy or photorealistic and try to go with something a little more abstract or stylized, but I was commissioned to do a painting of a photo. So, the trick is to do the closest approximation of the photo possible while still putting my own spin on it.

My idea is to do a somewhat muted, impressionist background a bit darker from the one in the photo, then contrast that with a sharper, brighter, figure in the foreground. One of the things I wanted to do as well was stick to nothing but autumnal colors for the fans in the stands. Although, I noticed a few blues, greens, and other colors in that part of the background I stuck mainly to browns, reds, yellows, and oranges. I hope this will really make Ben pop out at you, especially with how stark the black and yellow is in his uniform.

Big Ben

Sorry that I haven't posted in about a week. I got caught up in family activities and Giants football this weekend. Plus, I was working on a few things which are meant to be surprises and can't be posted just yet.

Yesterday, though, I started a commissioned Ben Roethlisberger painting. You can see the reference photo below, followed by a light charcoal rendering of shapes and forms, then a more detailed line drawing, and finally the one I'll be painting on. The last one isn't any different than the line drawing except that I wanted to plan out my use of negative space, as well as strengthen the line of action. I'll post more later today and tomorrow as I add color.