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.