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 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.

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.