Major League Baseball World Series!

I was honored to do three paintings for the 2010 World Series Program, a full page illustration . . .




. . . and two smaller spot illustrations . . .






This was a fun job to do, but it had many challenges. While working on these three paintings, I also did my first painting for Rolling Stone, and on top of that I caught a nasty sinus infection. Good times, but the brush must move on!!! In the end, I only had 5 days to complete all three paintings. I decided to loosen up my style, I wanted them to be fun, and light-hearted. I decided to be more painterly as well, leaving brush strokes and some sketch lines. I wanted the paintings to feel more traditional than digital as I felt it would fit the article more.

I had a difficult time finding good references of Jeff Weaver of the Dodgers . . . I wanted a specific look which I could not find. The best reference I found was taken indoors with horrible lighting and just about everything else wrong with it. So I ended up re-building his face using several different reference shots including pictures I had taken of myself. Challenges are good fun, but can be stressful under such tight turnarounds.



Quick mock up sketch.



I wanted to show these close ups to share the loose and painterly look . . . less is more was the idea . . .



I love and hate painting hands!



I really enjoyed painting this camera. It's simple but I really had fun with the color and brush work.




The little details in this piece were fun as well.




This lady is so simple and took maybe a couple minutes at most, but she's my favorite part.



This painting was a lot of fun as well, but took almost as long to complete as the opener and this was only supposed to be a "spot illustration". Oh well, sometimes you gotta go with what you're feeling. Again, I really enjoyed creating the brushwork in this one. I wanted to capture the grimy lighting that you sometimes see in NY subways . . . and there's always someone sleeping somewhere with their mouth wide open, so I thought that would be a fun little bit to throw in there.




The sketch on the left was done very quickly and was the mock that I did for the art director. The version on the right side was how the block in looked before I decided to re-draw and paint the sleeping girl. I changed her because I felt in this version they looked like a couple instead of strangers and it's funnier if they don't know each other.



This was the last spot I did for the program . . . this one had to be done in one day. Again, less is more, I knew it would print rather small, so I kept it more brushy and loose.




This is a sketch I did for one of the spot's but then last minute I was asked to paint someone else instead.