Sports Illustration | Illustrating the Sports World

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May 17

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Here are some highlights of my sports illustration collection. I’ve been asked to create graphic illustrations of sports figures many times, so this is a very small sampling of this work.

Baseball Sports Illustration

“Play Ball!” Yes, it’s Baseball Season once again, and I have a couple of classic poses for you:Here’s the Detroit Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera, taking a swing.Next up: Joey Votto, of the Cincinnati Reds, maintaining order on First Base:

ESPN Sports Illustration

These two Illustrations were done for ESPN.Leaning towards Europe, I produced a couple of full-page illustrations for EUROMAN magazine. These were a ton of fun to draw. I like to think I gave these a bit of extra ‘punch’ in interpreting the photo-reference I received. EUROMAN is published in Sweden, and here are two Swedes that are making waves across the world.Mikkel Hansen is making the play for the Borges Team, part of Football Club Barcelona, or FCB. Despite the league name, I believe he’s playing Handball here.Skating for the Vancouver Canucks, Janik Hansen is getting ready to score!WSJ Sports IllustrationLastly, here are two of my illustrations out of the pages of The Wall Street Journal, where I headed the illustration team of staff artists. Aside from the production of those distinctive WSJ hedcut portraits, we were also called on to produce more colorful images for publication.Here’s a dynamic shot of a volleyball player, I’m guessing a star of the U.S. Olympic Team. In this drawing, I took pains to emphasize the depth-of-field of the image, contrasting the sharp clarity of the figure against a blurred background. It was great that The Journal of those years allowed us the liberty and luxury to create beautiful artworks on a daily basis.Again, a richly-detailed illustration of a weight-lifter, which, I believe, I allowed myself a full workday to create.I hope you enjoyed this tour of sports illustration. Check back next week for something different, or Subscribe to this blog so you won’t miss a thing!