ART: Basketball Art - Kobe Bryant

To say that I love basketball is almost an understatement.  It IS my favorite sport.  To say that drawing is my passion is also a gross understatement.  It is what I consider my true talent.  And it's always a treat whenever I merge both basketball and drawing together.

Here's a little art project I did about 4 years ago and it shows the progression from rough sketch all the way to the final image. (This was not commissioned, I'm just a huge Lakers fan)

I start off with a rough pencil sketch (left) to see if the overall proportions are just right using a 2H pencil.  The 2H lead is a light shade which allows me to make adjustments and corrections to the drawing with ease.  Using a HB pencil, which is a darker shade, I start to add in the details. (middle)  I would usually have a pretty good idea how the picture will turn out at this point.  After a few tweaks here and there, I start inking the drawing which produces the image on the right.     

I usually stop at inking since I don't considered myself a good color artist but I figured why not challenge myself.  With the use of professional color markers courtesy of the lovely wife, I carefully lay down each layer of color to get the desired effect and the image above is the result of that painstaking ordeal. Phew!

Ah the wonders of technology!  Fast forward three years later,  I take my colored drawing as a guide and proceed to color the scanned ink drawing using none other than Photoshop.  But the colored image looked incomplete and I felt it needed a little more detail.  So I drew Kobe's number and the Lakers logo on a separate piece of paper, scanned it and laid it on the image. (He even has different shoes)  Above is the final result.  What do you think?  Till my next post.  Thanks, everyone!