This commission was painted in 2017 for a good friend and huge hawks fan. Being one myself, I was pretty excited to complete this piece. The first step was a VERY basic sketch, if I didn’t know what the end result was supposed to be I would have no idea what the sketch was supposed to be depicting.
The next step, which turns out I didn’t even really need to draw in the placement of the figures because it all got covered up, was to paint the background. I was pretty nervous and unsure how to make the masses of people in the crowd but I just kind of went for it with a large brush and a lot of different nuetral tones and it ended up looking pretty decent. I actually didn’t do much on the painting for a few weeks until I was given a hard deadline which kicked me into high gear. I figured since these figures were very detailed the best option would be to draw them individually. If you look at the far right, you can see that I attempted to freehand paint the players and realized it was going to make for a much bigger challenge then I was already facing. So I decided to draw them with pencil first.
The most tedious part began with filling in the figures, I start with just a basic block in of color, or hit the large shapes first; then get more detailed.
Drawing the figures in was probably the smartest move I could have made in this piece. It made the players way more precise then I could have made them if I were to freehand them and it sped up the process significantly. At this point they just need a few more details and heads.
Once the heads are put in and their names are put on their jerseys there’s not much more to do then hand it off to its new owner!