Hey everyone,
Thanks so much for all of the kind comments, as well as the words of encouragement about the raffle stuff.
I think in regards to the latter, I'll just have to re-evaluate where things are later on in the year or in early 2018. I do try my best to have these things and push the winner's painting closer to the front of the queue, but the older stuff can (and needs to) get in the way sometimes. This Bautista painting was definitely an example of that, and compounded with familial obligations, it just got finished later than I would have hoped it to.
However, I'm happy that Chris will be receiving his painting soon. I'm planning on bringing Jose in to be photographed tomorrow, so I imagine it'll be on its way next week.
Here's the finished, varnished piece:
And a couple of details:
The fun stuff happened with Bautista's helmet and hand. With that helmet, it was important for it to FEEL like plastic. So, light was going to shine on it differently than it would cloth. You'd have harsher highlights with fewer halftones in-between, as well as sharper edges where those highlights are. Also, since the lights in the stadium are traditionally cooler in temperature, the light on everything will appear a bit more blue than it might in sunlight. In some of those highlights, I played with some complimentary oranges on those edges to really make them pop more.
It was a similar kind of thinking for Jose's hand, but the edges were treated a bit differently, and since I wanted that feature to stick out a bit (since it's in front of his body as far as space is concerned). I was able to play with a few of the complimentary colors there as well.
The same kind of thinking went into the painting of the bat. Well, the same kind of thinking in regards to the highlights and how light falls on it. The tempered wood is a harder, slicker surface than cloth, so it's also going to have light fall on it a bit differently than other materials. I also pushed the texture and impasto on the bat, hoping to make it pop more.
The most important thing was pushing that crowd back, though. That's something that involved more edge manipulation than anything else, and maybe a bit of chromatic color control. By juxtaposing the sharp bat against the fuzzy shapes of that crowd, hopefully it creates the illusion of depth, as well as draws your eye to it before anything (or at least secondary to Jose).
The detail of the legs was to show all of the different kind of stuff that went into that lower part of the painting - all of the different textures that were a challenge to paint. The smooth cleats had to look different than the rough dirt of the batter's box, and so on.
Anywho, I'll post the professionally shot image once I receive it, and maybe some details from that as well.
If any of y'all have any questions or comments, feel free to chime in.
As always, thanks for reading.
Graig