Feel the Love

I thought it might be fun to document the entire process of a page. Make no mistake, this is not a formula by any stretch. I rarely do things the same way twice. This is just how I went about things this time.

For my subject I picked Kevin Love, the soon-to-be-traded basketball star. I’m from Minnesota, and thus am a Timberwolves fan for my part, though they never make it easy. I was working from a photo, as I often do, because most of the spare time I get is in a windowless office cubicle. The picture above includes all the materials I used. That’s most of the contents of my usual kit these days.

I started with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. Roz Stendahl did a recent post on hers, and it inspired me to get it out. In all honesty, it’s been a really great pen for the two weeks I’ve had one. Very expressive and easy to use. And very permanent ink, which is always a plus. The scraggly beard in particular was fun.

Next up was the grisaille wash, which is a new step for me. I have a hard time with small gradations with such a dark ink. One drop diluted with water seems to work fine, but I imagine it’s going to take some more practice to get the hang of this step. Thinking in terms of grayscale is going to really pay some dividends; this has been a weakness of mine in the past.

Then I bring in the water soluble crayons and watercolors. I had planned on getting a bit looser with the color, but keeping it slightly more contained and accurate seemed to work fine. I threw in a bit of colored pencil at the very end to make it feel more sketchy, and there it is.

My scanner is still out of commission, so this is the best I could do. I’m pretty pleased that I seemed to capture that perpetual look of almost-terror on his face. He seems to be genuinely afraid of a basketball court sometimes. I have no doubt that he’ll win a championship in Cleveland. Not because he’s so great, but because winning championships with other teams is what Minnesota sports stars do. I’m just glad he didn’t go to Boston. But no hard feelings.