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I can finally share the art that I did for GOLF Magazine! It's out on stands now, page 87. This was a fun piece to work on. Since the article I was illustrating for was mostly about the crazy golf course "Whisper Rock", I chose to make the background just as important a character as Phil Mickelson.
The fun that I have while creating these pieces is in creating something that didn't exist before. I used references of Phil Mickelson, but created the expression by shooting photo references of myself as well as spending a good amount of time making faces in a mirror. The background is fictional as well. For the background, I read up a bit on the course and found out what makes it unique and different from other courses. I then gathered up some visual references of the course and then created my own version . . . a "caricature" of the course.
*Fun Fact* The golfer in the very back is my little brother Jeremy.
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Detail of face.
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Detail of hands. I feel that hands are just as important as the face . . . if you screw up the hands, the whole piece suffers. I spent about a day working on these hands.
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I had so much fun working on the landscape of this piece. The A.D. said they wanted the green to be ridiculous and impossible for any golfer to play. So I thought it would be funny to make the green really small with difficult planes and on top of that, make it a cliff of sorts. It was also a lot of fun working on the rocks and plants. I spent a good day or so just painting the rocks and brush in the foreground. It was probably the most challenging part of the painting for me to work on.
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This is my color sketch or mock, and the first thing I sent to the A.D. This is the part where I twiddle my thumbs for a bit and wait for an email or for my phone to ring . . . will the A.D. OK this or have me start over? Thankfully there wasn't any big changes needed.
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This is a stage shortly after approval. You can see here that I did a lot of work on Phil's face.
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Here's how the art looks in the layout of the magazine.
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This was a thumbnail sketch that the A.D. sent to me before I started the job . . .
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