"The Art of Baseball" -- In Honor of MLB Opening Day

Class of 2019, Justyn Farano

MLB Opening Day is April 1st

One of the highlights of my trip to Cooperstown in July of 2019 was the art gallery, The Art of Baseball, at the Baseball Hall of Fame. My two brothers and I went to see some of our favorite players be inducted into the HOF, including of course ex-Mariner Edgar Martinez.

I purchased art prints of Ken Griffey Jr. and the Class of 2019, by the artist Justyn Farano, to hang in my office. Farano is deservedly the official artist of the Baseball HOF and also paints athletes from many sports.

You may want to revisit my post entitled, Baseball HOF 2019 Induction Trip, to get a flavor of the art we saw during our visit, including our road trip.

My HOF Collection

For this post, I am including my own Seattle Mariners HOF bobblehead collection. I'll also include baseball artwork that my brother and I have done recently.

Hawk (June 2020), Jon Patterson

My older brother does his art using Paint 3D and commemorates his favorite baseball players, placing images on t-shirts and mugs, and often frames them to hang in his own baseball shrine. Here, he got inspired to create a drawing of HOFer Andre Dawson because good figurines of this player are unavailable.

He drew the geometric background first using MS-PowerPoint to make semi-transparent triangle shapes in the Expos' colors, then converted the PPT slide to a JPG and imported it into Paint.

Here's his homage to HOFer Ken Griffey Jr. complete with the slugger's figurine displayed in front of the Wheaties cereal box. It reminds me of a futuristic painting by Marcel Duchamp or a Leroy Neiman painting the way the image on the cereal box swings through to the final pose of the figurine.

Jarred Kelenic (2021), Ken Patterson

In my Palm Springs post, I included my watercolor painting of Mariners outfielder Jarred Kelenic, 21, working out at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma last summer. I saved the photo from the Seattle Times with the intention of painting it while vacationing in California. Little did I know that Kelenic has been playing in the Bigs with the M's during Spring training in Peoria, AZ. Alas, he has currently been reassigned to the Minors. Maybe someday I'll frame it and get it signed by #10 when he gets called back up.

Thankfully, the bats cover up what would have been the star logo and the Nike swoosh. I also did not outline the letters in white on the jersey. I am happy with the way the color and the shading came out on the new Mariners jersey. It really looks like that on TV.

Kosco as an NYY
(on 8"X8" foam-backed tile),
Jon Patteson

My brother's all-time favorite baseball player is Andy Kosco, who played for several MLB teams throughout his career, including the NY Yankees. He established a friendship with Andy over the years and visits him periodically. Both my brothers follow sports, while I am mainly enthusiastic about baseball. As teenagers, we used to draw portraits of Yankee players and have them signed when they'd make appearances at local car dealerships. I particularly remember the drawing my brother made of Whitey Ford, the HOF pitcher who died in October of last year.

Lugnuts to Blue Jays, Jon Patterson

As you may have guessed, my brother has been an avid baseball fan since he could throw a baseball. As an adult, he was an announcer for 5 years on the local Lansing Community College radio station, WLNZ, when they covered 'city league baseball'. My younger brother liked to do interviews with his cassette recorder and used to imitate the NY MLB announcers like Joe Garagiola (2014 National Sportscasters and Sportswriters HOF) and Phil "The Scotter" Rizzuto (1994 Baseball HOF inductee). We had a good laugh when we saw the bovine statue at the HOF bringing to life his trademark expression, "Holy Cow!".

The Ferocity and Violent Delivery of Sandy Koufax

Another drawing from October of last year commemorates the career of Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers left-handed pitcher, Sandy Koufax. Koufax is the youngest MLB player ever elected to the Baseball HOF. I am in awe of my brother's ambition and tenacity to draw five different poses of Mr. Koufax from windup to release. Way to go, Bro!

The Hall of Famer (1996)
Leroy Neiman

Leroy Neiman's The Hall of Famer is an idealized baseball player that will remain nameless. I love it when artists use abstracted color schemes in their paintings, making them exciting and almost surreal. Here's a link to his portrait of Yankees' Reggie Jackson, Hall of Fame Day.

Smokey Joe Williams (1985),
Deryl Daniel Mackie

My favorite portrait from The Art of Baseball gallery has to be the one of Smokey Joe Williams by Deryl Daniel Mackie. I also found a wonderful website called ArtsLonga Art Cards displaying some old-fashioned baseball cards, including Joe Williams and many others. Very cool!

Kadir Nelson, author of We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, also paints portraits of Negro League greats, including Williams, Norman "Turkey" Stearns, and others.

I am also enamored by the artist Kehinde Wiley who paints large portraits with interesting patterned backgrounds. Check it out! I was privileged to see his A NEW REPUBLIC exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum in the Spring of 2016.

My brother is a member of the National Baseball HOF and often shares articles from publications he receives from the Hall. Here are two articles relating to Baseball Cartoons: Cartoon Artwork From TOPPS Cards Part of History and #SHORTSTOPS: Baseball Cartoons Tell Story of the Game's Popularity. The first article highlights the cartoons drawn on the reverse side of TOPPS baseball cards. The second relates how Looney Tunes, Charlie Brown (Peanuts), and more recently the Simpsons helped popularize our national pastime.

I dedicate this post to the Baseball HOFers who have recently passed, starting with late great slugger Hank Aaron who died January 22nd. In 2020 we lost New York Mets pitcher Tom Seaver, St. Louis Cardinals ace Bob Gibson, New York Yankees left-hander Whitey Ford, outfielder Lou Brock, and Cincinnati Reds second baseman Joe Morgan.

Irish Artists in Honor of St. Patrick's Day

It's been nearly four years since we visited Dublin, Ireland on our trip to the UK in June of 2017.  While we did visit the Irish National Gallery, many of the floors were closed off to the public, possibly for renovation. However, we did get to see works by Picasso, Signac, Monet, Sisley, and John Singer Sargent. See my June 2019 post entitled, UK Art and Museums.

Molly Malone (installed in 1988)

Apparently, there are lots of statues of Dublin's famous characters although the only one I remember seeing was of Molly Malone, the heroine immortalized in Dublin's unofficial anthem. Visitors seem to be enamored with her breasts as is evidenced by the shiniest area of the bronze sculpture.

Guinness Turtle
by John Gilroy

Our favorite attractions were the Guinness Brewery and the Jameson Distillery. Surprisingly, both showcased artwork used in advertising along with other historical artifacts. My daughter and I also found a picture of David Bowie (who died in January 2016) displayed in a shop window. In January 2021, I included him in my post about Famous Capricorns Throughout History.

In my March 2020 post, Shamrocks, Bowler Hats, and Irish Artists I highlighted Irish artists -- Francis Bacon, Dorothy Cross, Conor Harrington, and Sean Scully -- and now I realize that I missed six more famous artists from the Emerald Isle. See The Best and Most Famous Irish Artists.

Let's go in chronological order:

1. Charles Jervas (1675-1739) was famous for his portraiture.

Deer, Dog, and Cat (the 1730s),
Charles Jervas

His figures of royalty are stylized with elongated bodies and often disproportionately small heads. His paintings that include children show much smaller almost dwarfed figures clad just as opulently as the adults. I found this rather gruesome portrait of a dog and cat with the spoils of a hunt, including a deer and a bird (excluded from the title).

2. Sir John Lavery (1856-1941) also painted portraits and is particularly known for depicting wartime (WWI) scenes.

The Chess Players (1929), Sir John Lavery

This painting is a portrait of two redheaded girls playing chess. It reminds me of the Netflix miniseries, which we watched while visiting Palm Springs, CA -- The Queen's Gambit -- about a young female orphan who with the help of a janitor and her adoptive mother becomes a famous chess player.

3. Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) was an Irish Expressionist artist and brother of Irish Poet, William Butler Yeats.

Kerry Fisherman (1927), Jack B. Yeats

His work will be featured at the Irish National Gallery this September in an exhibition entitled, Jack B. Gates: Painting & Memory. 

4. Paul Henry (1877-1958) was primarily famous for his landscape paintings.

The Potato Diggers (1910-11), Paul Henry

You can clearly see how Henry was influenced by French artist, Jean François Millet (one of my favorites), whose work was often copied by Vincent Van Gogh. He was also influenced by Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin.

5. Norah McGuinness (1901-1988) is known for her illustrations.

McGuinness was a painter and illustrator who was influenced by modern Cubists. She designed sets for the Abbey and Peacock theatres and illustrated William B. Yeats’ Stories of Red Hanrahan and the Secret Rose (1927).

6. Louis le Brocquy (1916-2012) was an artist who dabbled in Cubism.

Travelling Woman with Newspaper (1947-48)
Louis le Brocquy

Remarkably, 12 years before his death, his Cubist painting, Travelling Woman with Newspaper fetched a whopping £1.2 million. The colorful divisions in the background remind me of Surrealist Marc Chagall's I and the Village, although I'd need to study this one a bit more to better understand what I am seeing. Apparently, the woman represents the artist's study of the traveling clans (~gypsies) who lived outside of conventional rules-based societies, hence the crumpling of the newspaper (I guess). The green kerchief is wrapped around her red hair almost becoming one with the green hills.

More Palm Springs Artwork

Burning Man Airplane,
Bombay Beach, CA

While in Palm Springs, we drove an hour away to Bombay Beach, located on one end of the polluted Salton Sea. It's a shame that the largest body of water in California is full of poisonous algae. People live there now to be off the grid. The ghost town contains broken down trailers and homes where you can find artwork such as this sculpture making use of a recycled airplane fuselage.

Television Art Display, Bombay Beach, CA

One abandoned building was converted into an art gallery of sorts. Recycled TVs were individually painted or stacked and painted to create new objets d'art.

Salvation Mountain

We had to visit Salvation Mountain to witness first-hand this large painted mound. We couldn't decide if it was a religious mecca or just another hangout for people who wanted to camp in the barren wasteland surrounding the 'typhoid' (Salton) sea.

Indian Totem Pole,
Victoria Park, by Henry Hunt

Horse Sculpture (Unknown)

In the neighborhood where we're staying, we took the dogs for a 4-mile walk and spotted some more local art. Unfortunately, the Palm Springs Art Museum remained closed during our trip.

Photo of Bryce & Jeju

Watercolor Version of Bryce & Jeju

My next watercolor is of our two dogs looking out the window at me from a bedroom window. The dogs are both in shadow with halos surrounding their bodies as they peer out between our house and the wall overlooking the Palm Springs neighborhood.

Here are two more watercolor paintings -- one of the floral arrangement of lilies, orchids, and hydrangeas that my daughter received for her birthday and the other of bougainvillea vines outside a bedroom window.

Wanted to paint one more floral painting, so I tried the yellow bush outside our garage where we're staying. I took pictures separately of the two lanterns and incorporated larger versions for the composition. My daughter suggested sponging on some texture for the mostly unpainted white areas. For the yellow flowers, I tapped my loaded brush then added extra brushstrokes for the flower clusters. I may decide to go back over the lines on the lanterns and the cinderblock walls with ink pens.

I have to update this post to include my final artwork from my month away from home. I wanted to finish with pastels, having experimented with colored pencil drawing, then spending the rest of my time doing watercolors. I brought with me another photo from last year's trip to a dog park in Redding, CA. The challenge was the gravel surface where the three dogs were wrestling. A second challenge was painting a white dog (Bryce) and the black face of a pug dog. The addition of cyan accomplished both the shadows on the white fur and the highlights of the surrounding rocks. After I apply the fixative spray, I will attempt adding some warm golden highlights to the pug's muzzle.

I love how the rocks in the foreground turned out. For the ones in the background I used a lighter gray and more blending. I like to use a variety of strokes and textures when I paint with pastels. I hope it is reminiscent of the Impressionist or Post-Impressionist works from the time of Pissarro, Seurat, and Van Gogh.

All of the works I've endeavored during this quarantined vacation, including my show-and-tell Zoom meeting with fellow artists, has taught me valuable lessons that I hope to share with my students once my volunteering resumes. Stay tuned for more painting as I work to complete my mountain landscape in oils when I return home. 

Palm Springs Artwork - Daily Art in Various Media

Portrait of Jeju (20-Feb)

I brought my art supplies with me on vacation with plans to commit to creating one artwork per day. To start, I drew a colored pencil portrait of my daughter's dog, Jeju, a Shikoku that is slightly larger than an Shiba-Inu. The challenge for me was finding the right tone of gold or caramel to use for his coat. Turns out that a combination of light brown, orange, yellow, and white worked. This portrait was more about refamiliarizing myself with the medium rather than perfecting the proportions. Jeju can curl up into a pretty tight ball, though I may have shortened his body somewhat.

Jarred Kelenic (21-Feb)

Sunset in BD (21-Feb)

For my next two paintings, I decided to switch to watercolors. As a warmup, I painted a small sunset from a photo I took off our deck. Then I got serious and painted a baseball player from a newspaper photo I grabbed from the Seattle Times last Summer. Both end up as mixed media paintings once I embellish them with ink pens.

Jarred Kelenic, Final (22-Feb)

I completed my painting of Outfielder Jarred Kelenic from the photo of him working out at Tacoma's Cheney Stadium last Summer. I wanted to fix the length of the bats and add letters to the uniform, I used the ink pens that my Arizona friends gifted me for my birthday. Also finally used the brush-tip watercolor ink pens I got for Christmas in the past two years. Often when working from a photo certain items like facial features or other details are less distinct. This is where The jersey looked more realistic in the previous watercolor without the darkened details inked in. This is where you as the artist get to be creative. For me, it was about trying out the ink pens not about making the jersey wrinkles look realistic. I do like the effect of the brush-tip pens.

BTW, Kelenic scored the Mariners' winning run against the Padres in the Cactus League opener in Peoria, AZ on the 28th.

Sunset in BD (22-Feb)

Using my Tebik 15 Pack of Calligraphy Hand Lettering Pens (thanks, Donna and Woody), I've embellished my sunset to include the wintery trees (sans leaves) that we can see from our deck. If this were to be framed, I might edit out the ivy-covered trees on the right. Only the artist should be allowed to do such editing. I would never trim any of my students' artwork or anyone else's work for any reason.

Dog Park (Phase 1)

On the 23rd, I began a drawing of three dogs I met last year at the Palm Springs City Dog Park. It begins with a light sketch using a light brown erasable colored pencil, followed by washes of watercolor for the background. Curiously, the waxiness of the pencil acts as a resist that creates a boundary between colors. This was a lot more helpful to me than using a graphite pencil.

I found it too hot to paint that day. Sometimes you need to stop and take a break, then revisit it later.

Dog Park (Phase 2)

Phase 2 includes the beginnings of the definition of the three canine subjects on day #2 (the 24th). I was interrupted by the gardeners who were about to mow grass, edge, and use blowers at the house we are renting. After a quick swim with my daughter, I resumed painting. I will need to darken the value of the cement on the right side, as it is in the shadow of a canopy. I also plan to make the doodle a little less athletic and a bit chunkier.

Coco, Moana, and Spencer at
Palm Springs City Dog Park (2020),
Ken Patterson (25-Feb)

It turns out that the doodle is actually a poodle named Spencer, according to the other owners of Coco the Husky and Moana a tri-color mutt(?). Both were at the dog park today. Coco's owner is a waiter at one of the local PS restaurants and an accomplished drawer himself. I got to see his works in graphite, charcoal, and colored pencil on his Smart Photo Watch. Cell phones and other electronic media are so convenient!

I'm happy with this now that I fixed the poodle and edited out the white plastic chair on the lower left. Only other thing I may do later is use my calligraphy pens to add a bit of details to better define the white dog in the distance and maybe the mans shoes. I wonder what my colleagues at BDAA would think about the result.

I painted outside today in 80° weather and full sun. Unfortunately, the image I was referencing (photo not shown) was on my laptop (no printer) and I kept having to go inside to look at it. This is also the first time I'm using an easel and trying to paint vertically on a pad of canvas sheets (sans clip); canvas board would work better. My challenge was mixing my colors light enough to match the values in my reference photo. I'm calling this first draft my under-painting. I'll let it dry and return to it in a couple of days.

My next watercolor is of the sunflowers on our tablecloth. I was going to embellish it with my calligraphy ink pens, but I think it looks fine the way it is.

Stay tuned for more painting. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish my landscape in oils, do some more watercolors, and dabble in both chalk and oil pastels.