Sketchin' at the ballpark

I actually have some photos and goodies to show you all from the game tonight, but my bluetooth doodad is acting flaky and it's too damn late to be futzing with it. Maybe tomorrow night. I do have some stuff to share from my new hobby though.

One of my goals for this month was to try to sketch something every day, good or bad, pony or non-equine, drunk or not drunk. (usually drunk). Going to the Braves game tonight was pretty much going to chew up all my free time for the day I could use for sketching though. I came up with a clever plan... practice with some quick sketches of the Braves' starting 9 based on the pictures of them that were flashed up on the JumboTron BravesVision ScoreBoard thingy on the back of my ticket confirmation printout. It would be a way to practice on some ballplayers and force me to draw a little quicker than I'm used to. While it was a tad challenging trying to draw, look at the scoreboard and watch the pitch all at the same time, I'm relatively pleased with the outcome.  These aren't finished drawings by any stretch of the imagination, but for some quick practice, they're not too terrible. Most of them, anyway.

Michael Bourn

I'm pretty happy with how this one came out, but I did have three at-bats to work on it. Of all the facial expressions I drew this one looks the least ludicrous. Decent looking faces are hard. Gotta keep practicing. As you can see, the text from the ticket confirmation e-mail is a lot more visible on the scan than I expected.

Martin Prado

Martin looks a bit like the illegitimate child of Chief Wahoo here. His eyes do kinda look like that though in the original picture, although I exaggerated them more than I should have. Maybe I should work on caricature instead of portraiture. The obscene looking squiggle at the bottom left is a bat. You know the photo style, where the batter is pointing the bat at the viewer? Perspective's a bitch and I gave up rather quickly on that. I also had to edit this one a smidge, because some personal info was on the other side of the paper.

Chipper Jones

Chipper looks a bit old and haggard in this one and he may or may not have an entire can of Copenhagen in his right cheek. Actually that does kinda fit Chipper, doesn't it?

Dan Uggla

I thought this one sucked the entire time I was drawing it, but looking at it after the fact makes me like it a bit better. The picture for Uggla was this profile view that wasn't terribly flattering, but between the Popeye arm and the square jaw I like how it turned out. I also had to erase the nose and eye a couple times each  before they became more not awful. thank goodness for batting gloves, because I can't draw hands for crap.

Freddie Freeman

Another one that drifted into caricature, but I think of all of them this one is probably the most recognizable.

I'm not sure, but I think this was the reference photo used on the big board. I would normally link where I found it but the site was shady as hell so I just took a snip from the Google image search results.

Brian McCann

Guuuuuuuuh.

I actually think this is a pretty good likeness of Alex Gonzalez. It's a damn shame that I was using a Brian McCann photo as a reference when I drew it.

Matt Diaz

I'm not sure if this exercise was good for me because it got me to sketch things out very quickly or if it was bad because I didn't really use proper drawing techniques like drawing all those circles and skeletons and such. Matty D turned out OK I guess. I like his expression, but that arm is pretty noodly. Hands are my nemesis. No wonder I like drawing cartoon ponies. I'm still kinda bummed a lefty was pitching so I didn't get to sketch J-Hey.

Alex Gonzalez

You know, if I had just left out the names, I could probably have passed this off as McCann and McCann's sketch as Gonzo. I would have known however, and it would have remained a great shame to me forever. The effort level just wasn't here with Alex either, I could never half-ass a Mac sketch this way.

Randall Delgado

Delgado is the most bare-bones of all the sketches, mainly because he only got one at bat and wasn't up all that long during that one. It turned out ok though, especially because 95% of my readers couldn't pick out Delgado in a police lineup if there was a million dollars on the line.

I quit at about the 5th inning, once I had gotten all nine to the point where I just couldn't do anything more with them. The only other player whose picture I saw on the big board was George Jose Constanza, which was up and off in the space of about 10 seconds. It was still pretty fun though, and the most fun was my son looking over at me drawing with a fascinated expression. "That one looks done, dad!" If you say so kiddo... :)