It's almost spring - time to think baseball

Recently an art league friend approached me and asked if I would do some baseball paintings. Hmmm...It turns out that a friend of hers has a restaurant in Baltimore and is going to celebrate the beginning of baseball season - an evening celebrating with the family of Mark Belanger - former Oriole shortstop. The artwork would be part of a fundraiser for a school in Baltimore.

At the time, it seemed like a good challenge - so I said OK. It's been along time since I attended a baseball game... I went on line looking for ideas.

After pouring through a lot of pictures, I came upon a photo of a group of boys sitting on a bench with their arms around each other. I thought - that's it! I clicked on the picture and went to the site to get permission to paint the photo. Within a few hours I received an answer that said they had just picked the photo off the internet and therefore they couldn't give me permission to use it. It seemed it was, as 'they' say..."up for grabs."

I sketched it out.

Then did a watercolor underpainting

I decided to add numbers to the shirts and changed it a little.

I framed it and was pretty happy with it until the following day...when I opened up the paper ...
There, staring at me was the same picture! Only this time, instead of having plain shirts - like I had seen in the on-line photo - the shirts had ads for a realtor on the boys' backs...right where I had put the numbers!

I still like the picture. It is going in the show (along with a couple other things that I will post). Proceeds from any sales go to Mother Seton Academy in Baltimore and it promises to be a fun evening.

For more information - Google - G&A Coney Island Hot Dog Restaurant and head there for a great celebration on March 28th at 7:00pm.