Baseball Autographs on Original Artwork
Topps 2023 Museum Collection baseball is a trading card set produced every year and like last year it included more than just the regular, run-of-the-mill baseball cards; it also includes baseball autographs on sketch cards! I had the opportunity to do some last year and this year I again did a few more. This year’s cards were of Greg Maddux, Andre Beltre, Derek Jeter, Jim Palmer, Buster Posey, and Andre Dawson.
How I Created my Baseball Portraits
The portraits I painted were created with designer gouache paint, same as what I did on the paintings used for the Canvas reprint cards. I first made a loose pencil sketch of the portrait and then went in with pencil crayons to strengthen the lines. I used gouache overtop in layers to build up the colours, forming a matte layer of paint. Overtop of that I used caran d’ache and polychromous to smooth out the colour breaks and strengthen certain lines like those around the eyes. Lastly, I applied another few washes of gouache and used acrylic paint for highlights and cleaning up edges.
These sketch cards were shipped to me without the autograph. I placed painters tape overtop of the area that was to be signed by the players so that I didn’t accidentally spill paint there. After I was finished the painting I sprayed the card down with a varnish so that the painting wouldn’t be damaged by the player during signing nor during packing it in the product. While spraying the card I left the tape on so that the autographed area again wouldn’t be impacted.
Promoting Your Artwork
Side-Note: OK, honestly I do enjoy writing about my projects and artwork in general, but I don’t really love promoting my artwork. Perhaps weirdly, I do actually enjoy and I think I’m pretty good at advertising for other people, companies, and their products as that’s something I do during my 9-5 days, but I feel weird promoting myself.Â
Promoting your own artwork is essential in becoming an artist, regardless of how much you like it or not. It’s also something that takes time! Not only have I spent time writing this blog and creating this website, but I also created advertising graphics for these cards. For these graphics I only had scans of the artwork I did and I don’t know what they look like once they had been signed. I figured it would look neat if there was an autograph on these cards, so I Googled each player’s autograph and then attached it in Photoshop. Since it’s not everyday that baseball autographs are added to my artwork I figured I’d spend a little more time on promoting this project as it’s unique and pretty freaking cool!
Baseball Autographs on My Artwork!
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