Original artwork description:

This is an Ink drawing of American tennis star Ben Shelton during his service motion.
This picture is part of a collection of Ink drawings made from life whilst watching the ATP 500 Tokyo Open in Tokyo,Japan. It was the first time I’ve tried drawing tennis players live and it was a fun challenge to try to capture the split second poses as they played. I would watch the players first for a few games to observe their movements and decide on which poses they would repeat that I could draw. I figured out that the serve and return stances were the most often repeated poses that allowed me the most time to try to capture a likeness, so I studied these for particular instances and poses that I wanted to try to draw. I would start (by first deciding on the pose I wanted to draw) with very loose line drawings showing the basic body shapes and angles and each time the players would repeat the shot I would see the poses for at most a few seconds and add to the drawings. It was very interesting to see the similarities and differences in the forms and shapes that each player would make. From different body shapes and feet angles to the open palms and fingers when throwing the ball up to serve. I enjoyed noticing these idiosyncrasies and trying to capture the ones that were specific to each player. At one point I was working on up to six or eight drawings at one time, swapping between them adding details and refining them throughout each game. It was definitely a big challenge in quick observation and mark making to do! Some of the more finished drawings are ones I was able to return to as I watched the same player on a different day as the tournament progressed.

Materials used:

Ink on 160gsm Brown Paper

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