2nd Basketball artwork

Untitled
Lee Shu Hui
Pencil on Paper
June 2009

This was the second sketch I did in 2009 that was realistic and was about basketball.

This was done because firstly, I enjoyed sketching realistically. This was also because I had kind of failed in my attempt (see previous post) to depict Kobe Bryant playing basketball back on 27 May, so I had that urge to better myself and to try again.

This work looks better than the one done of Bryant in May. I think that this work shows a lot more comfortable, natural pencil strokes, compared to the 1st basketball artwork I did.
There is a sense of movement in the picture and I love how this work is unfinished, with the central focus on the NBA player with the ball as he is the one who looks the most complete and finished. The fact that it's unfinished as a whole also provides a sense of rhythm to the sketch - yet these figures are caught in time, still and frozen.

I think this piece of work shows how I improved in my rendering of the human form. I disagree that in order to learn how to depict the human form you have to look at the bare body - I think if you have an eye that is discerning enough, you will understand the form even when you analyze and draw the body with clothes on. I dislike the way in which certain professional artists opt to study the human form.

I decided to include this, among my other 2 basketball sketches which i have already posted, to show my progress from the first artwork to the second then to the 3rd most developed one. I think it charts my growth. Though it doesn't sum my whole journey, which hasn't ended yet, I think it helps to show one segment of how I improved artistically.

I think I should say sometimes some spark just comes to me and that helps me a lot. Sometimes the spark isn't there and I get an uninspired piece of ordinary work.