A columnist named Mike
Royko once stated, "Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and
cheating on your income tax." Hey, even Dizzy Dean said that "All ballplayers want
to wind up their careers with the Cubs, Giants, or Yankees. They just can't help it." Aaah.
The New York Yankees.
No team in sports is as synonymous with drama, late-inning heroics, and utter supreme success
as the Bronx Bombers. 26 World Titles (tops in professional sports), 37 League Titles, 11 Division Championships, over 15 individual
retired numbers, 25 players in the Hall of Fame and..ahem..okay, that's enough of that. I guess
I fall somewhere between liking them and being obsessed with this franchise. They are after all, the most beloved and equally hated team in modern
sports today, which to the average Yankee fan, suits us just fine. Names? We don't care about any
stinking names! Evil Empire? That's a compliment to us. Anyway, here's how I created a championship
winning mentality, and I didn't need a $200 million plus payroll either!...
- STEP ONE: I actually wanted
to do this project on a full leather jacket, but spotted this wool jacket somewhere and decided
to change up. The sleeves however are leather and will be exempt from any airbrush work. I also
purchased over 2,000 clear, red, green, yellow, orange, blue and pink rhinestones in various
sizes. The rhinestones would be used for the flag that will be embellished behind the eagle in
the background and sporadic rhinestoning serving as the lights of Times Square in the foreground.
To enforce the rhinestones into the wool, I purchased Fabri-Tac Permanent Adhesive glue. Good stuff.
Very quick drying and strong once the rhinestone sits in a dot of it. With opaque white, I begin
the process of airbrushing the illustration in. The sleeves are blocked off with newspaper and
frisket to prevent any clouding from overspray. Remember, I'm using opaque white which can be
unforgiving if I don't block off any areas that I don't want any white to go on. For the line
work I used a Prismacolor White colored pencil.
- STEP TWO: Steps TWO through
EIGHT pretty much show the developmental stages such as tight line drawing to shading all with
one color.
- STEP THREE:
- STEP FOUR:
- STEP FIVE:
- STEP SIX:
- STEP SEVEN: While airbrushing the
opaque white in, some overspray gets on the collar. No problem. I take my tinting black and
airbrush the white out from the collar, carefully trying not to get any on the main body just
yet. I also use the tinting black around the stars of the flag.
- STEP EIGHT: This pretty much wraps up
the opaque white rendering on this piece.
- STEP NINE:
The first color I will
be using is a mixture of ComArt opaque pthalo blue and on top ultramarine blue in both the
helmet and the sleeve. Once I've completed work on the sleeve and helmet, using the same blue
mix, I add several drops of water to dumb down the opacity and lightly spray the wristband and
the blue strip in the batting glove.
- STEP TEN: I've increased the air pressure
up to 60psi in my Iwata HP-SB airbrush and begin brushing in the tight pinstripe lines in the
uniform. Then reversing the process by turning the psi down to 35, I begin to lightly shade in
various parts of the uniform adding that light-bluish hue to the uniform. On the base of the
eagle's feathers I spray a light dose of this blue, but just a little. Once I've used up blue
in all the areas that will be having it, I begin to spray the red stripes of the American flag in.
- STEP ELEVEN: I go back to my opaque white
and lightly airbrush in between the pinstripes to get that prominent white to be dominant over
the light blue. I maintain a level of shadowing around the right of the jacket careful not to
white out the black that's already been there from before as well as leaving in a little blue.
It's now time for the flesh. In 4 successive steps, I spray in badger flesh tone first, following
that with transparent dark brown in the shadowy areas. I lightly spray in transparent magenta and
wrap up this step with transparent golden yellow to punch up the areas of the flesh around the
wristband and the sleeve. Now for the Eagle's peak. I spray
in opaque yellow modestly covering it from point to point.
- STEP TWELVE: Following the opaque yellow I spray
transparent golden yellow over various parts of the beak. I want to establish a light source from
the upper left corner of the jacket. Although the light source will not be seen, this is a set up
for a later step in this project. In the eagle's main body, transparent light brown is airbrushed in
to create depth in it's body's feathers. I finish that up with a light spraying of transparent dark brown
over the areas that I had sprayed the light brown with. With that step out of the way, click below on the
circular Yankee emblem to see the conclusion of this Evil Empire jacket on page 2.
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