Portrait Process

The person I chose to do my portrait project over is Jackie Robinson. I am a baseball fan (I'm engaged to a pitcher, so I kind of have to be). When I first received this assignment, this is the first person that came to my mind. Jackie broke the racial barriers in major league baseball and without him, it is very likely that baseball would not be what it is today.

Word List:
baseball
Dodgers
42
equality
barriers
bat
dirt
blue
Georgia
Brooklyn
black
MLB
UCLA
basketball
football
football track
fast
ball
helmet
America
army
segregation
stats
Hall of Fame
prejudice
shortstop
running back
world series
bruins
rookie
home
Montreal
Royals
jersey
red

This is the picture I have chosen as the inspiration for this assignment. I really love this picture of him and it shows that he didn't let anybody's words or actions affect him…he was happy. This picture was taken during his first visit to Wrigley Field in 1947 (another reason for his glowing smile). The photo was taken by Charles Gekler for the Sun-Times files. 

Everyone that knows of Jackie Robinson, knows that his number was 42. I definitely want to incorporate this number into the portrait. Maybe in the background.

Here are the sketches I came up with based off the previous pictures I posted. I really like the bottom left one. The concept/style of this portrait will reflect on the fact that Jackie Robinson broke through the barriers of race in major league baseball years ago. There is a brick wall behind him (in the shape of the number 42) and it looks as though he is breaking through it. I would like the new pieces of brick (the ones not shaded in and not the ones flying through the air) to be Dodger blue. I chose brick because it's something very difficult to break, just as is was difficult for Jackie to break through the barriers of race. 

The final portrait will be based off of this sketch. 

Since my hand-drawn sketch looks ridiculous, I chose to trace the picture that inspired me. Haha. I want this portrait to look as realistic as possible with my own concept meaning behind it.

After tracing nearly every detail of the actual photo, I disabled that layer to see what it looked like...so here it is without the layer I traced!

Outline of the tracing. 

Then, it was time to add color! At this point, I had not added color to the jersey or traced the Dodgers on the front. 

Finally, after a LOT of steps, here is basically the finished product! I added the brick background in a new layer and added color to his jersey as well as traced the Dodgers logo on the front. I added shadows underneath his hat and near his jawline. I still have yet to figure out how to fade off the edges of the brick so it is not so blocky. I think with the headline "Jackie Breaks Through," this portrait definitely makes sense.