DRIVE SHIFT

Lately I have been creating very small gestural brush & ink drawings of the golf swing... then scanning and enlarging the drawing to then add painted textures and digital color.... resulting in images that look very big and bold. Posted here are just a couple of them....

The top drawing is of a player at the top of his swing, just at the moment when he begins the downward pull...you can see his left leg beginning to move toward the target a bit... The bottom drawing is of a player about mid-way into his backswing, and with an early wrist-cock...

These brush-ink drawings are fun to do... testing my skills of not only capturing the body positions of the swing, but doing so in an aesthetic calligraphic manner. Each drawing taking maybe just a few minutes to create, but the issue is getting a good one. I might create 10 or 20 drawings and toss out 18 of them, deeming only a couple worthy of moving forward with to add the texture and colors.

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Visit sasgolf.com to see all my available limited edition golf art prints.

"14 Red Shirts" ... can Tiger win another Major Championship?

Back in 2011 I created another limited edition golf art print (released on my gallery site sasgolf.com) entitled, 14 Red Shirts -referring of course to Tiger Woods having amassed 14 Major Championship victories through 2008. (see my original posting about this golf art print)

"14 Red Shirts" (Tiger's 14 Major Championship victories) 

-a limited edition golf art print by artist Steven Anthony Salerno  visit sasgolf.com

(detail) "14 Red Shirts" 

The art image I created was in a grid format, depicting 14 small paintings of Tiger wearing the famous red shirt he always wears in the final round of a tournament... in fact the exact red shirt he wore in the winning round of each of the 14 Major Championships he has won to date.... And in my art image I purposely left a couple blank spaces, which some people observing the art image interpreted to mean that Tiger was done winning any more Major Championships, and others read the blank spaces to mean that he would indeed continue to win more Majors. But could he win 4 more times to catch and tie Jack Nicklaus' total of 18 Major Championship victories? Could Tiger win 5 more Majors and surpass Jack's record?

In the last six years Tiger has weathered devastating personal life issues, injuries, surgery, and all under the scrutiny of the world's eyes and ears. And his golf game suffered. Last year though, healthy again, he won 5 more tournaments, but has yet to win another Major Championship since 2008... though his multiple wins last year allowed many people to begin thinking again that he might still be able to tie or pass the current record of 18 Major Championship victories held by Jack Nicklaus.

This season Tiger underwent another surgery, took time away, and then recently came back to tournament action again... however at last week's tournament he suffered severe back spasms and dropped out of the tournament, thus making people wonder right up to the last minute if he would play in this week's final Major Championship of 2014, the 96th playing of the PGA Championship at Valhalla, outside Louisville, Kentucky.

Tiger did enter the PGA Championship this week, which excited his fans greatly... but he opened today with a lackluster 74 (+3) in the event's opening round, which is not exactly the proper recipe for winning his 15th Major Championship. 54 holes remaining to play is ample enough for a recovery, so hopefully he will have three terrific rounds to offset his over-par start...

Tiger is now 38 years old. On paper this means he still has possibly 12 more years (if he stays injury free) of being able to seriously play... 12 x 4 Majors = 48 more Major Championship events he can play in. Is it conceivable that Tiger could win 4 of 48 Major Championship attempts? 

So, getting back to those blank spaces I purposely placed within my art image entitled, 14 Red Shirts...  I did and still do interpret those blank spaces as meaning Tiger can indeed win more Majors. Don't count him out. Tiger has the experience of winning more Majors than anyone else on the planet, except for one person. And of the professional players actually still active there is nobody who can draw upon past winning experience as Tiger can. 

"Tiger X4" by golf artist Steven Anthony Salerno   visit sasgolf.com

Above is another art image I created of Tiger recently... this one kind of a multiple "Warhol-esque" take on the player, depicting Tiger four times in various shirt colors. The number 4 of course, being the same number of Major Victories he needs to tie the Jack Nicklaus record of 18 Major Championship victories...

Time will tell.

Visit sasgolf.com to see the available limited edition golf art prints by golf artist Steven Anthony Salerno.

Steven Anthony Salerno's golf art and golf graphics have appeared in Golf Digest, Golf World, LINKS, and GOLF magazines, as well as on PGATOUR.com where he created portraits of top PGATour players. His limited edition golf art prints are in private art collections in Europe and the United States.