new drawing of Arnold Palmer...

Posted here is one of my most recent drawings... this one being yet another image of one of my favorite players of all time, Arnold Palmer. 

I created the image, first by drawing the figure of Palmer using black oil crayon... just a straight forward traditional rendering... then I scanned my drawing into Photoshop where I digitally manipulated the black color of the crayon drawing so that it was now a saturated blue. Then I added a hyper-flesh tone to his face, hands and arms with a digital brush. The last steps were to embed the drawing onto the background which is comprised of distressed paint on a wood panel, which also included the stenciled lettering of PALMER. The resulting "look" is of a traditionally conceived drawing, but the manipulations and layering in Photoshop gave it a modern pop feel overall, representing that Mr. Palmer was a link between older traditions and values to the contemporary game of today. 

drawing of Arnold Palmer by artist Steven Anthony Salerno  -visit sasgolf.com

Of the many top players to have played the game past and present, a handful of them, due mostly to their achievements on the golf course and their charisma, but also multiplied by their achievements in business, their charitable contributions, and the omnipresence of their likeness on television, the web, in books, magazines, and for endorsement advertising campaigns... actually transcend from star athlete, to star celebrity, to being a cultural icon... and for some fans (like myself) they take on mythical status. Mr. Palmer is one such golfer. 

When I was a kid growing up in Vermont back, in the early 1970's Arnold Palmer opened his golf academy at the Stratton Mountain ski and golf resort in the southern end of the state. That first summer they operated a summer instructional camp for teens... the cost of which was way beyond my family's means. However, the academy had a spot open for a couple "local Vermont kids" via a tournament (or was it just a lottery, I cannot remember) but my 17 year old older brother won one of the spots ... and got to attend the 2 week golf camp free of charge, room/board and instruction! (his roommate during the camp was J.P. Getty's grandson!)

I remember that my brother came back from the golf academy two weeks later having lost his extremely strong grip! No small feat! I was impressed. Eventually though, it did creep back into his swing mechanics. But hey, later (as an adult) he still somehow managed to shoot a round of 64(!) at his golf club even despite his strong grip... and win a handful of club championships as well! Never judge a book by its cover! 

The opening day of the academy Arnold Palmer flew in and gave a clinic for the teens attending the summer camp (and their family and guests), plus he then played a nine-hole exhibition on the Stratton mountain course. For me (at about age 14 at the time) it was a heavenly experience to witness such a great golfer play the game up close... and I am sure my getting to actually meet Arnold Palmer in person was the spark that eventually lead to me drawing and painting the greats of the game, and not just images of golfscapes only. 

Visit sasgolf.com to view all my available golf art prints.

Woods? Mickelson? Villegas? -nope, just the artist!

the artist, Steven Anthony Salerno on the range -visit sasgolf.com to view his golf art
photo by: James "Vegas" Yang

This is a photo of me one recent morning hitting a few warm-up shots at the driving range at Bethpage State Park golf complex, home of the infamous Black Course, site of the 2002 and 2009 US Open Championships. There are five course at Bethpage, and on that particular day we were not able to snag a tee time on the preferred Black Course, or even the Red Course... but played the Blue Course, a short-ish rolling hills layout of about 6,600 yards from the back tees. The USGA uses the Blue Course at Bethpage each year as a New York State local qualifying site for the USGA Public Links Championship. I played in this qualifier event a while back, with most participants being good college aged players... and the one young man I was playing with that day drove a level fairway 356 yard par four -on the fly!


Note: see the artificial grass mat I am hitting from? Don't worry, when the pros play the Black Course during the US Open they get a pristine fairway in an adjacent course to use as their practice facility.

THE KING (Arnold Palmer) -a new golf art print from Steven Anthony Salerno

Arnold Palmer is nicknamed "The King" for his major role popularizing the game of golf with American middle class masses via the blossoming sports television coverage of the 1950's and 1960's... It captured his husky American good looks, steelworker shoulders, swashbuckling charges on the golf course, and charisma. (As well as his seven major championships and 62 PGA tournament victories won during an illustrious career.)

Along the way "Arnie's Army" was created: the legion of millions upon millions of devoted fans who see him as the greatest modern ambassador for the game of golf. I met Mr. Palmer when I was about 13 years old, at his golf academy in Stratton, Vermont (my older brother was attending). He was my favorite golfer then, and he still is 39 years later! I chose to depict Mr. Palmer in his distinctive hunched and knock-kneed putting posture... and purposely rendered the image roughly, using thick oil crayons and gouache on basic brown paper (with digitally added elements of wood grain texture) all to suggest his powerful stature and humble beginnings. The phrase "The King" can be seen written within the image.

This new golf art print by artist Steven Anthony Salerno is available in a limited edition at sasgolf.com

US Open Back on the West Coast

It has only been a couple years since The US Open was held on the West Coast... but the past six months of hyper-detailed news concerning Tiger's personal issues (and his return to competitive golf) somehow has made the 2008 US Open held at Torrey Pines seems much further in the past, a bit like looking through a telescope from the wrong end.

In a couple short weeks the best players from around the world will be teeing it up at the Pebble Beach Golf Links for the 2010 US Open Championship, including the still reigning #1 in the world Tiger Woods. Considering that the last time the US Open was held at Pebble (back in 2000) Tiger decimated the field, it would be an error to count him out in this upcoming major championship. No matter what his play may be in the other tournaments leading up to the big event on the Monterey Peninsula, at some point Tiger will be "back" -and what better showcase for him than at Pebble.

This newest print depicts a bird's-eye-view of the famous links course seen below through the clouds and mist. The previous print is a view of a windswept hole and a lone cypress.

These new golf art prints by artist Steven Anthony Salerno are available in limited editions at sasgolf.com

PEBBLE -latest print release

In June of this year, the famed Pebble Beach Golf Links will host the US Open Championship for a fifth time. (1972 winner Jack Nicklaus, 1982 winner Tom Watson, 1992 winner Tom Kite, 2000 winner Tiger Woods) The print image shown here is my tribute to the championship event being held at Pebble and depicts an idealized windswept green along the Monterey Peninsula coastline, the flagstick bending in the breeze, and a wide view of gathering clouds above the Pacific Ocean. A lone cypress tree becomes the image's focal point.

I created the entire image on a digital drawing tablet with vector-based Adobe Illustrator software. Even though it has beautiful soft blends of colors and gradations, it still has a crisp and minimal graphic look, quite like lithographic travel posters from the 1930's and '40's.

This print has three different type version choices: one with bold red & tan type, the other with simpler black & white type... or a third option is just the image alone without any type.

This new golf art print by artist Steven Anthony Salerno is available in a limited edition at sasgolf.com

Steven Anthony Salerno opens his web golf art gallery

I've been a professional illustrator all my adult life... and have played golf since I was a young boy. I played well enough as a teenager to win the Vermont State Junior Amateur Championship, and as a young man worked in the golf business for several years, first as an Assistant Professional at the Yale University Golf Club, then at Racebrook Country Club, both in Connecticut. During that time I was also a registered apprentice in the PGA, passing their playing ability test (PAT) and also completing the first stage of their business school.

In my illustration career I create images for clients in magazines, advertising, children's picture books, product packaging, etc... However the golf drawings, paintings and graphics I also created over the years were made just for myself, never as an assignment for a commercial client. Very few people knew I even created golf related images.

In 2009 the US Open conducted by the USGA was to be played at the Bethpage Black Course in Farmingdale, Long Island, just a short distance outside of Manhattan (NYC) where I live. The Black Course is a course I've played before, so I decided to create a pretend design of a US Open/Black Course poster just for the fun of it. I created one, then another and another... having such a fun time that in the end I created seven different "mock" poster designs showcasing the Black Course as the 2009 US Open Championship venue. I presented a few of them in February 2009 to the Marketing Director at the USGA, Mary Lopuszynski, but they had already selected an official poster/print for the 2009 US Open event and in fact had already passed the date for finalizing all their merchandise selections.

These test Bethpage Black Course images I created made me decide that I'd pursue another new direction with my artistic talents by joining my life long interest in the game of golf with my artistic talents. Since I continue to work in the illustration field using my name Steven Salerno, I therefore decided that I'd promote my golf art images using my full name Steven Anthony Salerno, just to create a bit of an identity separation between my continuing career in illustration and my budding golf art career. The name of my golf art web site is SASgolf.com -which are my initials, S.A.S.

So, next I tentatively posted these 2009 Bethpage Black Course golf art images onto my illustration blog site, while I figured out how I was going to promote my golf art. In June of 2009 from out of the blue I received a call from Mike McAllister, golf writer and the Managing Editor of the PGA TOUR official web site. He explained that he'd seen my golf art images, and asked if I'd like to create art images of the tour's top players every week in their Player Spotlight feature on pgatour.com. Of course I did! So throughout the rest of 2009, every week, I created portraits of many of the tour stars, including Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington, Steve Stricker, Camilo Villegas, and others...

This project connection with the PGA TOUR further propelled me to want to make the leap into going beyond my career in illustration and also becoming the best golf artist I can be... so, I created and launched sasgolf.com to display and sell limited edition golf art prints reproduced from my golf art drawings, paintings and graphics.

Visit sasgolf.com to view all the various "galleries" of my prints available to you, for display in your home or office. If you love the game, you'll certainly find a print you'd enjoy owning. These striking prints are printed on 100% cotton rag-based archival fine art papers using vivid permanent pigment inks. The superb inkjet printing process, called Giclee, is the same ultra-fine printing process now used by many museums to produce highly accurate reproduction prints of drawings and paintings in their collection.

Posted above are a couple of my "test" Bethpage Black Course poster designs I initially created.