"Haig" -the great Walter Hagen

Here is a recent drawing I created of one of my favorite all time golfing greats, Walter Hagen. It was made using a wax crayon (pencil) on paper, scanned into Photoshop, and then layered on top of textures of color I had also created with gouache painted on paper and also scanned into Photoshop. It's a simple shaped vignette that adds to the character of the image.

Walter Hagen -by Steven Salerno

Visit stevensalerno.com to view my work in illustration and children's picture books, and visit sasgolf.com to view my available golf art prints.

Montpelier Elks Golf Club, Vt ...sketch of the 3rd hole, circa 1917

As a kid growing up in Vermont, during my high school years my family had a membership at the Montpelier Elks Golf Club, a short nine-hole course with a handful of the holes either playing extremely uphill, downhill, or sidehill... and add in very small greens and high rough always made it fun and challenging. (My 85 year old father and my older brother still play their golf there.) The course was first open for play in 1902, and will be open for play again in 2016, but is in financial woes and unfortunately it seems its days are numbered, with the best bet for the future going to developers buying the land and building homes...

This painting posted here is a rough study I created depicting the uphill par 5, third hole as if it were circa 1917. 

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"The Caddy" -ink and gouache drawing

This is an illustration I created (cropped view) of a veteran caddy looping for one of the amateur members. (you can tell from the players somewhat awkward looking stance at address that the caddy rarely treks down the middle of the fairways... I the drawing was created with ink and gouache with added digital color and effects. 

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Ben Zen -quick gesture drawing of Ben Hogan

-a quick gestural drawing of Ben Hogan done in ink, then digitally layered atop an image of his scorecard from the 100th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale Golf Club.

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

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.

Slammin' Sam Snead

Posted here is the view of a recent painting I completed of the late great Sam Snead... nicknamed "Slammin" Sam Snead" because of his booming drives off the tee. My painting is based on a 1949 photo of Mr. Snead by photographer Arthur E. Haug, from a golf instructional book by Snead and a handful of other pros of that era. What struck me was the perspective of seeing the player's swing from above looking down.... which nicely highlighted Mr. Snead's famous iconic straw hat he wore so frequently. 

You are going to see Sam Snead's name pop up in the golfing news a lot very soon, because in 2014 or 2015 Tiger Woods will probably secure his 82nd and 83rd PGA Tour tournament victories.... an amazing feat. 82 wins will tie Sam Snead's long time hold on the record of PGA Tour victories and Tiger's victory number 83 will surpass Snead's mark and set a new record which may then last forever in the golf record books.

Sam Snead (1912 - 2002), the smooth swinging, long hitting "country boy" from Virginia who became the winningest player in PGA Tour history with 82 official tournament victories (including 7 major championship wins). Wearing his signature straw hat and nicknamed "Slammin' Sammy", Snead's long, powerful swing endured, winning professional events over a six decade span. (At age 67 he shot a 67 and a 66 for two of the four rounds at the 1979 Quad Cities Open, a PGA Tour event) 

The original painting was created with oil crayon and gouache on raw paperboard. Visit my golf art web site sasgolf.com to view my limited edition golf art prints as well as some original golf art for sale, including this painting of Sam Snead.