I recently completed a painting of one of my favorite golfers, Byron Nelson (1912 -2006), nicknamed Lord Byron. This gentlemanly champion from Texas holds what will probably be one professional golf record that will never be broken, not by Tiger Woods nor any other future golf superstar. Not only did Mr. Nelson win 52 PGA titles and 5 major championships in his amazing career, but in 1945 he won a mind-bending 11 PGA events in a row! (He won a total of 18 tournaments that season) His scoring average in that magical year was 68.33 per round... which was a record held until 2000 when broken by the man in red, Tiger Woods.
The painting was created by lightly penciling in the figure of the golfer onto a brown paper, as well as drawing the grid lines onto the paper. Then the image was painted using gouache paints (an opaque watercolor), and by purposely leaving the paper exposed (unpainted) in precise areas, this allowed the brown color of the paper to act as the shadow tones. You can see this best in the white hat, wherein the shadow portion of the hat is actually just the brown of the paper showing through. The design of the lettering within the image was done in Photoshop in separate layers and then merged into the final image of the scanned painting. The image shows Byron striking a long iron just after impact, which undoubtedly sent the ball right on target.
This new golf art print by artist Steven Anthony Salerno is available in a limited edition at sasgolf.com
