There’s a player on the Seattle Mariner’s team who struck me from the first time I saw him pitch as a person to watch.

The Mariners agreed with me — he pitched his way into being the go-to “closer” for the team– the one they get in at the very final innings of the game to relieve the “starter” and any other relief pitchers who have come in through the game.

I am not sure what bone structure I see in this young man’s face, but both face and body language are really beautiful to watch.  He takes his pitching very seriously and doesn’t make many mistakes.  He is young.  His eye is keen.  His arm is strong.  And he maintains a kind of calm that looks to me as if he knows how to “get in the zone.”

Seeing a person “in the zone” doing what they do best is a treat in any field.  To a visual person he is poetry in motion.

I got some photos of him from the Mariner’s website and began to draw this week.  From the largish rough drawing, I move to the computer to get a different eye on the work and to do some analysis.  I compare the computer printout with my original photo printout and see where it’s “off”.  Then go back to the painting on the easel and make corrections.

I haven’t “nailed it” yet.  My drawing is looking lumpy, as usual, at this stage.  But I’m looking and drawing, which is the best way I know of to really SEE what is going on with the smooth planes of his face and what it is that draws me to his particular structure with the very long and fairly flat, but very beautiful nose– his steady dark eyes and his almost innocent looking, dramatically contoured mouth.

He is so young. 23. So smooth.  So lithe. 

He leans over so his upper body is nearly parallel to the ground as he readies himself for the pitch.  He stared at the batter and the plate.  And, like a cat slowly opening up to leap on prey he curls his body, bringing back the throwing hand while bringing that left knee up, and then he delivers the ball, fast, accurate, and deadly smart into the hitting zone.  He strikes a lot of people out.  He is relentless

And his demeanor does not change until the game is over.  Then he gets such a boyish smile on his face– almost shy-looking grin and then relaxes away from his concentration and exuberantly celebrates with the catcher (another story worth drawing about) and the teammates with high fives, low fives, special swats and leaps and bumps that they have all worked out to a dance in itself.  A glint of white teeth, and he disappears until another game is on TV.

I am describing his kind of beauty to my daughter and can only think of the same quality in one other public person I am smitten with, and that is Jessye Norman, the stunning, and very famous opera singer.

• Fruit-on-counter-rainy-day
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• once-upon-a-pistachio-and-the-what-if-factor
• 
• looking-looking-reading-the-model
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• conundrum-where-does-one-draw-the-line 
• x-x-v-a-gift-
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• https://medium.com/the-story-hall/summer-comes-in-bcedcc8df548
• https://medium.com/the-story-hall/and-the-muse-ef6519eb482c
• https://medium.com/the-story-hall/wreck-variations-on-the-flying-dutchman-theme-ac8a73e287e4
• https://medium.com/the-story-hall/red-paint-ink-scraping-draping-54ec93056910
• https://medium.com/the-story-hall/eschers-and-penrose-s-stairway-part-of-an-artist-s-life-5128c6035317

medium.com/@susangholland_41327       <—- THIS LINK WILL SHOW ALL MY PUBLISHED WORK ON Medium.com

View story at Medium.com

View story at Medium.com

SUMMER !

Watercolor on Arches circa 1985 by SGHolland

My artist friend’s sister was expecting to deliver any minute!  Would she like to just snooze on the squishy pink studio foldout chair and be our model for a session, I wondered.   Why yes,  that sounded good to her.

This watercolor, done sometime in 1980 or so, is dear to me not only because  I loved this young woman and her unborn child (Colin, he turned out to be) but because the lovely mama has passed away since then at way to early an age.

Another thing I especially like about this painting is that is IS the whole essence of that studio on a forested hillside with light streaming in from all sides and the familiar books and chairs and tables there!  A place built just for me by master craftsmen from my own family.  I am no longer in that studio– life moved me along and I left a lot behind.  But there it is with its gray rug and its happy plants and the sleepiness of a summer day.

Yes, her tummy looked as if it had a large balloon hidden in it somewhere.

ARTISTS are sometimes SPORTS LOVERS!   Can you imagine a well-seasoned female artist sitting on the edge of her seat watching the Seattle Mariners play baseball?  Can you imagine that same grandma sitting on bleachers in the blazing sun watching her youngest grandson pitch and hit for his All Star Little League team?  This is that grandma.

Where’s the art in THAT?

I am smitten by the looks and body language of these athletes;  that is not a new fancy, but an appreciation that began long ago at the old stadium in Philadelphia known as Shibe Park.  That is where, from seats behind the catcher,  my father taught me the fine-tuned dance of baseball.

Right now in Seattle we have Edwin Diaz, a 23 year-old closing pitcher whose dance is so tuned and his body language so focused he is beautiful to watch  Besides that he has one of those amazing noses that is long and close to the face with an amazing flattened tip that makes arabesques around his nostrils.  And eyes that are like a predator’s eyes when trained on his work.

I’m sketching from search material about this young man found on my computer– my 3rd eye– my plug-in muse. I work at the easel and then analyze my work on the computer, making notes and additions and suggestions with my computer mouse as a pen.  Than I print out my amended image and take it back to the original painting and make my changes with paint

Here are rough sketches I’ve been making to find my way around this guy’s face.  They are very transient–changing quite freely — feeling my way into the planes and proportions of his face while keeping an eye out for the Mariners these days.

What you see above are four small works from a series I am calling Coins.  During the election cycle of 2016 I decided to do “a painting a day” for a month.  Mostly in my lovely Moleskin “Chapbook”, I used mixed media on the “all-media” quality pages.  All were experimental. Many have coin impressions made while the medium was still wet.

The image here can be clicked to read a little blurb I published on The Story Hall, one of my current involvements these Spring days, as it grows and develops on a new writers/artist’s site by that name at medium.com.  The story will tell quite new news about me and my recent months’ focus and activity.  Just getting the paints going again and, as always, the camera and the image editing programs that I love.