Hand-drawn football cards. WIP.

Drawn by hand on an iPad using Procreate.

As a kid back in the 90’s, I had stacks upon stacks of old football cards that my uncles had given me, and I continuously added to it with the little cheap-o packs you could buy in the checkout line. When I wasn’t playing or watching football, I’d draw my favorite athletes (from those cards) as a way of playing it vicariously. Before internet, cable TV, and obviously phones, that was a way to occupy myself indoors. I loved trying to capture their particular movements, inspired by the combination of strength and speed it took to move around so effortlessly in those bulky pads and heavy, metal helmets. Having some baseline natural ability to draw helped, otherwise it may not have satisfied the itch I had. But I improved much as I got older and did more of them.

Now, having the ability to draw by hand directly into an iPad, I’ve adapted these drawings for the modern day in an attempt to rediscover my old skill. The digital tools make it so much easier to layer linework, sketches, base colors, backgrounds and final details over one another to produce a much faster and better end result. The different digital brush styles are amazing for adding light, shadow and texture seamlessly. Needless to say, I’m pretty pumped with how these have been coming out and I wanted to share a few recent works at various stages of progress. To come full circle, recently I had the idea to mount each one in a hand-drawn card template, emulating the ones I had as a kid. The idea is to keep going with this, eventually developing a full set of vintage, hand-drawn cards for NFL and NBA (and maybe baseball, too down the line).