Original baseball card art
I have a great fondness for the black border and colorful font on '86 Topps set design, and among the most iconic cards from that set was #50T... Bo Jackson.
The iconic photo of young Bo highlights his huge, thick neck... capturing the incredible physique of the two-sport star athlete. Not only was this image featured on his Topps #50T, but Donruss and Sportflics also purchased images from that photoshoot for their own rookies cards. While I'm typically not interested in creating portraits, this image was worth breaking from my norm.
More about my giant sticks of Topps Chewing Gum
The last card inside a junk era wax pack would often get stuck to, or stained by, the piece of gum inside. My childhood memories of chewing hard sticks of bubble gum became the inspiration for making these large scale gum sticks. My gum sticks are typically tilted by 9 degrees, as a nod to the starting 9 on the diamond.
- My gum stick paintings are done on plywood as homage to the game's wooden bats. I hand bevel the wood with a router to create the proper shape, which also captures highlights on the edges and supplies nice drop shadows on the wall.
- The sticks are painted with my own multi-layer technique, making them look realistic.
- Each gum stick measures 12" x 36" and is designed to hang on a rotated angle of 9 degrees. This represents how the gum is typically positioned imperfectly inside the package.
- Each painting ships ready to hang, with hardware already installed.
- A printed and signed description of the artwork will be attached to the back prior to shipping.
- All pieces are original artwork by yours truly, Matthew Lee Rosen.
