Page 38 - Sports Illustrated KIDS Magazine (January - February 2020)

Obviously, Serena’s leg
doesn’t stretch quite this
much. But in Rich’s world, it
does. (Remember tip. 42?) “That
comes down to personal choice.
I like to push things too far,”
he says. “It’s easier to do
that, and then bring it
back in.”

in this issue and you might
just become the Serena Williams of
drawing. In this piece, Rich serves up
massive style to show the G.O.A.T. like no
photo ever could. “I try to walk the line
between realism and caricature,” says
Rich. “I don’t want things to look silly
necessarily, but I want to suggest reality,
portray reality, but to be skewed a little bit
too, where it’s not a photograph.”

The above sketches show how Hey, who’s that guy? That’s
Rich eased into drawing his not a tennis player, that’s
Serena piece. “The intimidation of just a random dude’s face!
the blank page can be paralyzing. Rich can explain. “That day

I think it’s important to just I was just drawing, and on
start drawing. And as you draw, my side monitor I was
you’ll build momentum, you’ll find streaming impeachment “Serena’s an extremely powerful,
direction toward what you want hearings. I think that’s one strong athlete. When the camera’s lower,
to make, and you’ll get rid of all of the guys from CNN or it creates the idea of a powerful figure. If
the bad drawings. I’ll still sit down something. I just paused it the camera’s looking down on somebody,
they’re weaker: they’re surrounded by their
and draw and it looks like trash. because he had an interesting
But, after 20 minutes or so, that face and drew him.” There’s environment, they’re swallowed up by it.
stuff starts to fade away and I nothing wrong with sketching In searching for reference there’s not
hone in on something that I think something spur of the moment a whole lot of courtside action shots
has potential.” just because you feel like it. like this. That’s something I had to
create. But that’s the mood I
wanted to create with
the camera.”
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