NHL Western Conference finals: Chicago Blackhawks vs. LA Kings Mad Men Style art

My NHL bracket challenge of the Western conference was wrong for round 2 in both series but I picked the eventual winners and is now correct for round 3, I predicted that the Kings would win the series against the Blackhawks. After 2 games in this series it looks like they could, after the Kings had a strong 3rd period in game 2 for a 6-2 win. If Quick can stay at the top of his game for the series and not falter for a few games like he did in the previous series I think they will.

As mentioned in yesterdays post, here are the Western Conference finalist in Mad Men art form.

2014 Playoffs ST. Louis Blues vs Chicago Blackhawks

I thought, like may others, this series would be the best of the 1st round match-ups and so far everyone who said that is right, the Blues won the 1st two game scoring late to tie and in overtime in each and then Chicago won 1-0 in game 3 at home. Personally I have a rooting interest for the Blues because I would like to see Ryan Miller win and it would impact the Sabres draft pool but with the Blues ending their regular season so terribly I picked Chicago to win the series in 7. After 3 games it has been a hard fought series with both teams having their peaks and valleys through the series thus far, it's still a tough series to predict a winner.

So here are two of my digital drawings of St. Louis Blues defeseman Alex Pietrangelo and Chicago Blackhawks forward Brandon Saad.

Alex Pietrangelo

Brandon Saad

Hockey comic book covers

A few weeks ago I got inspired to recreate comic book covers with a hockey theme, my 1st imagining was recreating the 1st spider-man cover and thought of adding Alex Ovechkin mainly due to the same color palate of their uniforms. After that, the start of the Olympics took over and I created a few Olympic themed covers, featuring Sidney Crosby as Bane in a recreation of the Knightfall cover, and of course Zach Parise as Captain America and finally Jonathan Toews in a recreation of Wolverine #1.  All of these covers I drew and colored digitally.

Stanley Cup Finals: Chicago Blachawks vs Boston Bruins

For the Stanley Cup finals I wanted to create something simplistic and decided to really just focus on the main characteristics that I think of when it comes to the Stanley Cup final. I took the artwork of a profile for the two captains and simplified it to represent what I believed showed the intensity and focus needed to win, I just rendered their eyes. That was still a little too simple so I added the next feature I think of, which is the playoff beard. So here is a Stanley cup Final simplistic rendering of Chicago's Jonathan Toews and Boston's Zdeno Chara.

Jonathan Toews

Zdeno Chara

2013 Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 2: Chicago Blackhawks vs Detroit Redwings

My final post for round 2 is Chicago and Detroit, the series is currently 3-2 heading into game 6 in Detroit and Chicago looks to force a game 7 back home.

Here are two of my art pieces featuring a pencil sketch of Chicago's Corey Crawford and Detroit Captain Henrik Zetterberg.

Corey Crawford

Henrik Zetterberg

2013 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Chicago Blackhawks vs Minnesota Wild

Playoffs! As mentioned the NHL's Stanley Cup Playoffs start today, the most exciting time of the year, and even though my team the Sabres were out of the running weeks (some say months) ago I still try to watch every game. Until they're out of it, I will be rooting for my adopted team, the Pittsburgh Penguins to win it all. Though I haven't been watching the Western Conference a lot because I'm on the east coast (so I have an east coast bias) but Chicago seems the popular pick, I have a feeling the Blues may make a run this year after learning a lot last year in getting crushed by the kings, as long as their goaltending remains strong.

So to start off the run of playoff match up art is the Chicago Blackhawks and Minnesota Wild featuring Patrick Kane and Mike Rupp respectively.

Patrick Kane

Mike Rupp

Draw the Jerseys: Brian Schuster

I came across Brian Schusters' art work via Instagram, and was toughly impressed with the vast amount of quality pieces on his site. I do admit that the title of his site (Draw the Jerseys) threw me off, I guess I was expecting drawings of various jerseys but after clicking and viewing the art gallery section I was just amazed and shocked because I wasn't expecting the type of art work that was there. He does have artwork for other teams though it's mostly of the Chicago Blackhawks, so if you're a Blackhawk fan, I'm sure you won't be disappointed be sure to check out his site www.drawthejerseys.com and click on the Art Gallery and prepare to be amazed, just a sample of the many great artwork he has there.

Marián Hossa

Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane

SportsNic's part 2

Kevin sent in more of his SportsNics collection these are from his 09 collection featuring the Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Montreal Canadiens and the New Jersey Devils. There are more of these to come from each team from Kevin and for as many as he has and the simplistic design of the characters to the fine detail in the logos/equipment each one is a different pose.

2012 Playoffs Coyotes Vs. Blackhawks

Earlier tonight the Phoenix Coyotes eliminated the Chicago Blackhawks 4 games to 1. The big story in this series was Goaltending, Mike Smith was at the top of his game throughout the series. His counter part Corey Crawford was good most of the time but had a tendency to give up the bad goal here and there...two overtime goals come to mind. This sets up a 2nd round playoff in the west where each goalie is playing extremely well, Quick, Rinne, Smith and Elliot, this should be a very tight race to win the West. So here is the Coyotes enforcer Paul Bissonnette and Blackhawks forward Patrick Sharp.

Paul Bissonnette

Patrick Sharp

Mini Goalie Mask: Chicago Blackhawks

Well the season is about a month away, one of the reasons posts here have been scarce over the summer is due to moving into a new house, some good news though is that I uncovered some long lost hockey related art projects I created over the years. I'm going to try to post one a day, a perfect build up to the start of the season. I remember collecting those mini goalie mask key chains but didn't care for just the team logo printed on the top so I got inspired to paint a design based on the team logo on each mask. no these are from years ago (early 2000's i think) so some logos will be outdated but i think some of them are pretty cool. So I'll start off with the Chicago Blackhawks mini goalie mask.

2011 NHL Playoffs: Vancouver Canucks vs. Chicago Blackhawks

Now I'll move out west to the most interesting match up The Stanley Cup champs vs the Presidents trophy champs. So here's some artwork of Vancouver's Roberto Luongo and Chicago's Patrick Kane submitted by Matt

NHL logos made of food....yes thats right food

Scott sent in his really fun and different way to look at the NHL team logos, by depicting them in edible form, what he calls Foogos. below are some of my favorites. what makes this even better is that the choice for the type of food to use is linked to either the city or team. He hopes to create one for each NHL team, I know I'll be keeping an eye on this and will post any updates on new foogos from Scott. check out more logos at his site http://foo-gos.com/

Jim: Marty Turco

Jim sent in some more artwork, probably what I think is the most detailed to date, just great artwork to look at. here are two pieces of Chicago Blackhawks Goalie Marty Turco both red and white masks.

Sharpie art: Nikolai Khabibulin, Miikka Kiprusoff, Martin Brodeur

Jim sent in these pieces he created with sharpies, pretty cool style, looks great. I love the detail in these. Thanks Jim!

Nikolai Khabibulin

Miikka Kiprusoff

Martin Brodeur

More artwork from chuck

Chuck Mesey sent in some more artwork, Nice work!

Marc-Andre Fleury

Patrick Kane

Sidney Crosby

Staney cup Finals : Chicago Blackhawks vs. Philadelphia Flyers

Jonathan Toews

Mike Richards

Blackhawks vs. Predators

Antti Niemi

Pekka Rinne

Patrick Kane

Pencil sketch of Chicago Blackhawks Patrick Kane.

Playoffs: Blackhawks vs. Flames

I picked the Hawks in 7 I liked them out of the west.
Nikolai Khabibulin
Jarome Iginla

Dominik Hasek Career Commemorative Final

The finished art work, I took parts from every NHL team and moments from his career.