Mark Riedy’s Illustration Hits a Homerun for Louisville Slugger

When Louisville Slugger® was looking for artists to hand-paint a series of bats—and a Fender® guitar—for a branded activation at MLB’s All-Star Week in Cleveland, they found Mark’s style perfect for the project. “I thought a commemorative art piece needed to be more than a digital execution, applied mechanically onto the contoured surfaces of the bat and guitar. So this seemed like a good opportunity to go “old-school”—dust off the airbrush and paint these items by hand,” Mark explains.

Mark started with a simple idea. “I wanted to use the Reds’ 150th anniversary of professional baseball as my launching point.” The idea of a spiral timeline, marking the Reds’ World Series years, seemed perfect. “I had to deconstruct the shape in a long “ribbon” to see how the images would wrap around the bat. And the guitar presented its own challenges, working around strings, pickups and an unconventional contour shape. It was quite a challenge cutting masks on the cylindrical and curved shapes of the bat and guitar.”

The Guitar focused on imagery used for the Great American Ballpark project. The main figure is one of the characters from my “Spirit of Baseball” basrelief sculpture at the park. The stacks icons are part of Queen City’s riverboat history and I couldn’t ignore Cincinnati’s unique deco architecture. Maybe you’re a Reds fan yourself? You can bid on his guitar, and others, through the month of July.

Illustration is a custom art form. And that makes it the perfect medium for projects like this one. Of course, finding the right illustrator is important. That’s why Scott Hull Associates has illustrators with lots of different styles. Click here to check out more of Mark Riedy’s work or email Scott directly at scott@scotthull.com for help finding the perfect illustrator for your next project.