Basketballers

These are the projects I have been working on for the last week. They are for the basketball team I have been coaching since the first of the year. The wood "pictures" are about 15 inches high, and 10 inches wide. I had to do something different for the kid in the middle, because I had him last year, so he already had one.

Since I am a stick-figure artist...I have to "cheat" on the images. I take their picture, print it out, trace it on the wood with carbon paper, wood-burn parts of it, then finish them with acrylic paint. Some pieces of 1x2 boards complete the frame. The hardest part is doing the facial features with my cheap wood-burner. It makes you hate eyes, glasses, ears, and especially noses. "WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE TO HAVE NOSTRILS?"

It is a league called Upward that tries to mix basketball with a dash of religion. My church has the Junior and Senior High ages. These boys are 7th and 8th graders.

It is a tough league to coach. 95 % are not quite good enough to make their school teams, so it makes for a wide discrepancy in talent. Some can't dribble or shoot, so you just try to get them to play some defense, and see some improvement before the season is over.

I gave the kids their boards today. I am abandoning them for the last four weeks to go to Florida. My assistant will take over. They all seemed to like their likeness on the wood, although one kid asked me why I didn't make him slimmer. I wanted to give him the old line..."Pictures don't lie"...but thought it would be too harsh.

Woke up this morning to 8 degrees F, and 3-4 inches of snow.
It has warmed up this afternoon to 14F. Using the snowblower on 3 driveways this morning was bone-chilling. BRRR-effic!!

I blurred out the last names because I didn't get the model consent forms signed.