Ryan Maloney draws New York Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner while explaining his creative process. He uses a six-source framework for ideas, builds the portrait in Procreate with loose sketching and color theory, and weaves in personal stories about loyalty to the Bills and a second-grade teacher's reaction.
Chapters
The last thing I want to do is draw anything to do with the Jets. That shiny green color, it's cool by itself, but it's in total conflict with where my loyalty lies— the Buffalo Bills. Sometimes you have to do what the boss tells you. Luke's friend is a big Jets fan, specifically Sauce Gardner fan. So for this video, so am I. Before I talk myself out of this, let's get— I was going to say saucy, but let's just draw Sauce Gardner. You know the process. Ideas Sketch lines, color shadows, highlights, details. Art is just a sport. Sport has structure. This is our drawing structure. If anyone can make me a good acronym for this, drop it in the comments. The idea. If you want to really nerd out on idea generation, I think it comes from 6 places. One is places. What do you absorb on a daily basis? What do you— what you absorb will spill over into what you do and what you become. Practice daily in the same place if possible. Jerry Seinfeld writes by hand on a yellow notebook at a desk. When you show up and do the work, so do ideas. Are you willing to just do boring work like write in a yellow notebook at a desk. I sometimes am. Pain. No pain, no gain. Resistance makes your creativity stronger. If you want to be more creative, go do painfully hard things and embarrass yourself. You'll create a bucket of painful ideas to use in your art. People. Who are you creating for? Hopefully yourself first. Who are the people you want to light up? Use this enthusiasm to make these people happy as fuel into fine ideas. Your past. Who made you? Where do you come from? Were they 7 feet tall? They write poetry. Tap into your DNA, shortcomings and all. You're gonna find ideas there. Your point of view. When I wrote Pancake Pennsylvania, I was totally stuck. I wanted to quit this book. I thought it was absolute garbage. I was trying to write Jack and the Beanstalk with pancakes and think it was gonna sell a million copies. It was when I realized I was writing about something deeper, writing about Buffalo Bills fans in Buffalo, New York, and how people's loyalty lies to the Bills masked with pancakes on top of that, the ideas popped out. Hold on to philosophy lesson because this photo caught my eye. It's got that— what's it called? The perfect spiral composition. And if I didn't want to break my focus here, I'd look it up. So let's add it in the edit. Yes, that's it. The golden spiral. I like that layout, but I just can't copy the photo. I need to use it as inspiration to get going. It's like a slingshot. We're in the second step of the drawing process and you didn't even realize it. Sketch, blue color, Crunchy Cow Pen. It's free to download. Blue tells your brain not to be perfect, to be fun, energetic, explore. Like adding an arm here, maybe some diving legs. A fun expression on Sauce's face. Gotta see the teeth. Is that his real name? No, Sauce Gardner's real name is Ahmad Gardner. Grady. The sketch is done but it never feels done. Narrowing down the drawing in the first pass is like writing a screenplay in the first pass. You're not gonna do it. Let's let this sketch breathe. Put it away for a day or two. Your brain is soon going to want to quit. Start tricking your brain and tell it you are not allowed to work on this sketch for a couple of days at least. Come back, challenge yourself, then add 1% new, 1% different. Stretch yourself, push your It's the same feeling as working out at the gym and adding weight or doing a new exercise. Line time. I used to call this phase inks, but that locked me into one style, so now we call it lines. Tomorrow I'll call it something else, keep you on your toes. Lines are the blueprint of the drawing, like the architectural drawing of the house or the painting, whatever you want to call this. Can you skip this step? Yes, Monet, go for it. But Maloney needs a coloring book page to make my next step easier. Color time. Some people paint, splash, draw in grayscale first. Have I done that? Yes. Will I do that now? Probably not. I always fear that I'll spend all this time creating this grayscale artwork and then I'll change it into colors and it won't look right. I did it for this Josh Allen drawing. It turned out okay, but Sauce, I need color. I need that jet green to inspire me, to motivate me. I need greens, lots of greens. Face mask details, fun yet frustrating. Let's see those teeth. We'll come back to those. My base colors are down. Now I play around with the hue slider because sometimes I find it to be smarter than me. Once I find a good tint, I leave the self-deprecating marks behind and I move on to the shadows. Pick a light direction, paint or draw the shadows underneath those shapes, leave a little edge of volume so it doesn't look totally flat. And are we painting or drawing here? We're Procreating. The app, not biology. Highlights, these are the light that catches on top of the objects wherever the angle of the light comes from. Don't overthink this, just do the best you can. You'll get better with this in the future. Tip I learned in high school, throw some compliments in the shadows. Compliments are the opposite on the color wheel. I hope. I'm— I'm saying this from memory, so I might get it wrong. Reds are complements to greens, purples are complements to yellows. You get the deal. Just look at the color wheel, do the opposite. This comes from the Fauves. I don't really remember this history lesson, but I remember my teacher saying, "Oh, you've got some Fauve in you." I think the Fauves would have loved football, especially the sauce. Now, look at this hot mess. A green color soup. Now the magic happens, blending, and I need to add blending to my ironclad drawing process. B for anybody who wants to add that to your acronym. Blending is all about practice. You will probably be bad at first like I was, like I could fall back into, and therefore I continue practicing. Remember, art, sport, I know you know. Detail time. This is the icing on the cake, the reward, the fun. You've decided we're going to do this no matter what. I envision someone looking at this drawing and calling out the details. Make them fun. Go the extra mile. Side story: one time in second grade, I drew my teacher and her eyes lit up at the drawing and she said, you drew the ridges on my teeth. Yes, Mrs. Student Teacher, whose name I forgot, I drew the ridges on your teeth. For this drawing, the ridges on Sauce's teeth. Okay, this is getting weird. This is how it turned out. I am not going to end this video by saying Saucy. I am not going to end this video by saying Saucy. Okay, but I have to because I'm a corny old dad on YouTube. Saucy.
