Venice Beach, CA Street Basketball Players

This black and white sports art painting of a couple of Venice Beach Ca. players ended up in the Amway Sports Arena in Orlando Florida where the NBA Orlando Magic play their home games.  The painting is 5 feet by 6 feet, acrylic on canvas.

basketball courts

Most of the players on the main court are ex, really good high school and college players.  Occasionally some ex-pros show up on the courts for a pick up a game.  These are the courts where the movie “White Men Can’t Jump” was filmed.   Think of all those great college players that did not go on to play in the pros.  Where are they and what do they do?  What do they think about the past – and the future. 

Why Paint Sports Art Figures

Me,  I don’t have much of a past and I certainly don’t have much of a future.  I don’t have “ past glory’s – just a mundane life – or as the joke goes, “living a life of quiet desperation.”   So, all in all, that is probably why I have ended up painting sports figures as I can live vicariously through the paintings, like a rabid sports fan that roots for his favorite player or team.  It’s an enjoyable pastime of beauty and inspiration. 

Art Basketball Image player dribbling the ball

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I did a series of large-scale (5 ft by 6 ft) black and white paintings for the Amway Sports Arena in Orlando Florida a couple of months ago. (Home of the Orlando Magic) I sometimes do charcoal drawings or small paintings first to see if the image is going to work well. (You can see some of those paintings further down on the blog.) I was running out of paper so I drew this basketball image of a player dribbling the ball on a map.

Art basketball. Sport image on map by sports artist John Robertson
dribbling is 10" x 14" charcoal on paper.

Art Basketball Image player dunking the ball

basketball dunk shot, basketball drawing player, basketball art, sport image basketball,

I did a series of large-scale artwork (5 ft by 6 ft) black and white paintings for the Amway Sports Arena in Orlando Florida a couple of months ago. (Home of the Orlando Magic) I sometimes do drawings or small paintings first to see if the image is going to work well. (You can see some of those paintings further down on the blog.) I was running out of paper so I drew this basketball image of a player dunking the ball on a map.

Art sport drawing Charcoal on paper map by sports artist John Robertson
dunking is 14" x 25" charcoal on paper

Art Basketball Image Players at Venice Beach, CA

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Basketball "Defense" sports art painting by John Robertson
60" x 72" acrylic on unstretched canvas

Basketball sports art. The new Amway sports arena in Orlando Florida purchased this basketball art. This is where the NBA Orlando Magic plays. The sports arena opened the first part of October. The sports image came from a photograph I took of the basketball players that play on the courts in Venice CA.  The basketball courts were the ones used when filming the  great basketball movie, "White Men Can't Jump."
Somewhere else on this blog is some more paintings I did for the Amway Sports Arena

Basketball art "The Dunk"

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The dunk shot art basketball by John Robertson
48" x 60" acrylic on unstretched canvas

A few years ago I  had painted a series of basketball paintings for Fox Sports Net who then used the sports art for a commercial promoting the upcoming NBA basketball games.  Since then I get requests from clients to paint one for them on commission.  So this is one of the basketball images I painted from the series of paintings I did for Fox Sports Net.

Art Basketball Images "Time Out”

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"Time Out" sports art basketball painting by artist John Robertson is 50" x 70" acrylic on unstretched canvas.

I photograph a lot of basketball players at the Venice Beach basketball courts for use as basketball images for my basketball art. As a sports artist the basketball courts are a good place for a variety of sport images. I like to work from my own photographs when painting sports images. Just a little bit up the beach is a skateboard park. I have gotten some good shots of the skateboarders but have not painted one yet.

Basketball Image Charcoal Drawing of Athlete Dribbling Basketball Sport Art

basketball art, basketball image, sport art, artist John Robertson

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Sports Art - Charcoal Drawings of basketball players by artist John Robertson
Basketball art is 18" x 24" charcoal on paper



I was sitting around and thought I would do a couple of basketball images, drawings in charcoal. One is of a Los Angeles Laker dunking the ball and the other is of a basketball player dribbling down the court. I was working of the skill of trying to show action and movement in the basketball art. I may use them as a basis for a large-scale black and white painting. If you scroll down on this blog you will see some of the black and white sports art I have done. The most recent were four paintings for the Amway Sport Center in Orlando Florida - where the Orlando Magic play.

Basketball art sport image artist John Robertson

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Dunk Shot Basketball art - sports artist John Robertson
48 x 84" acrylic on unstretched canvas

This basketball image of a dunk shot is one of a number of basketball images I painted for the new Amway Sports stadium in Orlando (opened the first part of Oct 2010) developed an art collection of sports images. This is where the NBA Orlando Magic plays. This basketball art of a dunk shot is part of the collection. If there is anyone that happens to be in the arena and sees some of my paintings please take a photograph of the paintings and send it to me. The painting is also up somewhere else on this blog as they bought it from existing paintings.

Basketball Painting Ten on Sunday


This painting was originally done for a book signing for the book, "Ten on Sunday: The Secret Life of Men," by author Alan Eisenstock at Village Books in Pacific Palisades, Ca. The image that I painted came from the cover of the book. I did not do the original cover for the book. The painting is approximately 50" x 70" acrylic/latex on canvas.

Jump Shot Basketball Art

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"The Jump Shot" basketball sports art painting by artist John Robertson is 48" x 60" acrylic on unstretched canvas.
As you can see in this painting the player has a nice hand and arm extension above his head. It is suppose to be an easy shot to make from a distance but I could not do it very well from any distance. I was easy to block – being short. And being short the only thing I can dunk is cookies into milk.