Jannik Sinner interview for Financial Times // Swedish Foxhound and Fox (1885) by Bruno Liljefors // Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz at the final match of Roland Garros 2025
I'm watching Jannik Sinner wave to a kid in the crowd in the middle of a game, play in his lucky (washed) blood stained shoes, smile to his box when he wins an important point and he just chirped to himself after saving a break point. Who is this guy. I love him.
well yes you're right child.... the ohbh is majestic and superior in every way to the cumbersome thbh... you know who's a specialist in that barberic shot? why yes your compatriot. i heard they are slowing down tennis courts far and wide to compliment that heavy handed monstrosity... apologies, you were saying?
“If you want to be one of the best, then, to me, there also has to be obsession. Passion has to be something natural. Obsession to me is about how much someone wants it, no? I’ve always put tennis first. I’ve always tried to give my best, always put tennis first, and I keep doing it because it’s what I chose to do. So either I give it my all, or I don’t do it at all”
Between Points, pastel on paper, 31.5x20in (80x50cm)
At Wimbledon in 2023, I had the chance to watch Jannik play a Frenchman, Quentin Halys, from the first row of Court 3 in the third round. Jannik was still ranked outside the Top 10 at that point in the tournament, but would make it inside the Top 10 following a semifinal result.
While watching him play that day, I had a feeling it would be the last time I would see him on such a small court. Indeed, from that point on, he would play only on Centre Court or Court No. 1, and I would never get to photograph him from that close--at least, not during a match! One of the photos from that day became the first thing that popped into my head when I thought to try pastels, one year on when I had started to do art. At that point I'd only done graphite pencil sketches, and didn't know if I could handle color.
I ended up going for other projects--a good thing, because while I might've done OK with this two years ago, I lacked the confidence in drawing and understanding of the pastel medium to achieve the effects that would have suited this image best. While you'll often hear people refer to "pastel paintings," or "painting with pastel," pastel is, like all dry media, properly a drawing medium. Unlike true painting with wet media and a brush, the act of applying color directly from a stick of dry pigment encourages a form of mark-making that is distinctive to the medium--if you will let it be.
In my first big pastel, I tried blending everything out for a nearly photorealistic look (mainly because I didn't know which details I could do away with, and the more I looked the more detail I saw). While that's all fine and well--academic realism is a legitimate style--it doesn't really let the medium of pastel sing. As I've learned since, pastel really shines when you lean into the mark-making, when instead of broad patches of flat or perfectly blended color you go for optical layering, squiggles, crosshatching--drawing, in other words.
That's what I've been trying to do since, and what I've attempted to do here: produce something that looks like a drawing as opposed to a painting (or a photograph).
Some process pics and comments:
(1) Face--I've changed up a bit how I tackle things: instead of beginning with it and worrying about the background later, I laid in some of the background around the face to help judge the values of the latter better (very important, because against a dark background even fair skin tones are actually darker than you think).
I consistently have this problem of making people's faces not dark enough--and even with the background put in first, I still ended up doing it this time! I had to edit his face later, after the whole thing was done. I have two theories as to what is causing this issue. The first is to do with the fact that I work from a reference image projected from a screen. These days devices often automatically adjust the screen's brightness to match ambient light levels; I generally complete my faces in one day, working late into the afternoon, and this means that the time I'm putting finishing touches on a face--highlights and so forth--is right around the time daylight is declining and the screen is brighter than it should be, brighter certainly than it was when I started working in the morning.
The second, not mutually exclusive possibility is to do with ... I guess this is a phenomenon related to atmospheric perspective? If you work with traditional media, you'll probably know that colors and values look different when you are really close to a piece, i.e. arm's length or working distance away, versus when you are at a typical viewing distance of two or three meters away. I was getting the colors and values right from close up; but from further away dark passages become less dark unless you really go bold with them. This is precisely why art instructors will bang on about the importance of stepping back from your work frequently. Something I'm still not consistently good about; but I digress ...
(2) Hands. Pretty straightforward here.
(3) Clothes. Like hands, they don't generally trouble me, but strongly backlit white fabric is always a special challenge. Before tackling the shirt I spent a good 20 minutes squinting at the reference photo wondering, What the !@#$ is that base color?? It looks grayish-blue, but the closest match was actually a violet. Here in the left-hand images you can see the initial (blocking) layer of the shirt and shorts being composed of a variety of these purples bordering on blue (ultramarine, to be specific).
After two years of pastel-collecting, I have a lot of candy-colored tools at my disposal. The flat pebble-shaped pastels, from Diane Townsend, are nice for the initial blocking layer: they contain pumice, which provides grit for subsequent layers to adhere to. The square ones from Terry Ludwig have become my workhorses, but despite coming in 789 colors, they did not have the deep, saturated greens and teals I needed for the background.
Enter my Unisons, and a random stick of Sennelier No. 957 Imperial Green that I'd bought online two years ago, using a digital color swatch, hoping it would be a match for the background of this exact piece. (It was.)
So. Two years late, there he is, memorialized as he was on a sunny English summer day, twenty-two years old and on the cusp of greatness.
I say, better late than never!
📸 @purblind-dragon | Wimbledon 2023 R3 Sinner vs Halys | Canon R3 + EF 70-200mm f/2.8
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