How about a magic trick? - Kari Lehtonen, Atlanta Thrashers, NHL, 2008-2009
The story
It was with great excitement David started the work with this painting. In the end of the summer 2008 David was at the movies to see the new Batman film with Heath Ledger's incredible Joker. Oh man, David loved the film and wished a goalie soon would want to have the Joker on the mask, it would be so much fun to paint, he thought.
A week had passed by when the Atlanta Trashers star goalie Kari Lehtonen gave David a call. He wanted David to paint his new mask, and David was really happy. And Kari said he wanted the Joker in the design... Bingo! The reason Kari wanted the Joker is his former Finnish team Jokerit.
Kari had a clear vision of how the design would look. After some discussion about the details David started to paint using his favourite airbrush Micron.
On one side the Joker is painted in all his evilness. The motif was created to give strong contrasts and effects that makes the Joker pop out to the max.
On the rest of the mask David created a sedate classic old school design. This makes the Joker pop out even more when the mask is turned around. An important design stroke to maximize the effect!
In the front Atlanta's cool club logo painted with cool 3D effects. Around this David painted a pinstripe graphic in red and white playing over the surface of the mask with maximum 3D effects.
To give balance to the design David on the other side created an old school graphic of Atlanta's logo and the team abbreviation ATL.
Details, details and details, as always in David's paintings. Check out the composite patterns in the base colours that lift the graphics and gives the mask a unique 3D feeling. Also the metallic effects help to give depth to the whole.