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The Ripple Effect

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One of the first boxing matches I ever watched was the title bout between Larry Holmes and Renaldo Snipes in November of 1981.  The fight was seen as a tune-up for Holmes as he waited for Gerry Cooney to agree to contract terms on their highly-anticipated bout.  Snipes entered the fight with a 22-0-0 record, but his most recent matches -- his first against quality opponents-- had been underwhelming.  Holmes would win an 11th round TKO with some minor controversy.  There are three things I remember about the fight.

The first was the shocking seventh-round knockdown that Snipes scored.  He threw two quick jabs and followed with a jarring right-hand that caught Holmes unprepared.  Holmes crumpled to the mat and stumbled face-first into the ring post when he stood up.  Snipes would later claim that Holmes had been the beneficiary of a long count, but that didn't seem to be the case.  In any event, Snipes was facing a groggy Holmes with plenty of time left in the round, but he was unable to finish him.

The second thing I remember is the final moments of the fight.  Having gained control of the fight after that seventh-round wake up call, Holmes landed two jab-hook combinations just moments apart, and the latter left Snipes stunned long enough for Holmes to calmly use his left glove to measure Snipes for four or five more punches.  Snipes seemed to be gathering himself just as the referee decided that enough is enough and stopped the fight.

The third thing, which left the most lasting impression, was a photo in the next day's paper.  A photographer had captured the moment when one of Holmes' right hands crashed into the side of Snipes' face.  Had I not seen the fight the night before, that photo would have convinced me that his jaw had been shattered into fragments.  (Just Google "Holmes Snipes photo" and you'll see a few examples.)

Those images led to this drawing, of a fighter slipping a rocket through her opponent's defenses and landing a fight-ending punch.  That's one of the things that makes boxing so compelling, the understanding that one slip can end a hard-fought battle.  Holmes dropped his guard for a split-second and almost lost his title in a tune-up. O.o;

Technical Notes: This image is an example of one of those occasions when a rough sketch works so well that I turn it into a finished work.  Usually for a scene like this I'll work on the characters and poses through a series of sketches, but now and then everything just falls into place from the start.  For coloring I tried to create a sharp contrast between saturated highlights and desaturated shadows.  I still haven't found my coloring style, but I'm enjoying the process of experimentation as I search for it.

The focal point of the image is the the face of the recipient of the punch, even though it's not the center of the image.  The center of the image is the space between the fighters.  The composition should force your eyes around the image and help you to take it all in: the fierce determination of the woman on the right and the three levels of body language on her opponent.  The top level shows her seeming to lose consciousness as the punch lands with terrific force.  The mid level shows that her upper body is still braced for the blow, and the lower level seems to relax as she prepares to go down.  Hopefully this gives an impression of motion in a still image and helps to tell a bit of a story all its own.

In the past I often will show the way the face seems to bend away from a punch as it lands, but I don't often show the ripple effect that can occur as the face absorbs and dissipates the energy from the blow.  Nothing says "pow" like a fighter's face distorting in seemingly impossible ways as it tries to keep the head from coming apart.  I could have changed the shape of the glove to make the impact seem even more powerful; that's something to keep in mind in future drawings.
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2765x2048px 2.61 MB
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