Empty Hand

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Thursday installment of sketch-a-day.

Today's sketch is of a karateka. I wanted to do a very loose sketch, with heavy black lines to try and emulate a brush loaded with black ink. I felt that this style of freeform sketching really lends it's self well to martial arts sketches.

The inspiration for the sketch actually came from watching the commercial for the upcoming UFC 104 featuring Loyoto "the Dragon" Machida defending his belt. I didn't really know much about Machida, I had been out of the UFC scene for a while while he was making a name for himself but he became a name to follow for me when I heard that he knocked out Rashad Evans. But more importantly, that he has a karate background. It should be no surprise that I tend to navigate more to the Okinowan arts, and their practitioners, but I remember thinking "allright, a karateka just knocked out the Light Heavyweight champion. Time to give karate a little more respect MMA."

And during the commercial for 104 it shows Machida practicing some forms and kicks in his karate gi. After seeing that three or four times while watching TUF episode 4, I ended up looking Machida up online and found out some very interesting facts about him. He comes from a very famous karate family, and not only is he excellent at karate, but he also started practicing, and competing in Sumo and Jiujutsu as well! How awesome is that! Sumo!

The Dragon is now a fighter that I will be following a lot more closely.

Anyway, one of the stances he was in during the commercial reminded me of a Kyokushin stance, so I decided to draw this sketch based of that imagery. It was created in CS3 on my MacBook using my Bamboo tablet.

Hope you all dig it, and I'll see you back here tomorrow for yet another Friday sketch.