I have one very memorable moment from watching
Tracy McGrady play in person. I was lucky enough to have tickets to a Raptors game when they were playing against
Michael Jordan's Bulls in February 1998. All I remember of the play is Tracy McGrady jumping from way out and throwing down a dunk on
Scottie Pippen. He actually missed the dunk, but hung on the rim for a little while with Scottie beneath him. It was very impressive and a bit of a glimpse of his talent in his rookie season. Despite being a Bulls fan I still wish that dunk would have gone down as it probably would rank amongst some of the best ever.

With the
Houston Rockets up for this week's illustration I decided to paint
Tracy McGrady. I had some requests to paint NBA legend
Hakeem Olajuwon and I was putting together some ideas for that piece when my brother text messaged me. He told me I should paint someone from the current team since they have just won
20 straight games (second best streak in NBA history).
I agreed and started to think up some ideas. The process started by researching rockets. I thought it would be cool to paint McGrady as a rocket scientist, posing with a couple of test rockets with schematics on a chalkboard. From there I developed the idea into making McGrady a rocket
scientist/Rocketeer type figure with a
steampunk (elements from the steam powered era combined with modern or fictional technology) influenced fashion.

Coincidentally, as I was working on this piece I learned that
Dave Stevens, the creator of the Rocketeer, passed away.
The border includes schematics of rockets and was a lot of fun to draw. I really enjoy adding technical details to my illustrations.
It was a lot of fun to work on. I tried to make the Houston Rockets jersey subtly visible in his outfit. To push the steampunk direction I made the buttons on his jacket and his earrings appear like bolts and machine parts. I also had a lot of fun drawing the gears at the top of the image and the billows of smoke.
You can see this piece larger on the Portraiture page or on SLAMonline in the Links by Lang Whitaker.