Check out this article on my MMA artwork!
Hey Dojo readers, check out this article that the nice folks over at www.bjjinmma.com did on my artwork:
http://bjjinmma.com/blogs/you-want-some-unique-mma-artwork-we-know-guy
Excerpt:
My partner and I started this site in hopes of meeting people like us. People who enjoyed the sport of MMA and more specifically, people who enjoy the ground game of Mixed Martial Arts. They also have to have a slight sense of humor in order to enjoy our site at all. Recently, we told you about some of the worst clothing we have ever seen in MMA. One site visitor led us to this horrific piece of clothing. Which, by the way, he was right. It was the single worst MMA shirt I have ever seen. This BJJ in MMA’er was known simply as JM. As we learned more about JM (by facebook stalking), we learned that this guy does some great work of his own. Take a minute today to check out his stuff and you may want to get some pretty incredible and rare pieces of art to add to your collection.
One thing we noticed is that this guy had a lot of rare and unique hand drawn MMA artpieces in his collection. Upon more research, we found out that he’s the artist drawing these things.
The guy trains MMA and BJJ, can draw some really great pictures, and is a vistor to our site. The perfect Tri-fecta if you ask us. Something else I noticed very quickly, was that his drawings weren’t the typical tough-guy pieces of art. Many times, the fighter he is portraying is smiling; a rare find when people try to potray our sport and fighters.
JM is actually a man by the name of James-Michael Smith. Smith did a great in-depth interview with the guys over at IronForgesIron.com, in which he talked about his style of art.
Fighters often have incredibly diverse personalities and there is a ton of misinformation among the general public about what fighters are like. My portraits serve to showcase the personhood of these greatest of athletes, rather than the stereotypical “fighter persona” like all the skulls, foil-stamped t-shirts, gaudy designer jeans, Jersey Shore alpha male personalities we see. It’s so much more enjoyable doing pieces that show the lighter side of the sport.”
We couldn’t agree with Smith more and you can check out that full interview here.
Not only is the guy a great artist, a portion of all of the proceeds from his print sales go to help the International Justice Mission. The IJM is an organization that helps to fight against many terrible practices in the world including global slave trade. Not just a great artist, a stand up guy also.
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Take a second to read the full article over at http://bjjinmma.com/blogs/you-want-some-unique-mma-artwork-we-know-guy
And while you’re there, show ’em some love for highlighting the work of your favorite artist/Bible geek!
JM
ps: This is the shirt I showed them that is the undisputed worst-designed shirt in MMA clothing history…
Categories: Arts and Culture, Blog, Martial Arts