← illustrations

Applebee’s Park

It was a big deal when Lexington, Ky., got a minor league baseball team and built Applebee’s Park (renamed Whitaker Bank Ballpark in 2011). One of the fun things at the time, as I recall, was the contest to name the new team. The Lexington Horseflies was my favorite, but the boring Lexington Legends won out for some reason.

This was one of the first 3D illustrations I had published. I’d been playing around with it in my spare time, but this was by far the most involved piece I’d done to that point. The baseball balanced on the neck of a bat and drizzled in red wax just past the centerfield wall was my favorite detail — it was a nod to the wax-topped bottles of Maker’s Mark bourbon, probably a sponsor at the time.