Some paintings begin with an image. Others begin with a memory.

This one began with both.

I’ve been a Los Angeles Dodgers fan since I was a little boy. Baseball has always been more than just a game to me. It’s connected to childhood, to summers and to the players we admired.

I also grew up with a connection to Japanese culture through my grandfather, who was from Okinawa. That part of my family history has always been meaningful to me, and I wanted to explore a way of bringing these two influences together through my artwork.

Shohei Ohtani seemed like the perfect subject.

Over the past several months, I’ve been exploring vintage poster design, particularly the bold, simplified compositions found in early and mid-20th-century advertising, screen printing, and lithography.

What fascinates me about these older designs is how much they accomplish with so little.

A limited palette. Strong shapes. Carefully considered typography. An image that communicates almost immediately without needing an abundance of detail.

For this painting, I wanted to draw inspiration from traditional Japanese graphic design while maintaining the feeling of an old baseball advertisement or collectible sports poster.

The large red sun became the visual anchor of the composition. Mount Fuji, the cherry blossoms, and the Japanese lettering help establish the cultural influence without competing with the central figure.

Ohtani himself needed to remain the focus.

One of the most interesting challenges of painting in this style is learning what to leave out.

Working in gouache, I deliberately simplified Ohtani’s uniform, face, and equipment into larger areas of color. Rather than trying to reproduce every shadow or small detail, I wanted the shapes themselves to create the form.

It’s a different way of thinking about painting.

Gouache is particularly well suited to this approach because of its beautiful matte finish and ability to produce strong, opaque passages of color. It allows me to build an image that feels somewhere between a traditional painting and a vintage printed advertisement.

The challenge is finding that balance between simplicity and character.

Too much detail, and the image begins to lose its graphic strength. Too little, and it can lose the personality that makes the subject recognizable.

Throughout the process, I kept returning to that question: What does this painting really need?

What I appreciate most about this piece is that it brings together several things that have been part of my life for a very long time.

My childhood love of the Dodgers. My grandfather’s Okinawan roots. My admiration for Japanese art and design. And my continued interest in creating paintings that feel as though they could belong to another era.

There is something especially fitting about painting Ohtani in this way. He represents a remarkable connection between Japanese and American baseball, two traditions that have developed their own histories while sharing a love for the same game.

I didn’t want this to feel like a modern sports advertisement.

I wanted it to have a sense of history, even though the subject is very much part of the present.

Something that might remind you of a poster discovered in an old shop, carefully preserved for decades.

This painting is also part of a larger creative direction I’ve been pursuing in the studio.

I’m increasingly interested in the relationship between fine art and vintage commercial illustration, and how the visual language of old advertisements can be reinterpreted through traditional painting.

There is an honesty to these older designs that appeals to me. Their imperfections, restrained palettes, and simplified forms give them a character that I don’t always find in contemporary digital imagery.

Painting them by hand adds another layer.

The subtle variations in color, the edges of the brushwork, and the small inconsistencies become part of the finished piece.

Those are the things that remind us a person made it.

And for me, that’s important.

I’m pleased with where this painting ended up, but perhaps more importantly, I enjoyed the process of getting there.

It allowed me to explore a different approach to painting while connecting with a few pieces of my own history.

Sometimes the most rewarding projects are the ones that remind us why we started making art in the first place.

Thank you to everyone who followed along as this painting came together. I truly appreciate the encouragement, comments, and interest throughout the process.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Are there other baseball legends, historic teams, or cultural subjects you would enjoy seeing interpreted in this vintage painted style?

Until next time, thanks for following along from the studio.

Pete Mishler