KC artist John Boyd Martin’s latest subject? Soon-to-be Royals Hall of Famer Ned Yost

As John Boyd Martin studied Ned Yost to create the portrait that will be unveiled with Yost’s Sept. 2 induction into the Royals Hall of Fame, he pondered not just Yost’s appearance, but his persona.

The sort of stuff the renowned 86-year-old portrait artist once described to The Star as seeking the “inner beauty, their quirks, their history, their hearts.”

“Above all, (a portrait) should create a sense of the personality — who the person really is,” he writes on his web page.

In this case, he distilled that through numerous photos, of course, including front views and side views. And through his recollections of Yost’s disposition in the dugout and when being interviewed.

He processed the ups and downs of Yost’s managerial career in Kansas City, all he’d read about him and a few encounters with Yost over the years.

And he even thought about the life-threatening fall Yost took in 2017 on his Georgia farm.

From all that, Martin determined the aura he wanted to convey from a single prototype photo of Yost— who guided the Royals to those enchanted back-to-back American League championships and the 2015 World Series title en route to becoming the winningest manager in team history.

“It gave me a feeling that he had a lot of inner strength, you know? He really did …” Martin said earlier this month as he stood beside the portrait he was beginning to finalize in the studio of his Overland Park home. “That’s what I saw about Ned.”

That prevailing vision has distinguished Martin’s work for decades — some 75 years now since the Ottawa, Kansas, native sold a drawing of Notre Dame star Johnny Lujack, derived from the cover of Sport magazine, to a neighbor for a dollar.

“That’s when I turned professional,” he said, laughing.

Those discerning insights you’ll soon see in the Yost portrait help explain why golf immortal Tom Watson’s office features several works of Martin, including the 2004 “Mount Rushmore” of Kansas City sports featuring George Brett, Len Dawson, Buck O’Neil and Watson that Martin created to benefit the ALS Association.

The other day, when The Star visited Watson on another matter, Watson admired how that piece captured both the details and essence of the subjects who make up just a few of Martin’s vast canvas.

The main living area of the longtime home from which Martin plans soon to downsize features a virtual pantheon of his work depicting not merely Kansas City sports greats, but an American sports panorama:

Here and within can be found vivid images of Joe DiMaggio and Bob Cousy, Willie Mays and Stan Musial, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino.

Murals that enlivened the NCAA Hall of Fame and his alma mater, KU, and the University of Texas, among others. And the artistry of All-Star Game and World Series and Final Four program covers and Chiefs and Royals media guides and yearbooks.

And on and on it goes, including a number with signed testimonials:

*DiMaggio: “John, you’re (sic) works are Hall of Fame Material.”

*KU men’s basketball coach Bill Self, among those in a celebration of the 2008 national title: “John: What a great gift! I wish I was only ½ as good at what I do as you are at what you do. Thanks again, you’re great!”

*Dean Smith: “John — Random House should have used your painting of me on the cover (of his book) since your work makes me look good (Ha!). You have a special talent, and I send best wishes for continued success!”

The success, including nearly 1,000 commissioned works in collegiate and professional sports, academia, business, medicine and government, come from a drive within that is sustaining Martin now even as he’s more physically challenged with age.

He’s still got to do the KU ‘22 championship mural, he said, but that likely will be the last of its kind for him.

While he’s got no real notion to retire — ever, it seems — Martin is in a reflective time as he works on a book about his career.

He thinks about the remarkable journey that grew out of being lucky to be born with “an eye … a power of observation” and the fortune to get encouragement to engage that power.

His father, Andrew Martin, was the president of Ottawa University. When John was 4 or 5 years old and started drawing in blank pages of his father’s books, he said, his father “didn’t take too well to that.” But the solution wasn’t to punish him but to get him a pad and pencil.

From whatever he was doodling, he soon was tracing Time magazine covers during World War II. His memory for that remains uncanny: As he reflected on one cover featuring British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, he alluded to “a little symbol in the background … a tank or something.”

As it happens, the Feb. 1, 1943 Time cover of Montgomery features a tank over his right shoulder.

Martin became so consumed with sketching that he’d even take his pad and pencil along when his dad was preaching in church. Once, he drew a caricature of a friend of his father’s who had nodded off.

And when the friend asked to see what turned out to be a depiction of him asleep, his father and the friend could only laugh.

The green light kept him going, so he kept exploring.

And he kept getting that kind of reinforcement — even when he might have gotten in trouble. In a psychology class his junior year at Ottawa High, he got caught doing caricatures of classmates.

The teacher told him “this is the last time” … but not before he told him to go ahead and draw everyone in the class and put all the work up on display.

As much as he always loved sports, though, Martin didn’t foresee making this realm such a part of his life’s signature.

At KU, he earned his degree in fine arts, with an emphasis on illustration and graphic design. He drew or cartooned for the Daily Kansan, Rock Chalk Revue and the alumni magazine but with no particular trajectory towards sports art.

After graduation in 1959, he answered a newspaper ad and got his first job in the art department of Western Auto. It wasn’t until a few years later at his third job, as art director for the Valentine Radford ad agency, that he became engaged with sports art.

It started in earnest with an ad campaign to “Join The Wolfpack” for the Chiefs, a client for whom he also would design renderings to promote suites at the newfangled Arrowhead Stadium and a 22-by-17-foot, seven-layer montage for the rotunda lobby. He even had a hand in designing the first scoreboard graphics at Arrowhead.

One thing led to another out at the Truman Sports Complex with work for the Royals, and Martin was commissioned to do the All-Star Game cover for the 1973 version at brand-new Royals (Kauffman) Stadium.

As the years went by and his hobby became his passion became his livelihood, Martin became better connected and represented through vital mentors and agents to whom he’s forever grateful.

His work led him to fascinating relationships with countless compelling figures, in and out of sports. It took him to an untold number of places and can be found in some 90 cities around the world.

But as Martin is “fading into the sunset,” as he put it, in “the overtime” of life, the best parts of the journey seem close to home.

Fifty years after his first work for the Royals, it’s a full-circle feeling to be commissioned for yet another of their Hall of Famers in Yost — another iconizing by an icon himself.