Old Sketch Cards (Edited, but still possibly NSFW)

I was going through the old scan folders that were still on this computer and editing the sketch cards into into individual pics for posting on The Sketch Card Page, so I thought I’d toss ’em up in a blog post while I was at it.  Enjoy.

Starfire..

Dunno who this one is by.  I literally only started keeping track since the last two or three sketch card-related posts.  Great card though.  I think it was a pick up from some charity thing.  Well worth the couple bucks I paid, and then some.

Dani Moonstar by MRam (Edited)..

Whoa!  Sexytime Dani Moonstar.  I won a pair of commissions from MRam on eBay.  Figured I might as well go for the nudity since that’s what he’s known for anyway.  Dani and the next card were who I chose.  Both are edited for obvious NSFW reasons.

Raven sketch card by MRam..

You were expecting somebody else?  You know I’m all about the Raven.  MRam does fine work. 😉

Raven by Banky Farano..

These last three come from an epic several person sketch card trade in a Facebook group.  I know I posted the cards I did for everyone else, but it doesn’t appear I ever got around to showing what I got in return.

Raven by Juan Fontanez..

We all did a sketch card for each other (in one case, we did two apiece).  It was a good way to do get experience by doing a lot of different cards (8 total) in a short amount of time, and get exactly what you wanted in return.  And in return, I got Ravens.  Lots and lots of Ravens.  Mwahahahaha…

Raven by Ashleigh Popplewell..

And the best one of all was this magnificent Ashleigh Popplewell classic.  I believe I did a Jareth from Labyrinth in return for this.

That’s all for this one.  I should be able to do at least one more post like this when I’ve edited the rest.  Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next…

The Sketch Card Sale-A-Thon Part 2

Time now for the next bunch of sketch cards I picked up all from this one seller.

Mockingbird by Mauro Fodra..

This one is for the miscellaneous licensed Marvel sketch card page and it is pretty fantastic for the just under $8 price tag.  Definitely one of the nice Fodras.

Dagger by Johndell Snead..

Breakin’ up the Mauro Fodra-fest (there are two more coming) with some Daggers.  Here’s a nice shot by Johndell Snead.  I wish I had the skillz to do anything remotely dynamic like that.

Dagger by Stefanie Battalene..

This is card is phenomenal.  It almost looks it glows.  Stefanie Battalene is a top-notch artist and I’m super psyched that I’ll have at least three sketch cards by her in my binder when this sketch card buying frenzy is all said & done.  Outstanding work.

She-Hulk by Mauro Fodra..

This was also a nice effort for the same price as the Mockingbird.  I like it when She-Hulk actually has muscles.

She-Hulk by Felipe Alves..

It’s not an absolute necessity though.  This is the other Felipe Alves card I mentioned in the prior post, and despite lack of defined muscles, it is also good.

Scarlet Witch/ She-Hulk puzzle by Mauro Fodra..

Another Mauro Fodra.  Not sure what to do with it though.  Puzzle won’t work on She-Hulk page cuz one isn’t She-Hulk, and I won’t break them up.  But it won’t go on the misc. Marvel full color page cuz She-Hulk is on it.  So I guess I’m gonna have to start some other page for it.

That’s all for today.  We’ll do the third part of this saga once they get here and have been scanned.  Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next…

The Sketch Card Sale-A-Thon Part 1

There has been a certain seller on eBay with tons of Marvel sketch cards that has been marking them down a great deal.  Enough that way too many pretty nice ones have fallen into my price range.  My sketch card page has suddenly started to fill out a bit, and this is why.  There’s so much that I’m splitting this into at least two posts (I still have three more on the way).  So without further ado, here is what I have picked up in the last month or so of going absolutely bananas on sketch cards.

Dani Moonstar by Stefanie Battalene..

There are multiple Battalenes in this bunch.  Her style is probably my favorite amongst my pickups.  I sense a hint of manga in it and it just looks unique, especially on the more colorful ones.

Rogue by Stefanie Battalene..

See what I mean?  And just wait until you see the other two in later posts.

Rogue by Bridgit Scheide..

This wasn’t originally on my radar and kind of grew on me over time.  Probably the one closest to my “I could make one this good” standards, but eh, I like it regardless. 🙂

Rogue by Jessica Hickman..

Jessica Hickman has been on my shortlist of sketch card artist wants for awhile, so to get one by her for under $9 is pretty cool.

Rogue by Felipe Alves..

Without question, I think this was the best card available by this artist.  I do have one more by him I also quite liked to post next time though, so you can be the judge.

That’ll do for now.  More sketch cards that aren’t by me again next time.  As always, thanks for stopping by!

Until our next…

The Centerpiece!

Something really really amazingly beyond cool came in the mail yesterday.  I don’t even know where to begin… But I guess the beginning will do.  As you know, I have a Sarita, aka “Dark Angel” Sarah Stock, supercollection going.  It’s pretty great.  I’m not sure why, but she (and to a lesser extent Hamada) was who I was drawn to when TNA brought in a bunch of women wrestlers to fill out the Knockouts division.  And even though she was way underutilized, she hung around quite awhile and did some good work in TNA and was part of the Knockouts great early run.

She has a fair amount of cards from her stint in TNA, nearly all of which I have acquired at least one version of, and they tend to be pretty inexpensive.  I’ve even amassed a trio of 1/1s, though they do tend to push the upper limits of my card budget.

Anyway, I’ve still been following along with her and her career since she joined up on Twitter at some point after leaving TNA.  She’s been splitting her time between Japan & Mexico and has enjoyed a good amount of success.  She’s always seemed pretty cool and easy to root for in the limited interaction I’ve had with her on there.  Which leads us to about a week & a half ago.

I powered up my internets to find a new 1/1 Sarita card had surfaced on the ol’ eBay.  Much to my dismay, however, it had a BIN of $500 on it!  Boo-urns.  So like I am want to do, I took to twitter to passively-aggressively whine about it.  I am a whiny ass sometimes and Twitter is a good place for anonymous whining, what can I say…

But then a funny thing happened.  The Dark Angel herself replied back, saying she would send me “something even cooler for free”.  After confirming she was for realz about it, I sent her my address.  And yesterday, from south of the border… it arrived.

What arrived, you may ask?  Behold!

Wrist/arm thing from sleeveless side..

Could it be?!

Oh my..

Yes!

The top was too big for to fit in one shot..

A full set of wrestling gear!

One side had a sleeve is why it wouldn’t fit..

I literally had tears in my eyes as I pulled each piece out.

The rest of the sleeve..

How freakin’ unbelievably cool is this?!

The other side of the unattached wrist/arm piece..

Oh yeah, each item is also signed!

The separate wrist/arm piece signature..

The bottoms..

The signature on the top is on the inside..

Like all things in life really (especially my own), my digital camera is… hit-or-miss.  So if you can’t quite read it, this is what they say:

Sarita

Dark Angel (with wings on the outside)

-2014- ♥

Briefs back..

This is all just so unreal… I still don’t know if it’s fully sunk in.

Other side of the top..

They smelled lovely, btw.  I mean, wait… Ha!  I didn’t get all creepy about it!  They just had a powerful perfume-y scent you didn’t have to be right up by to catch.  Was very intoxicating and will stick with me for awhile.  Yaharr… Moving on.

Other side of sleeve..

Rest of other side of sleeve..

Oh and check this out!  I immediately recognized this gear from somewhere, but a Google search didn’t find what I was looking for.  But then I checked my own collection.

Immortalized in card form..

Yep, I’m pretty sure that she sent me the same gear she’s wearing in this card.  This was already way beyond the call, but that somehow makes all of this even more insanely cool.  And all because I was a whiny tool on twitter.  That’s… um, that’s probably not the lesson you should take away from all of this. 😛

Anyway, I am so beyond grateful and humbled by this gift.  I mentioned when I sent her my address that I couldn’t in good conscience accept it for free, even though my promise of sending some original art in return seems so paltry in comparison now.  But I guess that means I just gotta step my art game way up to make it worthwhile.

Thank you again, Dark Angel!  You are fantastic and amazing and I am down 4-Life!

Until our next…

A Trade Post?!

Ryno!

Yes indeed… Having successfully fished for artistic complements, now we’re going to do an actual, honest-to-goodness trade post.  I’m no good at getting these up even when I trade regularly, but here goes.

These come to us from Brad’s Blog.  Let’s have a look!

Old timey-ish Cubby baseball mans..

Mostly…new…timier…Cubby…baseball…mans?

The big fellas..

Love dat Ichiro, although I’m unsure where exactly they pulled the black swatch from (the undershirt?).  But anyway, this is only my second relic of him even though I’ve collected him basically since I started blogging in back in the long long ago of 2008.  The manupatch is one Topps’ better efforts since they started doing them, in my never humble opinion.  The ® being on the patch itself also greatly amuses me for some reason.  And the Chris Sale is #’ed /50 and is a fantastic addition to my newly reinstated Single Page dedicated to him.

Seeing as this will basically be the first time I have managed to get out during daylight hours since it dipped below zero for three days straight a couple weeks ago, my end of this deal finally going to go out today.  It was supposed be out immediately before that stretch of frozen hellscapedness, but I didn’t make it out until like 8pm that Sunday, and my sleep cycle has been super broken ever since.  I am still a wreck of a human being, in case you were wondering.  But I did throw something extra I remembered I had that will hopefully make the wait a little more worthwhile.

That’s all I got for now.  A few other trades are being prepped for February, & I might be able slip one more small one into this month.  Who knows what happens next?

The Shadow knows…

Card-Sketch-Cards

When it’s nice out, I walk to the mall to draw in center court every once in a great while.  Since I don’t have a computer with me when I do this, I have to buy a pack of cards and use a good player for reference.  Here’s the couple I have side-by-side views of the sketch card and the regular card of…

First up, Stephen Strasburg..

It was a good thing I pulled this card, because it was probably the only one in the pack that was worthy of being drawn.

Tulo, with background color..

The watercolor pencils gave it a nice touch.  I suppose I should do the other four like that one of these days.  Speaking of which, here are the three I didn’t to get side-by-side scans with.

Albert Pujols..

Jackie Bradley Jr.

Evan Gattis..

The latter trio came from series two.  Pujols got a weird ding on the back from me carrying them around in my arting backpack a bunch.  It also occurs to me I’m missing the Jurickson Profar I did based off his U&H card… It doesn’t look like I ever scanned it.  Weird.  It is in the box with all the rest, so I will try to remember to scan it and post it whenever I have another batch of art to post up.

But anyway, I will close by saying these are all available for sale or trade.  Do keep them out of harm’s way if you are interested though.  I do not have fixative, nor do I really know how to use it.  Erasers and direct sunlight are big no-no’s.

That’s all I got.  Hit me up if interested.  Stroking my ego with compliments on my otherworldly skillz is also nice. 😛

And now to watch an episode or two of Fairy Tail (the anime resolution is going well thanks to this and the glorious insanity that is Space Dandy) and then hit the hay.  Stay tuned next time for my first trade post in just short of for forever.  Thanks for stopping by!

Me make pretty…

LOLcards #1

‘Sup, dawg?

New-ish Sketch Cards Pickups

Picked these up towards the end of last year.  Scanned ’em the day after Christmas.  Posting them now.

DC Women of Legend Raven..

The rare Raven from a licensed set..  This was by far the least expensive of my quartet of licensed set Ravens, at a hair under $15 with free shipping.  None of the others were under $20.  Hopefully with regular sets coming out again, the price of DC sketch cards starts dropping off so I can get more Ravens in the $10-15 range.  That would be fantastic.

Raven by CK Russell..

This outstanding PSC comes from via eBay from my frequently moving Canadian friend Cara.  She is the main reason I got into sketch cards in the first place, both as an artist and a collector.

Dawnstar..

This is also by Cara, my first Dawnstar sketch card.  This is the main reason I picked up the lot of three Legion of Superheroes sketches.  Here are the other two:

Apparition..

Cosmic Boy..

I will (reluctantly) consider sale or trade offers if anyone wishes to make Apparition or Cosmic Boy a part of their collections.  Hit me up.  Also, go follow Cara on Twitter & see about a commission or something, eh?

And that’s all I got for now.  Thank you for stopping by!

Until our next…

2014

I’m not much for resolutions and I know anything I put here is going to fail miserably.  But what the hey.  These are my goals for 2014, in no particular order.

Collecting

1.) Mostly Finish Fergie Jenkins playing career run- Pending COMC shipment, I will have gotten all of Fergie’s solo, non-league leaders Topps cards from the 1970s.  So, barring oddballs and OPC, which are not major priorities. I’ll just need his ’68, some league leaders from the ’70s, any SSPCs, and most of his ’80s cards, none of which should cost too much.

2.) Get Ryne Sandberg’s other two RCs- I have a Fleer and two Topps Ryno RCs, so I need his OPC and Donruss.

3.) Complete 12 trades- Averaging one a month shouldn’t be too hard… right?  We already have one pending, two if you count Shot Not Taken being always pending.

4.) Complete any three sets- Propaganda Posters, Diamond Stars, and some year of A&G Highlight Sketches look like the easiest options, but we’ll see.

5.) Complete the following Single Page Sensations-

2011 Topps Legend Variation SPs

2011 Topps Diamond Legend Variation SPs

2011 Topps Diamond Die-Cuts- Sale and Winfield Single Pages have been reinstated, so I need two to replace them.

2012 Bowman Chrome Legends in the Making Die-Cuts

2012 Finest Faces of the Franchise Die-Cuts- I was very on the fence about these until I actually got them in my hands.  I like them.  I will keep them (I  may still be willing to part with certain ones for the time being though).

2013 Topps Museum Collection Canvas Collection

Victoria/Tara

Luol Deng

Carlos Santana

Any combination of five others.

Any two from the Sketch Card Page.

The sketch cards might prove difficult, but none of the rest should require a great deal of expense or challenge.

6.) At least 30 new 1960 Topps Cards- This has really trailed off.  Out of the 30, I want a minimum of 5 superstar/Hall of Famer/common high numbers.

7.) Land at least 10 more key rookies- Andre Dawson, Ichiro Suzuki, Vlad Guerrero, Nomar Garciaparra, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, and Don Mattingly are the highest on my list.  I’d be very happy to land any one of them in the coming year.

8.) Complete 5 more trifectas- Almost everything I’m close on trifecta-wise is attainable, except Kosuke, because he has no autograph cards that I know of.  Peanut Tillman lacks severely in the relic department, but he does have one.  Even lesser Ladainian Tomlinson autos can be had for around $25 on occasion, so finishing these enough of these is just a matter of making them a priority.

9.) Break the 100 card mark of another player- I’ve been over 100 with Aramis Ramirez for a little while now.  Ichiro and Vlad are my next closest, and I feel like I might be able to get there on one of them, especially if trades pick up.

10.) Pay off my old debts- There are a couple trades from 2013 I still need to send out, and I found someone on twitter awhile back that I flaked out on like three years ago.  Those will go out soon, one possibly as early as today.

Blog

1.) At least 75 posts this year.

2.) At least 25 non-baseball card related- Art, crappy poetry, short stories, life in general, reviews, recipes, I’m up for any whim really.

Life

1.) Finally start hitting the gym-  This won’t start until I think the resolutioners have mostly cleared out though.

2.) Rededicate myself to running- I hit a wall last summer and never really recovered, even though I still walked a ton.  I’m starting to get it back though.  I’ve jogged the full, 2+ mile trip over to the parents twice recently.

3.) Rededicate myself to eating healthier- I don’t look hideous and haven’t gained a lot of weight, but I feel like I really fell off the wagon the last couple months of 2013.

4.) Finish most of the old sketch cards I’ve never gotten around to completing- I did a few awhile back, now for the other bajillion.

5.) Complete at least 30 new portraity sketches of real people- Well, I’ve started one so far.  Sketch cards count, but I’d like them to not account for more than half.

6.) Complete at least 50 new sketch cards- These could play into #5, but I’d like to get back to comic & such ones in a big way as well.

7.) Finish the first draft of a novel- I have a chapter or two written of several things and lots more character sheets to work from.  I really should have finished this already.

8.) Take at least one trip well outside of my town on my own- All I want to do is travel, so I just gotta start doing it.  No one is willing or able to help me with this.

9.) Watch more anime- I watched Trigun: Badlands Rumble over the holidays, and while I never got that into the series itself, the movie was pretty outstanding and reignited my love of anime.  I have a promising series called Fairy Tail queued up to watch in the coming days, so this is off to a good start.

10.) Play more video games- I want to finish my Gen IV Pokemon games, pick up and complete both games in Gen V, and maybe beat one or two of the oldern non-Polkamenz RPGs I have laying around by the end of the year.

That’s all I got right now.  Come back at the end of the year to see what an utter disaster this turned out to be!

Your reward for slogging through my self-indulgent post..

#KeepMoving…