From Conception to Completion

Over the past week or so, I’ve been plugging away at this sketch of New Zealand-based future wrestling legend Evie.  A short while ago I finally, mercifully finished.  Not that I can actually explain how I shade with so much detail (pretty much completely self-taught), but I grabbed progress pics after each session.  Just thought it might be fun to show it in various stage of completeness here on the ol’ blog.  So here now is Evie, in five excruciatingly long steps.

Step One: Just a semi-rough outline with minimal detailing..

Step Two: The first section of shading.  Gotta start at the top and left because I’m right-handed & don’t use a glove or anything, so it’ll get messy if I don’t..

Step Three: More shading.  Top to bottom, because the lower half is about to get hella complicated..

Step Four: Roughing out the folds in the fabric.  So many folds.  So, sooooo many folds..

Step 5: Tightened the folds, finished shading dress, tightened up other lines, touched up shading in places, and voila… Done!

And there you have it!  A complete sketch of one of the coolest and most badass wrestlers in the business, in classy mode, I guess you’d say.

That’s all for this post.  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…

The Most Badass Sketch Card There Ever Was

My dad finally got around to making use of the pack of blank sketch cards I gave him when I bought my first packs some time ago.  And oh did he ever it pwn it on his first try!  I’m going to start scanning all his sketch books and make him a deviantART account and post his stuff wherever I can (been meaning to for awhile).  He is a great artist, and where my brother and (allegedly) me get our mad artistic skillz.  So without further ado, I proudly present to the world, the most badass sketch card that’s ever been drawn:

Chuck!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s right, it’s a sketch card of Chuck-Freakin’-Norris!  My dad has been a big fan of Chuck Norris for a long, long time (decades before Chuck Norris Facts, the Walker, Texas Ranger Lever, or even Walker, Texas Ranger itself made it cool), so it’s only appropriate the man hisself be his first try at a sketch card.  Pretty awesome huh?  I like how he colored it, to give it an old-timey feel.  I forget the exact colors, but he did this with gel pens.  Not bad, eh?