Not Much Blogging, But Still Arting

I’m probably never blogging in any meaningful way on WordPress ever again, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t still been collecting cards and doing stuff.  In fact, dedicating approximately zero seconds to this blog over the past several months has freed up enough time that even my uncannily lazy & hopelessly unfocused ass has been able to settle down a bit here & there to create a decent amount (for me anyway) of art.  So I figure I might as well show off a few of my better works from the “after I bought a tablet & started using Instagram” era (established early July, 2015).

Rey Star Wars Sketch Cover..

First up is the most recent, a Star Wars Shattered Empire #1 sketch cover of Rey from the upcoming Force Awakens.  I think I spent somewhere between five and six hours on this early Saturday morning.  Turned out alright. 😉

Kyle and Jake..

You’ll notice the faces are more accurate than a lot of my baseball sketch cards these days, because I just grabbed the reference photos off the internets instead of trying to work from a tiny baseball card.  Thanks, tablet!

Bo Jackson sketch card..

See what I mean?  Not a terrible coloring job at least, despite using filtery, washed out A&G as reference.  Meh, I like this card less every single time I look at it.  Let’s just move on.

Lou Gehrig sketch card..

They turn out alright sometimes though. I’m not entirely displeased with my performance on Lou anyway.  Now might be a good time to remind everyone that, while technically I am doing this for my health (I’ve noted before, arting is good for my emotional state), I would very much like to turn my art around for a little extra cash, or at the very least, some nice new cards to add to my personal collection.  So if you see something you like, do not hesitate to leave a comment or email me or tweet me or something so we can work out a deal!

Kershaw!

Moving on, we have this Clayton Kershaw I drew/inked up well before I had the tablet/Instagram, but didn’t get around to coloring until a little while after.

Mr. Terrific..

If you’ve ever noticed I do way more DC sketch cards than Marvel, the reason pretty much entirely is because my dad has way more DC books with excellent photo reference.  He does have lots of Marvel books too, but they aren’t nearly as photo-heavy as the DC ones, which was kinda important when I didn’t have any way to access the interwarbs over there.

Heel & Face Captains..

I’m not sure why I leaned so heavily on dad’s books for reference after I bought the tablet, but apparently I did for at least a little while.

Big Barda sketch card..

This Barda sketch card is a very rare and special occurrence!  It’s one of the only cards I’ve ever completed where I liked the pencils & inks well enough, but felt like my color job almost ruined it.

Charlotte/Becky Lynch sketch card puzzle..

Finishing up with some pro graps art.  First up, this dodgy, cartoony, hastily drawn puzzle of Charlotte & Becky Lynch, leaders of seemingly failed, yet actually technically successful, #DivasRevolution.  I started a Sasha & Bayley puzzle too, but it’s still at pencil stage.  And now for a wrestling rant.  Joy…

So if the idea was to be booked on the same level as the guys, well… they are consistently booked like shit too.  So as much as it sucks to say it, more frequent lengthier matches and a small handful of the women on the show getting even semi-defined characters is probably the best anyone could have reasonably hoped for.  It’s a damn shame mainline WWE is almost entirely unwatchable garbage (NXT is excellent, however), but on that sliding (circling the toilet bowl?) scale, the 8-12% of extra effort they’ve put into the divas since 3/4 of NXT’s Four Horsewomen were called up more-or-less puts the women on equal footing with the men.  Isn’t it a shame that the only really viable game in town right now is basically the Springfield Tire Fire?

NXT’s Asuka/the last thing you see before you die..

It isn’t all bad though.  Whereas mainline WWE is the most shitty wrestling show on the planet right now, their developmental system NXT is the very best (at least until Lucha Underground comes back in 2016).  Longform storytelling in wrestling is such a beautiful thing, and NXT does it very, very well.  The reason Bayley & Sasha Banks at TakOver: Brooklyn was such a huge deal is because that match had been for two years in the making (even if not quite entirely intentionally)!  They do right by both their men and women down there, and it is absolutely mindblowing that the main shows can’t even deliver the slightest hint of gravitas and emotional stakes that NXT does in only an hour a week + a two hour TakeOver special ever couple months or so.

Anyway, the well-traveled and pretty much universally beloved badass Kana recently debuted on NXT under the name Asuka, so I tried to capture the wonderfully terrifying glare she gave Emma & Dana Brooke at the end of her first appearance.

And that’s all I got for now.  Sorry about my not even remotely groundbreaking wrestling rant.  And remember, everything above is available.  Thanks for stopping by!

Until our NXT…

Ending January on an Artistic Note

There were three more sketch cards in January’s shipment from COMC, so let’s end the month with a quick post showing ’em off!

Lady Demon, my beloved She-Hulk, and Hit-Girl..

The kinda iffy, if you’re feeling exceptionally diplomatic about it, Hit-Girl only cost $3, which more-or-less made up for the rad Lady Demon and She-Hulk pushing the edge of my spending comfort zone.  I checked eBay for Chaos sketch cards though, and at least at the time, $12.44 had everything on there beat by $7.50, at minimum.  Shulkie was the most expensive, but I can justify the purchase without too much difficulty.  All three together weighed in at under $10 per card, and the main two kick ass, so I’m content. 😛

In other news, I added a few more Single Page Sensations on top of the metric buttload I added in my previous post, and I’m going to make like Baseball Card Breakdown and cut full player collections off at 100 cards, which means a fair amount of my lesser Nomahs, Vlads, Rynos, Aramiseseses, and maybe Ichiros are about to become available.

That’s all for now.  Thanks for stopping by, and seeya in February! 🙂

A storm is coming…

Old New Sketch Cards

As the title states, most of these were originally drawn in 2011, and it took me until almost a week ago to finally get around to coloring (and in some cases, inking) them.  So we might as well take a looksie at them on the ol’ blogaroonie.  It never stopped me before, but be aware there be edited nekkidness at the end of this post.  So if you don’t wish to see it, stop reading this post after the sixth card.

Green Lantern Guy Gardner..

First up is the Green Lantern known as Guy Gardner.  He’s kind of a douche, but I sure did color him nice.

The Punisher..

Batting second is a slickly-shaded Punisher.  A little too slickly-shaded for how mediocre the sketch originally was, but that probably goes without saying.  I am who I am, after all.

Hawkman..

Hawkman has never been a great or terribly interesting character, but one of the very few complaints I have about the DCAU is that they turned him into a kinda creepy weirdo stalker.

Firestorm..

Batting cleanup is the surpringly well-represented in cartoon form Firestorm.  Dig that Kirby Krackle in the background.  It’s much, much easier to make with marker than pen, by the way.  My hand is grateful.

Nightwing..

Screw dat red bullshizz, Nightwing wears blue.  You’d have to pay me at least double to commission any New52 character designs.  New52 is the brown streak on the freshly cleaned underwear of DC Comics.

Vampirella..

Ah, I was coloring so well until I got to her face. *le sigh*

We have come to the end, so if you do not desire to see blotted out lady parts, scram now or forever hold your peas.

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Rogue..

Yep.  There you go.  Nekkid Rogue.  Someday the unedited version will probably make it to deviantArt or something.  Or you could buy it and have the poorly drawn lady parts all to yourself.

Same goes for everything else.  As always, on art posts like this, pretty much everything is for sale or trade.  So if you see something you wanna own, hit me up and we can work something out.

Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next..

2014 Final Tally

I had a different post planned for today, but it didn’t pan out so well.  So instead, I’m gonna look at my goals from the beginning of the year and see how things panned out (with intermittent pictures to fight the boredom).  I’m sure this will end well… >.>;

Finish Fergie Jenkins Career Run– Not quite.  Still no ’68 or anything from ’70s off-brand sets.  I think the league leaders from the ’70s and almost everything from the ’80s are taken care of though.

Progress was made..

Get Ryno’s other RCs– Nope.  The only other ’83 Sandberg I landed this year was his Topps sticker.  We’ll call it his 5th RC in the same way Billy Preston is considered the 5th Beatle.  He was absolutely the reason the group held together near the end of their run, and a complete run of Ryno RCs is not complete without his Topps sticker.

Complete 12 Trades– I don’t think I quite made it, but the two I got myself into at the end of the year might have gotten me into double digits, which is honestly better than I was expecting.  I will try to get better at posting my trades in the coming year.

A couple biggies found their way to me via trade, including a pretty decent condition Jerry Rice RC!

Complete Three Sets– Failed.  Hard.  I abandoned like half my set page over the course of the year, though I don’t think any of the trio I mentioned as likely candidates in the original post were officially abandoned.  But I still ended up with nothing from them.

The only set I made any progress on, and I only finally just broke the 30-card mark after Christmas..

Complete the Following Single Page Sensations–

2011 Topps Legend Variations– Nope.  Don’t think I added a single one.  Made a little headway on 2009 Update though.

’09 Reggie Update..

2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary Legend Variations– I picked up Harmon Killebrew and Paul Molitor.  Only one more needed!

2011 Topps Diamond Die-Cuts– YES!  The Winfield Single Page was decommissioned again (for the third or fourth time in my blogging career), and he returned to fill his old hole in the page.  The final piece came when I decommissioned my Adrian Beltre page, and the Diamond Die-Cut I had of the future Hall of Famer completed the page.

2012 Bowman Chrome Legends in the Making Die-Cuts– Yes, and then I abandoned the page and decided to only keep a couple.

2012 Topps Finest Faces of the Franchise– Same as above.  What I don’t want is available for everything I’ve abandoned over the past year.  Inquire and acquire within.

2013 Museum Collection Canvas Collection– Yaharr, this was so easy I was even able to replace a few I decided I didn’t like as much.  RA Dickey, Tom Seaver, and whoever the other one was are available for sale or trade.

As an aside, I’m still at 8/9 on 2012 and, pending shipment, 5/9 on 2014.  I am also at 8/9 on the 2013 football version.  I’d be finished already, but I’m holding out hope for a Deion Sanders to get close to the $0.60-1.38 range I paid for the rest that I picked up over the second half of the year.  Aikman & Andre Johnson were on the low end, Russell Wilson & Megatron were the most expensive.

Victoria/Tara– Nope.  Was too busy going overboard and accidentally turning Gail Kim into a full collection (2 new autos and two #’ed cards and a several early base cards cards).

Oops..

Luol Deng– Nothing.  Completely forgot about him, aside from that weird sleazy racist scouting report brouhaha during the offseason.

Carlos Santana– I’m still three short.  Four if the sweet Topps Tribute WBC patch #’ed /35 I picked up for around $3.40 doesn’t fit in a binder page.  My other addition to his page was a sub (if just barely)-$10 Bowman Platinum printing plate.  An expensive addition for one of my less important pages, but it was there, and still relatively cheap for an at least borderline superstar player.

This is one of those scans don’t do the card justice cards..

Any five others– Unbelievably, this is a yes.  It was almost entirely stuff either I eventually abandoned (2012 & ’13 Dynamic Die-Cuts, Rod Carew also available FT), decided to go back to the drawing board on later (Robbie Alomar), just pared down to a single page (Randy Moss), or eventually overdid to the point they are full collections now (Darvish, Jorge Soler, and the above mentioned Gail Kim) but I think I actually did this.  Pending shipment, Javier Baez and 1975 Topps Minis (George Foster and Dock Ellis are the final additions) pages will also be complete for the time being.  Winner-winner, sexy sinner!

Complete any two Sketch Card pages– Yeah, pretty much.  They ended up not quite being what I originally expected, but I have a full page of She-Hulks and a full page of Women of Marvel 2 sketch cards.

Sketch Cards!

Add 10 more key RCs– Blew this one away.  A single trade almost did the deed by itself, and a later eBay lot purchase would have easily done it on its own.  I even landed three of the biggies I listed: Nomah, Gwynn (’83 Fleer), &  Boggs sorta (also a Topps Sticker).

Key RCs was easily the most successful pursuit of the year..

Complete five more trifectas– I didn’t make them a priority.  I think I managed a couple though.  Brandon Phillips and Alshon Jeffykins were completed this year, I think.  Maybe three if Booker T counts, since I might be in possession of his oldest card now.

It’s the oldest WCW set, post Booker T’s 1993 debut that I know of, so maybe it counts as his RC?

30 new 1960 Topps– Abandoned set.  Everything but Vic Power, because that was my first ever vintage card, is available.  Even Gil, Maz, & the high number commons, if you bring it with your trade offers.

Break 100 cards with another player– Surprisingly, it was Nomar Garciaparra, because I bought a ginormous 200+ card lot of him on eBay.

Pay off old debts– Completed one, added one.  My original package for the dude on twitter never turned up, so I’ll have to go with a replacement package in the coming year.  Meh, I should’ve done better.

Now onto the blog, where things get even dicier than the cards themselves.  I started off strong, then posted pretty much nothing for at least nine months for no good reason, then ended with a nice little flurry.  And even though I added nothing else, my art got a good a percentage of focus, so I’m not terribly disappointed by my effort during the small fraction of time I was actually here.  Now if I could just find some focus to actually hang around all year.

What about me in real life?  I never did hit the gym, and it’s just been the past several weeks that I started running with any degree of regularity again, but this godforsaken place I live made it so I was going out and walking constantly all year long.  Eating healthier has still been spotty at best (in fact I was in stomach distress from overdoing it on probably the most unhealthy regional brand of potato chips you can buy as I was typing this, which is why it’s going up Sunday morning instead of Saturday morning), but I am still maintaining my weight.

Finish old sketch cards– Not many.  Mostly just the more recent of my old stuff, and I’m staying on top of newer work as well as can be expected.

30 realistic portraits– I don’t know for sure, but I feel like I have to be very close on this.  I managed to do a couple in the early morning hours before I had to do stuff just in the past few days, and I think I have at least one more in me in the waning days of this year.

50 new sketch cards– I expect to be around 40 by the time the year is out.  My arting is up significantly overall even if 50 sketch cards won’t happen though.  I think I probably drew somewhere between 100-125 things total this year.

Decent effort, kid..

Finish first draft of novel– I failed so miserably at writing this year.  To be fair to this and my lack of blogging most of the year, my computer situation was in serious flux the entire year, and I was too broke to do anything about it.  I was also leaving constantly due to noise.  However, there was more than enough downtime that I should’ve been able to do plenty of both.  So while there were mitigating circumstances, my first sentence still stands: I failed so miserably at writing this year.

Concept sketching went better than expected though..

Travel– Nope.  I’ve never been this ridiculously tight on money so constantly for an entire year before.  Not hopeful for 2015 either.  My money will be likely be at least as tight, though more focused on the things I need to get on with my life rather than things that I want or are necessary for an immediate specific purpose/moment.

Watch more anime– Only marginally more successful than the other things on the list.  Mostly just Space Dandy, a couple random movies, and a little hentai.

The Space Dandy gang are so disappointed in my lack of anime viewing..

More video games– Again, only just a slight uptick in activity.  A lot of it was done in the week & a half I went without a computer in late November/early December.

So there you have it.  I’m still a mostly useless wreck of a human being, but I can point out things that are actually improvements over years gone by.  That should give you an idea how hopelessly broken I’ve been, the incremental improvements I’ve made, and the many, many light years I still have to go before I could ever be considered functional in any meaningful way.

That’s it for now.  Here’s to a better 2015!  Thanks for stopping by.

We have come to terms…

Cloak Sketch Card

Marvel Now! Cloak..

I picked this excellent sketch card of the Marvel C-lister up late last month for $5.58 w/ free shipping, because I felt like I needed a Cloak to go with the five Dagger sketch cards I have at present.  They are two of my all-time favorite comic book characters for one very important reason.  When I was but a wii youngling, my dad had two big stacks of old comic books on the bottom of a huge bookcase in my room, and their earliest appearances featured prominently in there.

Those stacks are also the reason I have a soft spot for Jonah Hex and mark out hard for all of his DCAU appearances.  Issues 1-11 of Hex, his adventures in a post-apocalyptic future were in there.  There were also several Digest-sized DC Comics amongst the actual books, which included “Whatever Happened to the Crimson Avenger”, a short story that has stuck with me throughout the years and become one of my all-time favorites.

A few collections of newspaper comics also made an appearance on that magical bookcase.  This is the reason I’m one of the 8 people in the world today who knows of Tug McGraw’s fantastic ’70s baseball comic Scroogie, even though it came and went nearly a decade before I was born.  One of my creative aspirations is to create a sequel (probably in novel form) to that awesome comic.  I will post some pages on the blog if I the two collections ever turn up.

I’ve gotten way off track, but now you know where the root for a great deal of my nerdery comes from.  That’s all for now.  Thanks for stopping by!

A Sketch Card so Weird I had to Own It

Shulkie and Luke Cage intergender match..

I picked this sketch card up in November and just finally got it scanned in the past week or so.  I have a page dedicated to She-Hulk sketch cards, but I dunno if this one will go in it.  I am close to blowing by my single page limit since licensed Shulkie sketches seem to be a relatively inexpensive get these days (at least compared to everyone else I collect), so it might not matter in a couple months anyway.  But anyway, this is an odd bird and a few questions are begging to be asked-

Why are She-Hulk and Luke Cage fighting in the first place?

Since She-Hulk is at the very high end of the super strength spectrum on her worst day and the the artist formerly known as Power Man is at the very low end, how is she even noticing that punch?

Err, that is Luke Cage, isn’t it?

Why does She-Hulk have short hair and jeans?

Why do I miss Luke Cage’s ridiculous original Power Man costume so much?

Oh well, it’s still a nicely drawn card, and weird enough (and juuuust cheap enough) that I happily added it to my collection.

That’s all for this post.  I’ve got three more sketch cards to post from last month, and 9(!) more between my COMC shipment and eBay winnins for December, and amongst other things, I hope to post virtually all of the entire 104 total cards over the next few weeks.  First I have to scan them though, which I’ll start as soon as finish babbling incoherently on here.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Business is about to pick up…

My Nerdiest Thing…

Lynna Sage from something I’m writing, currently under the working title Nexus Eternum..

…is my art.

Sketch cards of Big E and AJ Lee..

Drawing is probably the one thing I enjoy above all else.

Musician Dia Frampton..

Deciding to draw again may have even saved my life when I was at my lowest point.

Thing and Wonder Woman sketch cards..

In the here-and-now, drawing relaxes me and is all-around helpful to my emotional wellbeing.

@Heinekenrana..

I don’t think there’s anything more essential to me.

Derek Jeter sketch card..

Losing anything else, it may hurt forever, but I’ll deal.

International indie wrestling star Evie on Wonder Woman sketch cover..

But even if I’m a laughably mediocre artist (and in many aspects I am), my art makes me more whole than I’ve ever been.

Stephen Strasburg sketch card..

If anything I do ever becomes a thing, my art will still be important to me.

Indy wrestling star Hania..

It centers me…

Lex Luthor, Starfire, and Green Lantern Arisia sketch cards..

It heals me…

Fitness competitor/model Chie Terui..

It completes me…

Dejah Thoris (Edited) sketch..

When I draw, it’s as close to deeply passionate about something as I ever get.

Sketch card of international wrestling star Evie..

That passion is why I have to consider it my ultimate nerdy thing.

Expos Legend Tim Raines and Yankees prospect Luis Torrens repurposed sketch cards..

Thank you for stopping by.

Thundarr/Under the Broken Moon concept art..

Until our next…

More Sketch Cards by Yours Truly

New day, new batch of art.

Rogue..

This is bound for my pal Twitter pal Celina.  Drew it up ages ago but just finally got her colored a few days ago.

Raven 1..

This was the only one of the three Ravens I liked before I colored them, but I’m pretty lukewarm on it now.

Raven 2..

I don’t even know what the hell I was trying to do on this one, but I actually liked it a little better after coloring.  Still not a strong effort though…

Raven 3..

I don’t even… I can’t stand most of my comic book/cartoon/anime-style stuff.  Let’s just get this post over with only other one of the five besides the Rogue that doesn’t really make me cringe.

Blink..

Finally, mercifully, here’s another Blink that turned out decent.  Multiple Blinks in a short period happened because I didn’t have a tan marker to help out with more regular human skintones at the time I first sketched them all out.

That’s all for this post.  I’ll try to do better next time.  Thank you for stopping by nonetheless.

Until our next…

Latest Batch of Art (Edited, but Potentially NSFW)

We’re making art again.  Here’s the latest bunch.

Lithuanian Snow Troll..

To go along with the Estonian Thunderfrog card from late last year, here is the Lithuanian Snow Troll, another 1/3 of the Baltic Siege.  Someday I will have to draw the Latvian Proud Oak…

Yoenis Cespedes sketch card..

Did this because it was all I had to do when I got stuck at the parents’ place one night early in the year.  Not one of my stronger likenesses, that’s for sure.

Jurickson Profar sketch card..

And here’s that Jurickson Profar I forgot to scan awhile back.  Most of these likenesses are a little iffy, but I’m working directly from the tiny card card picture, so it can’t entirely be helped.  I think Gattis & Tulo might be the only ones I came close to nailing.

Raven sketch card..

This is the only Raven I ended up kinda liking out of the four I’ve done so far this year.  I’ll put up the other ones in a future post.

She-Hulk sketch card..

Starting to learn how to shade again after the long coloring hiatus.  This one *might* be good enough to be my own entrant onto my She-Hulk page.

By rule, I must have at least one licensed sketch card, one random PSC or outright commissioned sketch card, and one sketch card drawn by me on my character sketch card pages.  The rest can be pretty much anything.

Blink by Me..

Finally, a NSFW Blink.  You’ll no doubt notice the pose is more dynamic/interesting than I normally tend to do.  The reason for this is that the pose (and even the shading to a degree) is based on a picture tweeted out by a nerdy pornstar I follow on Twitter.  And it should be noted that she indeed liked the card, so I guess I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

And that is it for this latest art & sketch card roundup.  More to come in the near future!

Big hitter, the Lama…

On This Date…

… in 1985, I was born.  And the world trembled.  I’m not one to do much celebrating (being poor and having almost no local friends probably has something to do with this), so how about we just finish off the sketch card pickups then?

Echo..

This was the only one of the bunch not from that one particular seller.  It is pretty great, but I can’t read sigs of people I don’t know via Facebook or whatever that don’t write out their full name, so I don’t who this one is by.  I will edit to attribute credit here & on the sketch card page when/if I ever find out.

Black Widow by Felipe Alves..

Another Felipe Alves.  I picked this one up purely because her face reminds me of someone I know, and not because she’s tied up.  That’s just a bonus. 😛

Dani Moonstar by Cal Slayton..

This is another one that’s borderline “I could do one this good”, but 1.) I like Cal’s style, and 2.) There isn’t a lot of choice when it comes to Dani Moonstar cards, so I grabbed it, and I am quite pleased with my purchase, thank you veddy veddy much.

Nico Minoru by Stefanie Battalene..

Finally, one more trip to the Stefanie Battalene well.  This card is just absolutely spectacular and phenomenal and mind-blowingly fantastic.  This isn’t just a centerpiece for my Miscellaneous Marvel Full-Color Sketch Card Page, it is one of the best cards in my entire collection.  Short of the heavy hitters that are way beyond my means (Melike Acar, Charles Hall, etc.), Stefanie Battalene has gotta be within the next couple tiers.

And with that, I am outta here for today.  Because what better way to celebrate one’s birthday than by going out in bone-chilling cold on when you are tired and not fully recovered from the stomach sickness?

But anyway, thank you for stopping by!

Until our next…