Sandy Sketch

I'm not sure if I have covered this before, but I wanted to do a sketch card post for a while. I finally have some free time now, so here is one of my Sandy Koufax sketches.

I think the color is a little off, but I like the composition and I think it sort of looks like him. So overall I like the way it turned out. I need to do another one with him in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform.

I based the drawing on a book I was reading by Jane Levy.



Pretty cool book. If you have chance to check it out and haven't already, it's a pretty good read.

Alright then. That's about all I got today. Thanks for reading (if you are). And have a good weekend.

Sketch card trade with the Lost Collector

I've been wanting to do trade sketch cards for a while now, but I could never find anyone who seemed interested in art. Admiring art and art cards, but not actually producing them. Seems like lately there are a few people trying their hand at doing artwork.

I applaud it.

I think it's cool even if people aren't so comfortable or confident in their talents. It's a lot of fun for me most of my life and I wish more people would try their hand at something creative once in a while. I guess writing and blogging is creative, but I mean more with the visual arts.

One guy that you're all familiar with is A.J. at the Lost Collector. I mainly remember him from his quest to collect one Yankee auto from every year of Topps. 1951-2011. Pretty nice collection. I didn't know that he was an artist too. The link above connects to his artwork. Really nice stuff. I don't remember how I came to find out he likes to draw, but I'm glad that I did. I asked him for a sketch card trade.

The card he sent over was a nice addition to my Gary Carter and Sketch card collection.
This card will go in the sketch card binder next to a couple of sketches from Lonestarr and a few that I did myself.

Here's the back.
I don't have a lot of Gary Carter cards so this is nice. Especially considering him passing away last week. Thanks for the card A.J.!

If anybody out there wants to trade sketch cards let me know and we can do this!!

My first sketch card pull!!

Still no hobby packs of 2011 topps baseball at one of the hobby shops. So I decided to pick up some random packs of goodness.

I haven't bought any non-sports cards in a while so I bought a pack of Star Wars the Clone Wars which is apparently based on an animated TV show. I didn't realize that as I picked up the pack.


The base cards are a little lame, but the sketch card is pretty nice.



I'm guessing it might be a reproduction of a sketch card and not a true 1/1 sketch card. I tried looking at the texture of the card to see, but I couldn't tell.


The back wasn't much help either,but at least it has a real on card auto. I did a little sleuthing and came to the conclusion that it was a Brian Rood auto.

The only problem I have is that I have no idea who the character depicted on the card is supposed to be. I don't watch the show so I'm at a loss as to who this could be. If anybody out there has a clue please let me know.

The odds for these sketch cards fall 1 in every hobby box, so I guess I did pretty well for my one and only pack that I purchased. If I liked the base cards more I would go back and grab some more packs.

Trade with Behind these Hazel Eyes- Cool Sketch cards

About a month ago,possibly a few months ago I completed a trade with Lonestarr who runs the Behind these Hazel Eyes blog. Since we are both comic book and sketch card fans we decided to make part of the trade a couple of sketch cards. Since this is the highlight of the trade I'm starting off with the two sketch cards.


This is the first time that I have received a sketch card and I loved both of them. The Adrian Peterson card is really good and sort of funny. I've seen that look on AD's face a lot as he looks up at his replay on the jumbo screen. He always seems to staring up at something on the sideline. This has to be from a card or photo, but I can't remember which one. Great stuff.

I also requested the Fantastic Four as it was one of my favorite comics growing up. I still like the FF, but I don't currently read the newer comics. I still go out and pick up the older ones from the '60's and 70's.

I think it would be really cool to start collecting sketch cards done by bloggers. It would be interesting to see what they would come up with.


In addition to the cool sketch cards he sent over some 2008 Masterpieces to help me out with that set.
I picked this nice one of Harmon Killebrew as an example of the Masterpieces card that he sent over.


He also sent over a nice assortment of Topps Magic Football. A couple of former Buckeyes.


Troy Smith won a Heisman and now is with the 49'ers.

.... and Anthony Gonzalez is currently with the Colts.


A cool card of the Cadillac. A really good running back from Auburn who is currently with the Buccaneers.

I've never really gotten excited over checklists before, but I took a liking to the ones in 2009 T206. It's another way to get Mickey into every pack. I didn't buy much of these cards, so needless to say I need some help finishing this up. Thanks to Charley I only have one more to go.



and lastly he knocked out a few A&G cards for me.

Pretty cool trade. Thanks for the cool cards Lonestarr. If any of you like to check out cool art, you should check out his deviantArt page. It's got loads of cool stuff on it.

Trade with Shot Not Taken

I'm not sure if ya'll have had the chance to check out the blog Shot Not Taken. I have passed by a few times. I'm not sure if I've commented. I'm a pretty bad commenter sometimes. I feel like saying something, but I know that I really have nothing of note to contribute, so I move on to the next blog or get back to crafting these wonderful blog posts on this here blog that nobody reads.

Anyway, I hope he doesn't mind but I'm going to upload his banner. I love anything to do with art so I'm going to show it off for everybody.

It's from a Lichtenstein painting entitled "Whamm". It was taken from the DC comic All American Men of War. Pretty cool banner. I've been meaning to do a banner for about 8 months now and I haven't gotten around to doing it.

But this isn't all about me, this is about a cool offer of football memorabilia and auto cards that Ray was offering up for trade.

As soon as I saw an Adrian Peterson card up for trade I had to make an offer. After much searching I realize I had absolutely nothing for him in trade.

So as a last ditch effort I offered up the services of my amateurish sketch art skills. He was cool with it and this is what I got in return for my two sketch cards.


My first ever(and probably only) Adrian Peterson relic card.

It's from 2008 Mayo. It's a stark contrast from the '09 version of Mayo that has white borders on the base and relic cards. The Peterson card is the best looking card from that year. I'm probably biased in my opinion because he's one of my favorite all time players, but I think it's really true. Most of the cards that I've pulled or seen online have a weird look to them and they're not all weird in the same way. It's almost like a fake textured look. Sort of the same fakeness you can see on some of the 2008 A&G cards.

But this card looks cool. The swatch is even purple so that's nice. The black border and desaturated colors really make the purple swatch stand out.

It will be the cornerstone of my A.D. collection. This is the card that I will pull out and show off to people when they ask about my cards.

Thanks again for the cool card Ray!!

Sketch cards

Lately I've been consumed with making little sketch cards. When I first came across sketch cards I thought they were a little weird. I guess the first ones I really saw in person were the sketch cards from last years Allen and Ginter. I wasn't that high on them at the time, but recently I had the chance to finish off that set and it made me look at them differently.

So anyway, here are some random sketch cards that I've done.

Originally I had the bright idea to do them on large paper and then shrink them down to card size.

I then, had the bright idea to trace them onto thicker paper stock so it was more like a trading card. Only one of these made it to the final stage:


This is a Valkyrie, a character from Airboy. A comic that originally ran in the 1940's and made a brief comeback in the mid 80's.

I realized that doing all that scanning and cropping and tracing weren't really necessary. Just making it from scratch on a 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 card is the best way to go. Their may not be a lot of detail, but it's a true sketch card. My cards are a little rough for now, but I'll correct them later.

This is one of my favorites:


Captain America was the first comic I remember owning and he's always been my favorite comic book character.

This is one of my least favorites. I knocked this one out quickly in pencil just to see what a black and white pencil sketch would look like.




Unfortunately it doesn't look anything like Julie Newmar or Catwoman or Julie Newmar as Catwoman. It just looks sort of like a girl in a Halloween costume.

I actually started out trying to do sports related cards first, but none of them came out the way I wanted. This one of the Mick was the first one that I liked.




A little too monotone, but I was working with a black and white photograph so I didn't have much color information to go on. I should have come up with something a little more colorful though.

This one was also taken from a black and white background. I didn't get much more creative with this background either.

Still doesn't quite look like who it's supposed to look like, but I can still practice up and get better.


I left this one uncut so that everybody could see the unfinished borders and "palette" on the left side. I needed to try out the different colors before I committed to using them in the sketch. If you look closely you can see the pencil borders.

I'm not sure why I went to so much trouble picking colors, the background on this card is the worst out of all of them. I don't like the color selection much and I don't like the "craziness" of the scribbles. I should've come up with something a little better for this one. I think psychedelic baseball trails would be cool to add in but I think it might be too late now.

I kind of like my little homemade cards. Nothing much to write home about, but for just playing around these past few days I think they look kind of cool.

Thanks for reading.