Star Wars Illustrated: The Empire Strikes Back Leia Sketch Card by John Soukup

I look at a lot of sketch cards on eBay and in forum threads, and occasionally I stumble across an artist whose work I really want to add to my collection. When the sketches from Star Wars Masterwork started being posted one artist who stood out to me was John Soukup, who did some pretty non-traditional stuff for his sketch cards. The ones that really caught my attention were collages and pieces with actual wooden figures attached to the sketch card. I set up a search on eBay to see what other stuff of his came up. I also by chance bid on and won a traditional trading card from him and recognized his name on the Paypal transaction, so that allowed me to follow his auctions directly in case he posted something interesting. I guess it kind of also makes me a creepy stalker. Oh well...

He recently posted a couple of auctions with sketch cards from Topps Star Wars Illustrated: The Empire Strikes Back. There were a couple that featured these colored stripes and character heads. I put in a bid on the Leia one and wound up winning it. The stripe is colored paint with some glitter added for sparkliness (the dictionary says that isn't a word, but I think it is) and Leia's head is actually a little piece of wood painted and glued to the card stock. This is one of those cases where the card looks a bit better in-hand than it does in the scan. I think it's pretty neat, and it is certainly not like all the other sketch cards.

The back of the card features the artist's signature and a congratulatory message for the sketch card owner. Now I just need to find a top loader or something that will hold this card without hurting it. Here is a link to his DeviantArt profile if you want to see some other stuff. I don't know that he has a Facebook or other web presence besides that. If he does I haven't found it yet.