Doug Riggsby Red Sonja Artist Proof

I like a little silliness from time to time, so I will occasionally buy a sketch that strikes me as funny. Doug Riggsby is an artist known for his cartoony art style and his jokes, some more off-color than others.

I got this Red Sonja Artist Proof from Riggsby's eBay shop. It's from the Women of Dynamite set that was released by Breygent a few years back. I swear I've seen that guard/soldier somewhere before, but I have no idea where. Anytime I see a, "That's what she said," joke, it reminds me of The Office. I like Doug Riggsby's work a lot. I think I've also got a couple of sketch comic covers done by him that I haven't shown off here yet. I'll have to dig them out one of these days.

Dynamite Comics are the folks who own the license for Red Sonja comics, and they just recently completed a Kickstarter for a premium card product celebrating the 45th Anniversary of Red Sonja. Each pack of the cards has two sketches in it, and I supported the Kickstarter for two packs, so I've got four sketches coming to me at some point. The artist list has some pretty big names on it, so I am hoping to get some good stuff.

Sketch Card Week: Red Sonja by Danny Silva

Today artist Danny Silva gets featured for the second time during Sketch Card Week, this time with a nice sketch of famed barbarian(ess?) Red Sonja holding what appears to be an orc or goblin's severed head. Gory stuff, I suppose, but fighting goblinoids isn't clean work. This set came out a couple of years ago, but Silva recently posted a video of him working on this sketch card to his blog.

That's pretty cool stuff. It's neat to see the progression of the art from pencil to inks to colors. I'm glad I was able to find the video. This card came from Breygent's Women of Dynamite card set, which is based on the various female characters whose rights are owned by comic book publisher Dynamite Entertainment. It was a small set released in sketch card packs that were only available at the 2014 San Diego Comic Con (and later from resellers). Each pack had two sketches, 6 base cards (from an 18-card base set), and a promo card (from a 6-card promo set). I bought a pack of the cards once, but I never blogged about it here. One of the sketches was a little on the risque side and I wound up selling it on eBay for a couple hundred dollars to a person who PC's the artist. If I recall correctly I paid about $35 for that pack, so it was a pretty good deal for me.

This sketch joins my small Red Sonja PC and I'll definitely be looking for more work by Danny Silva in the future.

What eBay Hath Wrought 112: Breygent Red Sonja Sketch Card by Jason Crosby

If you like swords and sorcery in your comic books, there are two big names out there. The main guy is Conan the Barbarian, and the main woman is Red Sonja. There have been other attempts at barbarian comics, but those are the only two that have really stood the test of time. I wanted a Red Sonja sketch card, but I had a few criteria that made it somewhat difficult to find the right one. I wanted one that was clearly identifiable as Red Sonja, which meant one that showed off her trademark red hair and chainmail bikini. I wanted one that was well-drawn, which is a pretty subjective thing, I suppose. And I wanted a sketch card that emphasized her warlike nature over just being some cheesecake model who happens to be wearing chainmail.

Eventually I settled on this sketch by Jason Crosby from Breygent's Women of Dynamite set. This one checks all of my blocks, and I would imagine that if there were a real Red Sonja out there in the world she would look a lot like this. Actually, she would probably have the sense to wear a few more clothes, but if a loincloth is good enough for Conan I guess the chainmail is good enough for her. I like the colors on this one and really couldn't be happier with it. A lot of the sketches in the set are very short on color, and to be honest a lot of the sketches in the set are just butt-awful. This one met all of my criteria and is well-drawn. It's cartoony without being overly simplistic.

I looked around at some of Crosby's other work. It looks like when it comes to sketch cards he sticks mostly to horror topics. He's got a lot of Mars Attacks! sketches out there, some Cthulhu stuff, and his recent Marvel and DC comic book sketches made my mind explode. You can see a lot of it on this thread in the Blowout Cards forum dedicated to his art. Looking up all of his sketches while researching this post makes me want to go out and get all of it. But that would be crazy. He had a Rocket Raccoon and Groot card that sold for $305.00 recently. That's about 20,000 leagues out of my league. But I am pretty happy to have this Red Sonja sketch, and hopefully I can pull more of his work from DC or Marvel packs down the road.