Sketch Card Week: Leia by Jason Keith Phillips

I am trying to beat my self-imposed deadline to write a Sketch Card Week post today. So far passively watching UFC Fight Night is a lot more interesting to me than trying to come up with words about cards. Then after that ended I saw the news about the police officers being shot in Texas and I really didn't feel like posting, but I tend to subscribe to the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' mentality when faced with tragedy. If criminals and terrorists keep me from doing the things I would normally do out of fear or sadness, then they win. So I'm going to write this post and get it out there before midnight strikes.

This sketch card comes from one of the Topps Star Wars Galactic Files sets, but I am not sure which one. There were a lot of them, and I haven't researched them all. I got it from eBay and the auction listing also didn't mention which specific Galactic Files set this was from. I am not sure if the design of the sketch cards was different from set to set or not, so maybe that branding on the front or the picture on the back would be an easy tell upon me doing some research. Well, I didn't do any research.

I am familiar with the artist, however, as I have picked up some of his work in the past. Jason Keith Phillips has done quite a bit of sketch card work, although I think he recently (as in, within the last six months or so, I have no real sense of time passing) announced on his Facebook page that he is moving away from work on corporate-owned properties to focus on his own creations. I thought this was a pretty neat rendition of Leia and the price was right, so I snapped it up. I really ought to sit down one day and count up how many Leia sketches I have now. It has to be more than ten at this point, I would think. It's a pretty cool sketch. I was happy to make it a part of my collection.

My thoughts go out to the police who were attacked tonight in Texas. Law Enforcement Officers have a tough job. I think I will leave it at that.

Red Sonja Sketch Card by Jason Keith Phillips

Here is another sketch card I picked up recently featuring the other famous barbarian, Red Sonja. Just like my last Red Sonja sketch, I selected a sketch that is a little more cartoon-inspired than the usual fare. The artist who created this one is Jason Keith Phillips, who seems to be a fairly prolific sketch card artist. The card comes from Breygent's 2012 Red Sonja set, which I was packed out in box set form, with each box set a base set, 9 insert cards, one sketch, and one additional hit which could be another sketch, an autograph, or a line art card.

His personal art tends to focus on horror and zombie themes, but he also has touched on most of the major pop culture themes like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Marvel and DC Comic Characters, Adventure Time, and various television shows. Most of his work seems to use similar coloring, with strong red, blue, and a kind of sickly white cast to it. I like a lot of his stuff, although the horror and zombie art turns my stomach a bit. I guess if I have a hard time looking at it, then he's doing his job and making it scary/gory enough.

Anyhow, I like this sketch and I think it's a pretty good addition to my small collection of sketch cards. I especially like all of the blending of the colors and the reflective highlights that make the shield and 'armor' look shiny. In the miniature wargaming hobby using blues, whites, and greys to make painted miniature figure look metallic is called Non-Metallic Metal (NMM). It's a more advanced technique than I ever mastered, but when done right it is very cool.

This Dwarf's weapon, shield, helmet, and fist all show NMM techniques. At first glance it looks like metal, but it's actually all carefully-applied colors to make it look like metal. It's pretty cool, and you can find examples where various colors are used to paint gold or even more extreme things like purple and green metals. It's a cool concept based on looking at an object and trying to imagine where the light and shadows would fall on it if it were really made of metal.

And now you know about that. Sorry to go off on a miniature-painting tangent in the middle of a trading card blog. I've been looking a little bit at my wargaming figures on the shelf and thinking about getting back into painting a little once I get done with school. So that stuff has been on my mind, and the colors on the sketch card got me to thinking about it.