Sketch Card #6 - Chief Wahoo

I have at least five sketch cards I need to draw, so obviously I'm going to post on the blog instead of drawing. I know! I'll post... a drawing! That will simultaneously procrastinate and make me feel bad about procrastinating! Here's a sketch card sent to Baseball Dad over at All Tribe Baseball.

TribeDad has a bunch of trade packages cluttering up his desk too! We're like soul brothas. I sent this one over along with some Topps stickers and a bunch of Indians I needed out of my house. I needed a break from drawing actual people after my sketch card of Billy Madison so I went with the classic Indians logo Chief Wahoo. Yes, I know. The logo is horrible and terrible and should be banned forever. The first person who invents a time machine should forget about Hitler and go back and murder Louis Soxalexis as a child so we can have something wholesome as a logo instead. Like Spiders. Or Napoleon. It's a bad logo and I should feel bad for drawing it. Fine. I'm not arguing with people who think like this anymore. If your method for improving the world is shaming sports fans whose favorite team picked the wrong mascot a hundred years ago then more power to ya. I hope you're also donating to a charity that helps Native Americans in need as well. And putting in the legwork to find one that's not a scam. I'll take the shame, hell, I'm a Braves fan, I double deserve it.

I copied the design off of the sign that originally perched on Municipal Stadium. If nothing else it's a neat pose with that high leg kick. One thing that strikes you when you sit down and actually draw the Chief Wahoo logo is just how utterly ludicrous that face is. I've seen that thing for decades and knew in my heart that it was kinda freaky at best and horribly offensive at worst, but when you're forced to sit down and examine it the weirdness envelops you. I'm not saying I don't like it anymore, I'm just saying it's downright bizarre. I don't understand the pointy eyebrows. And that is a big dang mouth.Steven Tyler would have to get the "Why so serious" treatment to get a mouth like that in real life.  The face actually reminds me a bit of Robert Crumb's The Snoid, which is WAY more offensive than the Chief could ever hope to be. As far as drawing the thing goes, there was more learning how to use colored pencils, The foreshortening on the leg was neat to do and I discovered pinstripes are fun.

Here's the back. I'm basically referencing the fact that Cleveland beat Boston in 1948, and Atlanta got revenge in 1995. We should have done the tiebreaker series in 1997 seven but Eric Gregg accidentally the strike zone. This is another example of "I don't like lettering, I'm not good at it and I refuse to put any time into it". Baseball Dad sent some other stuff back my way including some stickahs you will hopefully get to eyeball tomorrow. Thanks Dad-dad-daddy-o!

Bowman Beaters - Cleveland Indians

 More Ugly Bowmans for your viewing pleasure. If you need some eye bleach, I'm sure there's twenty posts about Topps Series Two over on the sidebar. Now let's look at some Indians.

Hall of Famer Early Wynn for a quarter! This is an odd picture. Early looks like he's scrunching down in order to fit in the tiny TV screen. There weren't no 90 inch plasma screens in the '50s folks, these suckers were actual size.

Outfielder Dave Pope was the other Indian I picked up. Dave is not as scrunched up as Early, but is a fellow Alabamanian. Alabamaninin. Albanian Bananarama. A fellow guy from Alabama. These pics were taken in the same stadium as the Res Sox cards I showed off earlier. Even better there are tiny little people in the background of both pictures. I like the tiny little people, especially the ones cowering under Early Wynn's gigantic hulking form.