Ever been completely off your game? I'm like that today. Slept in too late. Didn't oversleep, I just didn't feel like getting up. Got blindsided at work by an annoyance which messed up my plan for attacking my schedule. After work, I planned to take a walk for some exercise, but it's raining. Now I'm avoiding the leg-killing rowing machine thingy we have that makes you look like you're humping the air. I'm in one of those moods where I'm afraid of pencils so the drawing doesn't look good for tonight. I thought it would be good to organize my scans for posts and I can't find anything. Stuff I know I scanned just ain't there. The stuff that is there is loading slowly because I have 47 tabs open in Chrome like a moron. I opened up a beer. It's imported. Did you know that "NaturtruB" is German for 'cloudy with dead yeast sediment'? I do now. Now I'm afraid of beer. Oy Gevalt. I am so off my game right now. It's so bad I'm posting a package I received in the mail. I know! What's wrong with me??
That might make a good ticket for 2012, actually. Sure they're dead, but the Republicans are running a bunch of stiffs anyway. Just check out Woody McCarSalesman celebrating a victory and tell me that Zombie Nixon wouldn't mop up the floor with him. Of course, Tricky Dick would be running to the left of Hopey McChangerson so he might not be able to count on the Tea Party vote. But the robot vote...
See how far off my game I am? I'm posting about politics. The hell is wrong with me. Here's some Chipper to make amends:
Rod included this joisey cahd of Chippah along with three cards of players I love from sets I loathe. Which is good, since I would never buy them anyway. Lineage? blech. As you can see, it's a Feel the Game Joisey from Ultra. I can't remember what year Ultra because I am totally off my game. It's aping the 1987 Fleer design, which I find cool. Having gold borders instead of baby blue unnerves me in some unexplainable way however. I don't mind too much because I like the look of the card, the swatch has stitch marks and a little bit of red fluff, and I'm not 100% sure but I don't think I have this one yet. When you have over a thousand Chipper cards you kinda lose track but I think I would remember this one. Who can tell, I am off my - well - you know.
I've taken a sip of the schmutzy beer and it's not bad. Very smooth. Not hoppy at all. Slightly sweet actually. Ain't that goop at the bottom basically Vegemite anyway? A few shots of bourbon and I'll be ready to finish off this beer. Then I'll have the courage to exercise on the hump machine! Still afraid of pencils though - no Barry Larkin sketch card tonight I'm afraid.
Hey, I just detected a disturbance in the force... Like... someone was calling out... Like I was being... summoned. My pony-sense is tingling! Did someone mention PURPLE PONIES?!?!
Why, it was Night Owl! Night Owl is apparently a fan o' ponies just like Captain Canuck. I'm not going to draw him a pony though because he already got this:
The concept was easy: It's Night Owl so it's gotta be a Dodger. His favorite set is '75 Topps. Lotsa pretty colors in '75 Topps. Who's the subject? Ron Cey is his favorite player but Cey already has a card in the '75 set. Hmmmm... Kershaw? Nah, let's do an old timer. Jackie? Drysdale? Let's do Koufax. Topps has a thing for him right now. Koufax rookie card on a '75 Topps design. Done.
The whole thing was drawn over three days. I did the border first, then the back, and finally got the courage to draw Sandy last. I had started messing with colored pencils at this point but I'm still too chicken to do pictures of actual people in anything other than black and white. I don't quite have a handle on color theory yet. Purple ponies, I got that. I copied Al Downing's border for the card because the world needs more pink borders on baseball cards. The yellow and pink on the border worked out ok but the blue in the Dodgers name at the top got a little dark due to mixing with the regular pencil. I'm not even gonna comment on the lettering and lines in the border. I've dug out my old ruler and triangles from High School since this drawing. Sandy himself turned out good enough, although those eyes creep me out a little. I tried really hard on those, but I got some drawing advice that basically said "there's a time to just give up and walk away" and I hit my limit with those peepers.
The back is loosely based on the Bio box and cartoon on the back of '75 Topps cards. Once again, a ruler would have been useful. I was feeling Halloweeny in October so Owlie got a FrankenCard cartoon and a whole lot of poorly lettered text further obscured by some pink crosshatching to mimic the unreadability of the original design. I think I pulled an Ed Wood though, and made it so bad it looks kinda good.
Before I started in on sketching Koufax on the actual card, I did a trial run on this sketch page. I did this one a lot more quickly then the one on the actual card and labeled it "Koufax Practice". Once I was done I labeled various parts of the drawing based on how I felt about them.
Eyes: good
Nose: Meh
Mouth: not bad
Ears: Derp.
Other commentary includes "Goddam I hate drawing caps". And I do, I am never ever happy with how a cap comes out. I also tried to figure out how Sandy's head was shaped which was useful in drawing the final product. Overall, I think this was a help as I probably improved on everything in the final product. Except the eyes. There's just something freaky about Sandy's eyes on the actual card that I can't quite figure out.
Koufax was probably the fourth or fifth thing drawn on that sketch page. I started out with a trial run of the "Twilight Starlin" sketch card up in the top left. That monstrosity above Koufax is me getting stuck on what to draw and scribbling out Pinkie Pie in an unconscious homage to Finland's Coat of Arms. (without the sword, Pinkie's a pacifist) Thank Humon comics for putting that idea in my head. Twilight Sparkle is appropriately horrified and above her is a test run for the Frankenstein on the back incorporated into an equation I'm puzzling over. That's for another post though. Down below is a self portrait of me going off the rails again. This happens more often than I'd like to admit. The last thing drawn to fill up the page was a two minute sketch of Richard Nixon off an Upper deck insert card. It probably took slightly longer than two minutes, but certainly didn't go over three. I don't know why I think drawing fast is a particularly useful skill but hey, it's fun. I also don't know why I enjoy drawing ponies and old wrinkly dudes, but... um, there's probably some deep psychological issues there. Best not to talk about it. Hey, here's some Billy Madison to serve as a distraction!
(damn, that drawing really does look like Billy Madison)
I know I haven't even shown off my first pack of '09 Philadelphia yet (soon, I promise) but I snagged a couple more today and I had to show off the inserts because they were just too weird. Here are the packs, look at them closely.
I got these packs because Falcons Michael Jenkins and Jerious Norwood were showing on the front. That's right, showing. You can see Michael Jenkins above, here's a close up of Norwood:
It's actually easier to read it in person, the red lettering is almost as clear as the wrapper text. So is this pack searching? In my book, if the pack is transparent it ain't searching. And this wrapper is at bare minimum translucent. If you have a different rulebook and wish to shun me for my evil ways then more power to ya. Besides, what kind of deranged pack searcher targets Falcons base cards?
Anyway, this post is about what was inside the pack not what was showing on top. Inside the Jenkins pack I pulled a mini Goudey insert:
Of George McGovern?!???!
Yep, that's George all right. World War Two vet, South Dakota Senator, Vietnam War opposer and and the 1972 Presidential candidate that Richard Nixon was so scared of he wrecked his entire legacy over him. If you were to ask me who would be the most unlikely person to have a card in a 2009 football product, George would probably have been somewhere on that list. Yet here he is! It's actually a very good painting in the original Goudey art style. I'm very impressed with Upper Deck on this one, even though "Presidential Nominees who lost" is a pretty obscure insert subject. I like it though, although I bet most football collectors would puke if they pulled this card.
Speaking of Tricky Dick...
You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.
Oh no it waaaaasn't! History junkies know what I'm talking about, the rest of you probably don't have a clue. In 1962, former VP and 1960 Presidential candidate Richard Nixon ran for Governor of California and got beat by incumbant Democrat Pat Brown in Republican (at the time) California. Richard rattled off the above quote in defeat, then bided his time and worked behind the scenes to stage a comeback in 1968 when he beat Hubert Humphrey for the Presidency. Only to screw it all up by getting caught committing shenanigans in his race four years later against the aforementioned McGovern.
It's amazing the weird stuff that comes out of card packs nowadays.
