The Art Gallery- 2010 Breygent Classic Vintage Movie Posters Planet Of The Apes

This month’s Art Gallery display comes from Scott D.M. Simmons and is an oversized 3x5 sketch card from the 2010 Breygent Classic Vintage Movie Posters release. The subject is from the cult classic 1968 movie Planet of the Apes and isn’t a move poster but a scene late in the movie when Lucius is tying up Dr. Zaius near the cave in the Forbidden Zone.

The original 5 Planet of the Apes movies; Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquer the Planet of the Apes (1972) & Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)  I find enjoyable, especially the first movie. The reboot and remake films are pretty good but they rely on CGI and I am an old-fashion actor in a rubber monkey mask type of guy.

The Art Gallery- 2010 Breygent Woodstock Rock Posters John Lennon

This month’s Art Gallery display is from Jeremy Treece, an artist out of Detroit who has done work for Upper Deck, Topps, Cryptozoic and Breygent among others. I would call his style super hero-esq because he commonly uses squared off heads that you will often see on Superman or Wolverine. 

This card is from the 2010 Breygent Woodstock Posters release, is one of their oversized sketch cards at 3x5.  The subject for this set is Woodstock-era musicians and this card is John Lennon during his hippie days and one of his most thought-provoking songs “Imagine”. There are a couple of draws for me to this card; first John Lennon was amazing and second the grunge style design, I fell in love with the style during art school and it calls to me.

The Art Gallery- 2015 Island Dreams Prohibition Pretties Flapper

This month’s Art Gallery display is from j(ay), also known as 10^th-letter,who is one of my favorite sketch card artists out there. He has cards in many major lines including Topps, Upper Deck, Breygent and Cult Stuff, but in the last few years has cut down to doing work mainly for Unstoppable Cards and 5finity. 

The card is from the 2015 Island Dreams Prohibition Pretties release, a set based on the 1920s with lots of gangsters and flappers. This card depicts a flapper from the era in j(ay)’s typical style. The filigree is a bit smeared in the background which I am guessing is the reason the card was cheaper than most of his sketch cards.

The Art Gallery- 2015 Upper Deck Dinosaurs Neanderthal

This month’s Art Gallery display is from Sharon Gauthier, a freelance artist from Quebec. She is a talented artist who can work in multiple styles. She is a cartoonist so she has a very cutsie style but she also has a pseudo-realistic style, like this card. Not photo realism but accurate.

This sketch card is from the 2015 Upper Deck Dinosaur release, and this is my second sketch card from the set. This one depicting a Neanderthal following a successful hunt carrying an animal leg. I have no attachments to the card, I just liked the subject and colors.

The Art Gallery- 2005 Breygent John Wayne

This month’s Art Gallery display is from Chris Henderson, who has an amazing talent with realistic images using just a pencil. He does work in color too but there are certain sets where every sketch is done in pencil and they are done well. Henderson has done a lot of work for Breygent, and those are usually the sketch card sets done almost all in pencil with minimal color. I believe this is because he is the only sketch card artist for those sets so he has a lot of cards to do in a limited time and pencil line sketches are easier to produce but don’t take that as they are not quality art.

The card is from Breygent’s 2005 John Wayne set and features the Duke in cowboy gear. When it came to John Wayne it was almost always a cowboy flick or a military flick so all of the sketch cards that I have seen fit in those two genres.

Countdown 'til Christmas The Art Gallery- 2014 Breygent Kringle Kards

I worked as a retail manger for over a decade, mostly for Toys R Us, and I worked up to 90 hours a week between October and February, so I was not big on the holidays. From 1993 through 2002 I never had a regular Thanksgiving dinner; every Christmas Eve was a 5 am to 7 pm shift and the day after Christmas I was back at work at 5 am getting ready for returns. Then January and February were inventory time. It is fair to say, I actually disliked Christmas and it took a couple of years after I left retail and two children being born for me to begin to enjoy the winter holidays.

Now I love this time of year. Christmas carols, twinkling lights, cold nights, Rankin/Bass Claymation and Santa cards. 

This month’s Art Gallery display comes from the 2014 Breygent Kringle Kards release. The artist is Anne Cain, who is more a digital artist but did a wonderful rendition of the traditional Santa Claus. When I saw this card I was hooked, I have been watching it for awhile and when the seller lowered the price, I finally decided to add it too my collection. The seller initially sent the wrong card, a similar card by Anne Cain but not the one I wanted. I have purchased from the seller before and we worked out a resolution that worked for both of us.

The Kringle Kards set was mainly a sketch card set, with each artist giving their own artistic interpretation of good old Saint Nick. There are some amazing styles out there, it is wonderful seeing the different looks Santa has.

The Art Gallery- 2015 Island Dreams Prohibition Pretties

This month’s Art Gallery display is from Pierre Beauchemin, who also does work under the name “Niceroad”. He is a freelance artist that does portrait work usually, but for this set he went with an action shot. 

The card is from the 2015 Island Dreams Prohibition Pretties release, a set based on the 1920s with lots of gangsters and flappers. Who doesn’t love a running gun battle between cops and some bootleggers? I watched this card for awhile and went back and forth on it but the gangsters won me over.

The Art Gallery- 2005 Inkworks Family Guy Season Two Chris Griffin Imagine

This month’s Art Gallery Display comes from the artist John Czop, or just Czop as he is known to many fans. For about 6-8 years Czop was probably the most famous of sketch card artists. You go back to the sets that when sketch cards first making an appearance in Topps, Fleer and Rittenhouse sets and his cards have always been the top sellers. He has not appeared in any recent sets, I think he has mainly turned towards working on comic books.

The card is from the 2005 Inkworks Family Guy Season Two release and is one of the earlier sketch cards sets. The card depicts Chris using John Lennon’s style and I love it. It is one of my more simplistic card but this one was done intentionally so there is added appeal.

The Art Gallery- 2013 Cryptozoic Archer Seasons 1-4 Sterling Belcher

This month’s Art Gallery Display comes from the artist Jason Durden, thank you for the correction Greg. 

The card is from the 2013 Cryptozoic Archer Seasons 1-4 release and depicts Sterling Archer with a twist. In season 4 of Archer, Sterling has amnesia and ends up working in Bob’s Burgers restaurant with the joke being that both Archer and Bob are voiced by H. Jon Benjamin. This card shows Archer with his mustache appearing like Bob Belcher. If you haven’t seen Archer or Bob’s Burgers, you are missing two great shows.

I was able to pick up this beauty not long ago to add to the collection. The man himself, H. Jon Benjamin. The autograph is from this year's Allen & Ginter release.

The Art Gallery- 2014 Cult Stuff 1914: The War Illustrated British Soldier

This month’s Art Gallery display is from an unknown artist. The checklist that I was able to track down only had a couple of artists listed and this signature does not match any of them. The set is the 2014 Cult Stuff 1914: The War Illustrated, a set to memorialize the 100^th anniversary of WWI, the Great War.

I am a WWI history buff and I have been picking up cards from this set since its release, only a sketch card was outside of my price range, so I was very fortunate to find this one for under $10 shipped. The image is a great subject and depicts a British soldier in full gear going “Over the top”, a term that means the soldiers are literally climbing over the top of their trenches and charging across No Man’s Land in a frontal attack on the German trench lines. As expected, the charges rarely succeed and those that did often found that, so few soldiers made it to the defensive line they couldn’t capture the trench or they couldn’t hold it and ended up retreating. 

Initially Cult Stuff intended on releasing a set a year for the 100^th anniversary of each year of the war (1914-1918) but the 2015 Cult Stuff 1915: The War Illustrated set garnered minimum interest from collectors so they decided to cancel all the releases outside of a 1915 promo card, which really bummed me out.

The Art Gallery- 2015 Upper Deck Marvel Fleer Retro Rocket Racoon

This month’s Art Gallery is from J.D. Hill, also known as James Hill, and is Rocket Raccoon, one of my mini PCs. Hill has done quite a bit of work for Upper Deck and Breygent and his style is very reminiscent of the typical comic book art and that is what I love about this card. This card came from the 2015 Upper Deck Marvel Fleer Retro release.

I very rarely read comic books growing up and when I did they were usually Star Wars books so when it comes to Rocket Raccoon I was a late bloomer and my interest is based on the movie character. I love the character in the Guardian of the Galaxy movies, voiced by Bradley Cooper, because he is a little bad ass bastard who only cares about himself and his partner in crime Groot.

So You Don't Have To Experiment- Restoring A Sketch Card

 Last night I played Devil’s Advocate and so you don’t have to, I retouched a damaged sketch card. The card is one of my favorite Star Wars characters Salacious Crumb, I really like a lot of the alien creatures in the series, and it was drawn by the artist Amy Pronovost.

I chose this card to retouch for two reasons, a character I like, and it was damaged. I saw a similar card last year and that is what got me thinking about doing this from my So You Don’t Have To serial. Obviously, some sort of roller went across the surface, I am guessing during sorting or pack out since it is almost the same type of smudging I saw on the other card so it has happened more than once. 

So you don’t have to, I went through and attempted to clean up the damage and reline where possible. I did not add or remove any lines, I followed (as best as possible) Amy’s original line work and only wanted to make it presentable again. In my eyes, the card has been altered (by machinery and me) and I will not let this card leave my collection. 

I will not be restoring any of Vincent van Gogh's paintings soon but the finalized card, below, is presentable as the original artist intended it to be. More work could be done on minute details, like the text at the top, but I was beginning to remove some of the original background color on the card so I stopped. 

The Art Gallery- 2013 Topps Star Wars Galactic Files Series 2 Jawa

This month’s Art Gallery display comes from an interesting artist, he does his work under the name Little House but his real name is Edgar Pasten and is a Jawa from the 2013 Topps Star Wars Galactic Files Series 2. Pasten uses a very cool cartoonish style with his cards and that works so well in the Mars Attacks and Star Wars sets in which his sketches are included. What makes him interesting is that he uses a very unique color theory with his sketches, his work is almost always in one color per card. In this case he worked in blues but I have seen reds, pinks, purples and greens in others.

I like the Jawas and Sandpeople, I don’t think I have any specific reason why I like them, maybe because they are the first alien creatures we see in Star Wars and that made an impression on a young Corky when I saw the movie in theaters, not sure. But I do love the cartoonish look and the blue works so well here so this makes a wonderful addition to my Star Wars collection.

The Art Gallery- 2009 ACEO Lois As Princess Leia

This month’s Art Gallery display comes from an artist that has done so many prominent sets and is considered one of the top artists in the sketch card world, Brian Kong. The card is of Lois from Family Guy as Princess Leia and is a PSC (Personal Sketch Card) from 2009, probably a commission since it is on Brian’s personal sketch card blank.

If you haven’t guessed I am a Family Guy fan, it is one show that my son and I enjoy watching together and we probably have more inside jokes based on Family Guy references then a father and son should have. My favorite episodes were the three based on the original Star Wars Trilogy; Blue Harvest, Something…Something…Something Dark Side and It’s a Trap!. There are official sketches based on those episodes that were packed out in the 2011 Leaf Family Guy release but they are quite expensive so I look for other options and this is my second ACEO Family Guy Star Wars sketch card, the first being Stewie as Darth Vader from Nicole Falk that I picked up in 2015.

The Art Gallery- 2015 Upper Deck Dinosaurs

This month’s Art Gallery display comes from Denver Brubaker, a cartoonist from Michigan, who has a very comical Sunday morning comic strip style that we all loved as kids. His style is a lot of goofy looks, large eyes and smiles as well as gangly limbs so you can see most of that in this sketch.

The card is from the 2015 Upper Deck Dinosaurs release, which was the beginning of a dinosaur revival in 2015-2016, and easily the best of the multiple dinosaur releases. What caught my attention with the card was the fun of it where most artists went a realistic route with their sketch cards Denver stuck to his style and I love it. I cannot even tell you what kind of dinosaur this is but he is enjoying his life no matter. Adding to the happiness is the vivid colored and strong lines, just a great card in my eyes.

The Art Gallery- 2009 Breygent Movie Posters Stan Laurel

This month’s Art Gallery display comes from one of the best sketch artist to have their work immortalized on cardboard, Brian Kong. His work has appeared on base card designs like the 2009 Topps Allen & Ginter’s release, various Topps National Chicle releases and in a couple of In The Game hockey sets and this is in addition to his sketch cards.

This card is Stan Laurel from the 2009 Breygent Movie Posters release. When I was growing up I was interested in old-school slapstick comedy, I went searching for everything about The Little Rascals, Charlie Chaplin, The Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy and Abbott and Costello. Probably not the standard shows a kid growing up in the late 70s-early 80s would watch but I loved everything about those black and white comedies.

There is not a large collecting base for cards of these comedians, besides The Three Stooges, so I was excited to come across this Laurel sketch card for an amazing price. I am not certain but I would guess that Brian also did a Oliver Hardy sketch to go with this one and if he did I would be happy to add it to my collection too.

The Art Gallery- 2005 Breygent Three Stooges

This month’s Art Gallery display is from Chris Henderson and is from the 2005 Breygent Three Stooges release. I really enjoy Breygent’s sets, they had the licensing from a number of popular shows/movies and they always put out an amazing product. Breygent seems to have fallen off of the map so I would expect we will not see any future products from them. 

Ever since I was a kid I loved slapstick comedy and the Three Stooges were masters of their art. What really drove me to adding this card to my collection is that this is a classic scene from the I Can Hardly Wait short and includes the original Stooges. Not that I have anything against Shemp, Joe Besser or Joe DeRita but Curly is the man.

The Art Gallery- 2009 Topps SpongeBob SquarePants

This month’s Art Gallery display is from Paul Tibbitt and was part of the 2009 Topps SpongeBob SquarePants Premier Edition release. Paul Tibbitt is one of the original animators, writers and storyboard artists of the SpongeBob show but moved up the line and is now an Executive Producer of the show, additionally he was the director of the second SpongeBob movie and is currently the director of the third SpongeBob movie that will be out in 2019. He has announced that after he completed the third movie he will be retiring from the SpongeBob SquarePants series.

I will admit that I enjoy the show and have been watching it with my kids for probably a good 14 years. Even now I will watch the show if the kids have it on and recently watched the second movie.

The sketch cards were 1:151 packs and are extremely rare, near impossible really, since the release I have seen maybe 6-8 sketch cards when I picked this one up in 2016. The cards are basic but when you see one, it doesn’t matter the subject, and you want one you, just pick it up.

The Art Gallery- 2017 Island Dreams Jazz Musicians

This month’s Art Gallery Display comes from an artist that you all know, me. The set is 2017 Island Dreams Mardi Gras.

This is my first official release and I was excited and did a variety of subjects based on NOLA and Mardi Gras culture; gators, crawfish, zombies, voodoo dolls and some witch doctors but my favorite are a trio of jazz musicians. The musicians aren't puzzle sketch cards, because of the placement of each musicians the backgrounds line up differently but I used the same colors for a nice visual appeal.

I was kind of stressed doing the set, we were given 20 blank sketch cards with a couple of rules. Now normally I am confident drawing sketch cards, if I screw up I just throw away the card and grab another blank to start over. This was totally different because if I made a mistake I couldn’t just toss a card away but I look forward to the next opportunity.

The Art Gallery- 2007 Topps Heroes Sylar

This month’s Art Gallery Display comes from an artist that I am unable to identify. I have checked through lists that I can find, even comparing styles, and I have had no luck. The set is 2007 Topps Heroes and is of the main bad guy Sylar.

Sylar was the ultimate bad guy, he was able to steal the abilities of other characters but he had to tear their head open to do it. He was one of my favorite characters but after the third season I was not able to continue watching because NBC had destroyed the show well beyond repair and I lost complete interest, even the attempted reboot Heroes Reborn in 2015 couldn’t bring fans back.