Beginnings
Back in 2014 I decided, while still being a full-time project archaeologist mind you, that it would be fun to make sketch cards for a trading card company. I have been an avid collector of trading cards since I was young, and the introduction of sketch cards into these products piqued my interest to the point of where I asked myself, ‘could I do that?’.
The money from making sketch cards would be nice but even more fulfilling would be to create artwork for a licensed product or a company that would use it in their product. Before this time I really only dabbled in art. Sure, I drew all the time but I had never done much where I would get published or anything. Previously I had done scientific illustrations, which I kind of lumped into the regular practice of being an archaeologist, and had done a few freelance projects here and there like logos, t-shirt graphics, and a couple of music album covers.
I spent about a year applying to different companies, trying to break into making sketch cards. My art continued to improve and the new sketch cards I made were included in my portfolio when applying to companies. I saw an advertisement for a company called Monsterwax on Facebook and thought that could be a fun company to do artwork for as they did a lot of small sets with products that didn’t require a license, like classic horror and dinosaurs. In September of 2014, Monsterwax brought me on board to make some sketch cards for their Monsters and Dinosaurs, respectively, sets. From there everything snowballed by working for Leaf then Upper-Deck, Cryptozoic, Topps, and others.
New Project!
It had been quite sometime since those initial sets with Monsterwax and I thought I’d reconnect with them to see if they were working on anything new. For most companies, like Monsterwax, a set can take 1-2 years to produce, so I figured it would be about time Monsterwax would be working on a new product. Turns out they were and so I hopped on board.
For this project, Monsterwax is producing a horror /urban legends book filled with short stories and artwork. The project is being crowd funded (and successfully at this point as well) on Kickstarter. In connection to the book is a series of trading cards that feature artwork inspired by the short stories or other urban legends that the artist knows of. For my part, I created 20 original sketch cards (below), with some of them possibly being reprinted in the set. When I worked on the Dinosaurs set in 2014 I believe 2 of my drawings were reproduced in the set.
This product was inspired by the 1950s/60s EC horror comics so I took that thickly inked comicbook style and used it on these cards with pretty broad patches of copic colour. I kept my drawings pretty cartoony on these and had a lot of fun with that as much of my recent Star Wars stuff is needed to be more realistic.
Artist Proofs for Sale
From my work on this set I have four blank sketch cards I can use for commissions. I may just draw something on them and then put them up for sale later, but if you catch me soon you can commission a custom horror illustration on one of them! Contact me for availability and prices here!
My Contribution to the New Monsterwax set!
