Firstly, I just want to thank those who've PMed me about disappearing photos in this thread, it's become an ongoing problem in recent months and I'm doing my best to re-up them when I notice they've vanished.
Also, a new one for the thread! This is one of my favorite recent acquisitions, it took a lot of patience and perseverance to get it completed but I'm so, so happy it paid off in the end
It's no secret that Jim Lee is one of my favorite artists, so my idea was to get him to do a Leo headsketch remarque for me. Since Jim sometimes refuses to draw on blank sketch covers (due to eBay flipping and the like), I thought I would take the safe route and choose one of Sophie's covers for him to sketch on. I had to gauge which of her covers had the appropriate amount of space so Jim's sketch wouldn't interfere with the printed art. In the end, I settled on the Artist Edition of TMNT #66.
The sketch was done last summer via a facilitator, and I even sent a blue pen with a special request to have Jim color Leo's bandana blue for me. There was some cross-wires and Jim instead ended up drawing Leo with the blue pen but not coloring the bandana. A turtle drawn by Jim is extremely rare, so it wasn't a big deal for me. In fact when he drew the sketch, Jim told the facilitator this was "probably the second time I've ever drawn a ninja turtle, although I have another project in the works next year." Today I saw the announcement that he's drawn the TMNT with a bunch of other characters for a SDCC 2019 print, so I guess that's the project to which he was referring!
Here's a photo of Jim starting to draw my sketch. If you look closely, you can see he has Google Images up on his phone, so he obviously had to do a quick search for reference!
I then asked Sophie if she would be open to doing a mirror-reverse Leo beside Jim's remarque. Sophie typically isn't a fan of drawing remarques but she was generous enough to do one for me, plus she also colored both bandanas. I'm very grateful to own such a unique piece.
