I was very honored to be invited for the second time to be par of the collaborative project Playing Arts, where 54 extremely talented illustrators and designers together create a deck of playing cards. This year I got to draw 9 of Spades. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about the layout and how to position nine spade symbols in an interesting way and not to keep em flat. Here are some of the original sketches from the notebook. I didnt quite know which direction to go. I knew I wanted to have an isometric grid and play with 3 dimensions of it to position elements. First, I wanted to use shape on the number nine as a base and layout other elements around it. So I put together a grid in Photoshop and started to work around it. I also wanted to stick with just 2 colors this time too. At some point I decided to stick with a building idea and illustrate an utopian high rise apartment building that had an abandoned billboard on the roof top. I somehow saw the spades symbols as pills, so the banner shows three of them on the tongue. And number nine was treated in the other dimension/angle as a neon sign on the building, a welcome to a hotel or some other nasty joint.
I’m a New York based interactive designer with architecture background. Solving problems and creating new visual languages is my favorite part of the job. My main focus is designing large scale web projects, design languages and tools that lots of people will use for a very long time. I am an advocate for a proper user experience, structured design and extremely detailed execution. When designing experiences, I imagine a physical building where everything makes perfect sense and where some people will spend their lives.
Mattias Adolfsson
Peter Tarka
Tang Yau Hoong
Yema Yema
Teagan White
Mercedes deBellard
I’ve drawn the bodies of three starlings tangled in poppy plants. My card was the 3 of spades, and the suit of spades has always seemed ominous and dark to me — I frequently try to depict death and decay in a beautiful way in my drawings, and took this as an opportunity to continue that. I read that spades are the equivalent of the suits of swords and leaves in other types of decks, associated with the element of air, and sometimes symbolic of sickness and disappointment. I tried to take all of these factors into consideration when choosing my subject matter, as well as to create the composition out of groups of three — three starling, three large flowers, etc.
Teagan White
Fernando Chamarelli
Carne Griffiths
Serial Cut™
Ruben Ireland
MUTI
Peter Olschinsky
Using a familiar process whereby I let the materials dictate the piece – ’3 of Diamonds’ plays with the effects of optical distortion looking at glass or diamond as a metaphor for altered reality. The girl is lost within her distorted world, a world which is created and contained by her own thoughts.
Carne Griffiths
Musketon
Aitch
Valerie Ann Chua
Fab Ciraolo
Fernando Volken Togni
Javier Medellin Puyou
The 5 of hearts seems to me a very animated mix of symbolism, that s why i imagined it to be a vibrant scene of colourful beasts and flora.
Aitch
Tobias van Schneider
VASAVA
Muxxi
Felix LaFlamme
Krzysztof CHKN Nowak
Matt W. Moore
My original idea was to represent the seven main energy centers of the body and having each of them represented by a gem. The Heart, which is the emblem of the suit I chose, Is the main focus of the artwork. The Skeleton character of my card express a dying human race or society in general. He is doing the heart shape with his hands to encourage all of us to use the power of love, spread it all around and create a better world for the future. The Key is inside all of us.
Felix LaFlamme
Gary Fernández
Raul Urias
El Grand Chamaco
Jthree Concepts
Anton Repponen
Carlos Lerma
When doing my research I found that the 9 of Hearts card is related to wish fulfillment, specifically those wishes of an emotional nature and involving interpersonal relationships. I wanted to convey that longing for a wish to be granted, like a prayer, and I also included 9 different hearts in the character in different parts.
Carlos Lerma
Chuck Anderson
Pirecco
Bicicleta Sem Freio
Caramelaw
Hey
Lei Melendres
The idea of my project was to work with an observation drawing and making a connection with the number of my card. So, I decided to draw my hands, where the sum of the fingers results in the number nine. To erase some parts of the drawing that I did not like, I used collage with craft paper.
Pirecco
Seb Niark1
Steve Simpson
Bakea
Newfren
David Mack
Conrad Roset
I chose the Queen of hearts card because I thought that its the one that fits bettter with my style. Its very feminine, and I always like to draw female body and my muses.
Conrad Roset
Ise Ananphada
agnes-cecile
Yulia Brodskaya
Sara Blake
James White
Saturno (THE CREATTER)
I wanted to create a kind of ironic image of a king and I hope the audience will notice the little details that I incorporated into the artwork in order to achieve this. I really don’t want to be too descriptive here, I’m interested to know what people see in this work.
Yulia Brodskaya
Iain Macarthur
Mr. Kone
Andreas Preis
Jordan Debney
Mike Friedrich
Evgeny Kiselev
Joshua Davis
size
Poker, 88.9 × 63.5mm
material
Bicycle® paper with Air-cushion finish
inside
52 Playing cards + 2 Jokers + Info card
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