I wanted to create a surreal and conceptual illustration in a minimalist style. To me, 2 of clubs means two world- reality vs dream.

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.

I’ve drawn a knight which holds and protects the six blades/swords which represent nobility.

For the Seven-Of-Diamonds I chose to make a Diamond-Of-Sevens. It is somewhat of an ambigram since it reads the same when viewed from either perspective. It was fun to make the interlocking typography slightly cryptic yet still very legible upon closer inspection.

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.

We see Captain Gumball Coner here from the land of Candy. All the 10 hearts we see in his head so indicates that he’s filled with love and lots to give. Every time he dispenses a one of his ‘loves’, another heart will generate within so rest assured, its always 10 of hearts within his shiny glass head. He’s well respected and all the candy critters love him.

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.

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.