I drew a pair of Genets raiding a birds nest. Most of my work incorporates natural elements and I like to draw animals that are not know very well. The Genet is a small fox like carnivore that lives in Spain and some areas of Europe. I also wanted to make sure my card was reversible like a traditional face card.

2 elements + 1 spontaneous idea = guardian of 4 spades. Actually, when we thought about 4 spades, the most obvious was to play with 2 elements: spade and number 4. We tried to get answers for the following: How to combine them? How to present them in the most creative way? How to make understandable for player to know which card he take in his hand even within watching in its value.

In a previous personal project I have been looking into a way to make letters sexy again. Why not apply this to numbers as well. The idea is to mislead the viewer into seeing a regular number, but at a second glare notice an appealing woman looking at the person. Maybe her look succeeds in getting the person attention and distract the player into a new dimension.

I did a tiny bit of research about the symbolism of playing cards, it’s not the first time I played a bit with illustrating and interpreting cards. I have another series of works inspired by each of the Kings, of Clubs, Spades, Diamonds and Hearts, each with its own meaning, somehow overlapping with the four seasons. This time I illustrated The Seven of Clubs, and I read that the Sevens are the most spiritual cards of the deck, and this one in particular is connected with magic, creativity, spiritual knowledge. I was also inspired by the way the Seven of Wands in the Tarot cards looks like, with the seven sticks with tiny leaves on them. So I agreed to illustrate the Seven of Clubs as some sort of inspired magus, shaman, sitting, inhaling some magical vapors, with his eyes turned inside, surrounded by the seven wands, which in the Tarot card look very robust, very earthly, and in this illustration they bloom into these beautiful flowers. And visually I’m pretty fascinated and inspired by Islamic Art and Indian Miniatures lately, so the character is very reminiscent of that.

I based my design around a cats’ nine lives and the symmetry of life and death.

When I set out to make the card I jumped around in a lot of different directions. I originally was planning on making an image that related to the metasymbology of the card. At one point I was going to create a portrait of Jane Fonda as the iconic character Barbarella, because I found out Jane Fonda was born as a 10 of Hearts. In the end I ditched that idea because it felt too stiff. I agreed to loosen up and create an image that wasn’t related to metasymbology, but rather my own inclination when I thought of the words “Ten of Hearts.” Somehow I got to the image you see here. If I could sum up the image in a few words it would be: An elf is helping a tree grow anew. A tree stump felt like a strong base for a stand alone image, and the elf and plants grew around it to create the final idea.

The initial idea was immediately to play as Jack and saw that the figure of the classic card is traditionally depicted as a man divided in two parts, I was inspired to play with the concept of the dual personality of the famous character Dr. Jekill & Mr. Hyde

I think ’King’ has a originally strong character compared to the others, a leader. King of Clubs and my original character, Bluboo, have similar things. Bluboo wore a crown that could be related to King and Clubs represent many things for me, such as energy, happiness, flow, and creativity. I don’t know, i just like it.