Have you ever watched a video of someone doing something, regardless of how labor intense it is, and just got the urge to do it too? Well that's EXACTLY what happened to me when I watched the art-Youtuber, Moriah Elizabeth, customize an entire deck of playing cards! 😂 However, unlike Moriah who made her designs digitally, I decided that I wanted to torture myself extensively for over a year by hand drawing and hand coloring EACH PORTRAIT INDIVIDUALLY!
You read me right. I painstakingly hand drew and colored 52 portraits. And it gets better! I didn't just use one medium, oh no! Incase you didn't hear, I have a personal challenge where I have to use up my entire art hoard before it all dies forever. So, I used AT LEAST two different mediums per portrait! Some of the mediums I used were water soluble graphite, Crayola makers, and Gelly roll gell pens. But each card is different, so you'll have to check out each of the 52 portraits to see what all I used!
When Moriah designed her cards, she used her own custom made characters, which are totally adorable! There are quite a few that I would love to own personally, but, the life of an artist is a poor one😂. Not to mention that I have too much art stuff already!😂 For my Portrait Playing Cards, however, I thought I'd make them a bit more personal to me since they're mine 😂. Might as well, right? So, at first, I thought I would make all the cards pretty much the same - just random portraits that took my fancy for each card -, but then I thought that wouldn't be fun. So, I decided to make each suit a theme of sorts: The boys, the girls, the cartoons and the totem/spirit animals.
For the Clubs, ♣ , I chose different men for each card. Some were randomly picked from online photos and some have special meaning to me; being inspirational, attractive or influential to me in some degree.
The Spades, ♠, I decided to showcase my totem/spirit animals. If you're unfamiliar with what a totem/spirit animal is, check out the Native American Vault for a better description than I'll give in their dedicated section 😂.
The Hearts, 🧡, were dedicated to some of my top favorite shows, movies and cartoons. Mostly from the good ol' 90's 😂.
And, last but not least, the Diamonds, 🔸, were dedicated to some of the more influential, inspiring and fun women I grew up/still do watch/listen to. One of which being, of course, Moriah herself for inspiring this torturous idea in the first place 😂.