Over the course of the past three years I have progressively sold more sports portraiture and sports card art. While I feel a bit reluctant to refer to myself as a card artist, I suppose that that is what I have been doing of late. It has certainly proved a little more lucrative than some of my work in the past.
It does feel a bit odd though, as the idea that I found myself working with my first year of graduate school has sort of rolled back around. How odd. The trading cards that I was attempting to make at that time did not go well. I felt too confused as to what I was even doing. I eventually abandoned them only to saw pieces of wood over and over again into tiny little blocks. I still have a lot of them. There were nearly a thousand painted and illustrated blocks by the time I was done.
But now it’s card art I guess. I had tried painting newer players, junk wax from the eighties. My daily pieces have even been of junk wax cards, but while I feel very much into the daily process with those cards, I do not feel quite so into doing more detailed and finished pieces of them.
However, I found this past weekend that something that I really enjoy is vintage card designs. I was commissioned to create a reproduction of a 1952 Bowman and Topps Roy Campanella, respectively. Additionally, I was tasked with creating a Larry Doby Newark Eagles card.
These two projects proved much more fruitful for my creative juices. I felt much more into the process. There is something about historical reference that always gets me geared up. I think that I’m just going to lean into it a bit more going forward.
That said, I’m starting to get some ideas for a series of Jazz cards based off of these slick 1950s Bowman cards. There is something so delightfully simple about the color in the originals that really has me excited. I did a drawing of Thelonious Monk in my sketchbook that I think will be first. I’ll see if I can’t get that together and posted later this week.
Until then, or some other time that the impulse hits me, cheers.