Card Illustrations

I've had a bunch of people contact me asking about the process I use to do the illustrations in my books, so it seemed there was enough interest to write something about it and post it here. This might be of interest to anyone who has thought of creating (or wondered how to create) drawings to illustrate card sleights and routines. I've had a ton of feedback and positive comments about the illustrations in my books.

The gentlemen over at Vanishing Inc. said this about the illustrations and design in Details of Deception:

"It's a gorgeous book with some of the clearest illustrations we have seen."

Enough shameless self-promotion....

If you have considered publishing your own ideas but were not sure on how to go about having illustrations done for your book, the CLIP below shows a time-lapse sequence of the basic process I used to complete more than 50 illustrations in my first book and a hundred more in Details of Deception. Illustrations like this one below:

I've always been fascinated by books on cards, card magic and gambling moves, and having always had an interest in art, I was always drawn (unavoidable pun) to the illustrations as much as the descriptions.

It was kind of ironic that when I first decided to write a book of card material I decided to use photographs to illustrate the explanations, instead of using drawings. I understood the work involved and knew what a big job it would be to do illustrations for an entire book, but normally that would not put me off, and in this instance, I put it down to simply not really even considering drawings. For some reason I just went into the process thinking I'd use photographs.

But fate had other plans it seems, and a series of events would turn my decision around. I roped my friend Wayne Rogers into helping me with the initial photo shoot for my first book. I turned up to Wayne's house and I performed a handful of the routines and we took a bunch of photos. I took the lead on what needed to be photographed and from which angles. I didn't really study the photos during the shoot and it wasn't until I got home, and began editing the photos that I realised that none of them could be used in the book as they were just not lit well and many were out of focus. Also I had gotten many of the staging decisions completely wrong, and taken photos at the wrong moments, sometimes of things that really didn't need to be illustrated beyond written descriptions, and often missing moment that needed a photo.

But all was not lost, they helped me see better angles and moments that would illustrate my written descriptions more clearly. From that perspective the session was very successful. But I'd need a professional photographer to do things right.

It was later when looking through the photos again that I thought to try drawing over one of them to create an illustration. It occurred to me that drawing over the photos meant that they needn't be especially crisp, and even an out of focus shot could be fixed by drawing over it with a clean line. My first attempt worked well, and my plans changed immediately. This meant I could do my own photo shoots as long as I chose the right moments, good angles and lit the shoot with high contrast to create some shadows to use in my illustrations.

An unfinished "work in progress" illustration and original reference photo above. YET TO BE ADDED IN THE IMAGE ABOVE ARE THE CARD FACE AND EDGE DETAILS.

Due to the repetitive nature of the images needed (basically always cards and hands) I found ways to keep things consistent, such as the card pips and number which I created once in a digital file and was able to re-use to make different card values in each routine description. I developed consistent ways to draw finger nails, wrinkles on knuckles, etc, and as you'll see in the clip below, I found ways to shortcut the artwork needed on the kings which featured in a handful of routines so I thought it would be worthwhile extracting the face designs from a photograph for use in those illustrations.

But, for most of the illustrations I still needed to draw from scratch the vast majority of card faces (all except the kings in this image below). For more complex details such as face cards in an image like the one shown below, I found that just drawing an indication of busy patterned detail was enough for the illustration to look "right". A close look at the partial areas of picture card detail would show they are different in each instance from actual/real card face designs.

CLICK TO WATCH a time-lapse sequence which shows the illustration process in action for a less demanding and simpler illustration.