Bringing together a love of design, Ukiyo-e & playing cards for the ultimate passion project.

Project Information

Playing cards and their design was already a keen interest of mine, so when the opportunity to design a full deck was presented through a college based brief I was immediately captivated. I decided the theme of the playing cards would be based upon the woodblock prints and paintings of Japanese Ukiyo-e because I have always admired the confident and expressive characteristics of Ukiyo-e and wanted to recreate this style using traditional methods. Japanese calligraphy ink, both bottled and hand ground, was used on sized rice paper to create the black outline paintings for the court cards as well as to paint all the pips, indices and text.