Queen of Clubs

For the Society of Newspaper Designers who are having their convention in Las Vegas this summer, I contributed a painting for an illustrators' deck of cards. Edel posted on this earlier offering a beauty. My card is the Queen of Clubs. I had to do this quickly but thought about it for a long time. At first I thought I would do it as a demo but never had a free moment. Initially I thought I would paint a queen surrounded by water and waves. A recent job drained me a bit of wanting to do another piece with waves so I went back to the drawing board. I kept thinking of painting a grand, impressive woman and remembered a cool sculpture in the back of the Brooklyn Museum. Behind the museum in a chain linked fenced area there are pieces of old buildings, sculptures that actually mostly came from the old Penn Station. I shot a photo of this statue years ago and just found it last week. Bingo. I altered it a bit, added an arm and staff and of course, flipped it over and painted the whole thing as a worn Trompe-l'oeil. That stuff I can do in my sleep. The question was, would I do two halfs or just one and clone it over. I decided to dig in and do the whole thing. I had fun. Back to the paying gigs this week.