Wicked Kingdom - Illustrated Playing Cards by Wylie Beckert

Illustration Spotlight: The Ace of Hearts (with process video!)
over 8 years ago – Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 04:20:27 PM

I was a little nervous about launching the art book yesterday, but once again, I've been completely blown away by the awesome response this project has received. Wild thanks to the many backers who flocked in and/or upgraded their pledges to grab a copy of the book - your enthusiasm for the project made yesterday the second-biggest  day of the campaign since the launch.

We're now just $4000 from the next stretch goal - custom seals! If anyone out there has ties to the cold, dark corners of the internet that have yet to gaze upon the Wicked Kingdom deck, your posts & shares will help get us there!

In the meantime, here's the illustration spotlight for the Ace of Hearts (process video below!) and another dispatch from the Wicked Kingdom...

"The Kingdom of Hearts, a former colonial power built to greatness over a dozen generations, has been undone in as many years by the feckless rule of its widowed queen and her son - newcomers to the kingdom who have rejected its staid puritanical rule in favor of outlandish influences and their own self-serving customs.

Under their watch, the kingdom has been bankrupted through excess and shortsightedness; the borders have been opened wide and the kingdom has been transformed into a mecca not only for wayfarers and tradesman, but also for hedonists and criminals. The current rule is generally acknowledged to be illegitimate, but the kingdom's native population has been pushed out by the influx of transplants from the very lands that it once sought to conquer; the original inhabitants are few enough in number now that there is little organized desire to restore the kingdom to its old ways."

 I'd been kicking around the idea for this one for a while - an anatomical heart merged with a skull.

The Hearts suit is somewhat unique in that, outside of blood and organs, there aren't many visual motifs that carry through all three face cards. Rather than trying to incorporate a lot of small, disparate elements, I chose to focus on one of my favorites, the Bleeding Heart flowers that appear in the King of Hearts.

 I print out an enlargement of my thumbnail sketch, and transfer the rough layout to a sheet of Bristol via lightbox, using a red Col-Erase pencil. Since there isn't much information in my thumbnail sketch, this initial lay-in is quite rough.

  Once I turn off the lightbox, I start fleshing out the drawing - consulting reference photos for the skull and heart, and adding extra compositional elements (the overhanging branch of flowers, the twining hair, the paper hearts) to better match the visual weight of the last two ace designs.

 Once I'm happy with the overall composition, I switch to mechanical pencils for the final rendering. At this stage, I'm starting to build up the value structure (though it will be more apparent in the finished painting) and tightening up small details like the flower petals and the veins in the heart/skull.

 I scan my finished pencil drawing, and clean it up slightly in Photoshop (mostly Curves and Levels adjustments, but I'm also erasing stray marks and making minor corrections - such as the string of beads on the left, which I decided to remove for the painting).

 I print a low-opacity version of the adjusted drawing on a sheet of tinted pastel paper. To prevent buckling with the use of water media, I prepare the print by wetting the paper and stretching it on a sheet of Gatorboard using gummed paper tape - a common procedure for watercolor paper, but I've found it works well with almost any paper that's sturdy enough to withstand the handling.

 I ink the lines of the drawing with a mix of brown and black acrylic ink; I use a few larger washes (mainly in the eye sockets and the background heart) but I'm using this stage primarily to re-establish the detailled lineart from my pencil drawing. I'd skip this step entirely if I were painting directly over the pencil drawing (also an option, but since I like to work on different kinds of paper for my pencil drawings and my paintings, this method is my favorite. It also has the advantage of preserving the pencil drawing!)

With the acrylic ink dried, I apply a few broad washes of red watercolor, dulled with a tiny bit of green.

 One of the most important stages in my process is building up the highlights and fine details in white charcoal pencil. I love this stage because it adds a lot of depth and interest to what was previously a fairly flat, drab image. Since all but the brightest highlights will get knocked back significantly by subsequent layers of oil paint, I'm not too worried if the end result at this stage is a little gaudy and over-highlighted. Many of the white areas will come through in the final only as slightly brighter areas with some intense traditional-media texture.

Since both white charcoal and watercolor will lift and dissolve with overpainting, I seal the underpainting with three coats of spray matte medium, and another three coats at full strength (brushed on) to protect the paper from oil paint at the next stage.

I mix a deep greenish-teal oil paint with enough walnut oil to allow it to spread easily. Using a small flat brush, I scrub the mixture into only the darkest areas of the sealed underpainting, then rub with a blue paper towel to blot up excess paint and create a thin, even layer that covers almost the entirety of the painted area.

While the paint is still wet, I use kneaded erasers to clean up the edges and pick the paint out of the light areas. This reveals the lighter ink/white charcoal underdrawing beneath - adding a great deal of contrast to the value structure, and bringing back some of the details and highlights from the white charcoal stage.

With a small brush, I use the same paint I mixed for the base tone to build up the darkest areas, touch up outlines, and enhance any tiny details that may have gotten lost in the base tone. I allow this layer to dry completely (at least a few days) before moving on – if a paper towel rubbed on the surface picks up any pigment, the layers aren't dry enough to take additional oil work without lifting. 

 I use choose transparent oil colors – in this case Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Transparent Brown Oxide – and mix with walnut oil for my glazes. The complementary teal underpainting can take a lot of the saturation out of the red, creating more of a blackish brown color; however, since I used a pretty light hand at the last stage, I don't end up with any truly neutralized areas except in the very darkest shadows and outlines. Over the very lightest areas where I've applied only a tiny bit of teal, the red comes through at full saturation - so I apply it sparingly and blend well into areas that I want to keep clean and neutral-toned, like the skull.

 While the glazes are still wet, I use a tiny round brush to apply touches of pure white, then blend these highlights into the glazes with a clean brush - creating a subtle, glowy effect for my highlights.

Correction: Art Book delivery estimate
over 8 years ago – Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 11:24:50 PM

In my rush to post the art book reward tiers, I copy/pasted info from the Postcard Print Pack tiers - including the now-inaccurate August delivery estimate. Books, like print packs, will in fact be shipping in November with the decks. My apologies for the misinformation!

New reward tier: ART BOOK!
over 8 years ago – Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 09:29:02 PM

Since we're only a stone's throw away from $50,000 (!) I wanted to unveil the hidden stretch goal I've been working on... Wicked Kingdom is now available as an art book!

I poured hundreds of hours of drawing and painting into the Wicked Kingdom project; I've been hoping to assemble these images into an art book since the very beginning, but wasn't sure how the deck itself would be received. The flood of support for the project has outstripped all my expectations, and now that we're approaching the 50k mark, the artwork has finally earned itself a showcase outside the confines of the card deck!

The art book will be a 72 page softcover (6.625 x 10.25") volume featuring all of the art and writing from the Wicked Kingdom project, along with process write-ups, work-in-progress snapshots, and notes on the creation of the traditionally-painted artwork for the deck.

The art book can be purchased alone at the $35 tier, with a card deck at the $47 tier OR added to your existing pledge (see instructions below). An add-on chart with pricing for US and international orders can be found below:

Thanks again for supporting the Wicked Kingdom project - I can't wait to get this book into your hands... 

Illustration Spotlight: The Jack of Hearts
over 8 years ago – Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 10:14:04 PM

 "THE JACK OF HEARTS: One of the many industrious souls who ply their trade in the mecca of vice the kingdom's capitol has become.

The orphaned son of a vanished handmaiden, his place in the palace was lost during the upheaval caused by the old king's death. His early life on the streets was marked by hardship, struggle, and desperate acts; but a boy so very much like the old king in face and bearing proved a novelty to delight even the jaded tastes of the capitol; through wit and industry, he has managed to rise from his humble beginnings to become a courtesan of the highest order.

It would seem he could want for little now - having earned his place as a sought-after tradesman in the finest courtly houses of the kingdom and even, it is rumored, the king's own palace. But ambition, unlike lust, is not easily sated..."

Like all the cards in the Wicked Kingdom deck, the Jack of Hearts was painted traditionally in oil, ink, and watercolor. Check out a rundown of my traditional-media painting process below...

 Once again, I wanted the concept for the latest character to blend with (and add to) the overall narrative of the Hearts suit.

I wanted the Jack of Hearts to be the true son of the (deceased) old king - and therefore the rightful king over the current usurper; but since his mother had been a palace handmaiden (also deceased; see: the Queen of Hearts) he's lived a life on the streets, and has only now re-entered palace life, in a different capacity...

 I do a quick transfer of the adjusted thumbnail using a lightbox - mostly just copying over the major shapes and points of reference. I use Col-Erase instead of regular pencil for this stage, since there's often a lot of revising and back-tracking, which can get the paper pretty grubby pretty fast in graphite.

 At this point, I'm evaluating the overall composition at full size and checking for anything I may have missed or miscalculated at the thumbnail stage. One thing that stood out to me in the first pass for the Jack of Hearts was that the strong diagonal line created by one character's upraised arm was matched by empty space on the reverse side, threw off the overall balance of the composition. To correct for this, I changed the position on the hand on his shoulder; this also had the advantage of giving the unseen secondary character more of a looming presence, which fit with the narrative. Again, a fix that was much easier to camouflage in Col-Erase than it would have been in pencil.

 With the Col-Erase sketch finished, I start to render the image further in graphite. My main focus is getting the faces just right (and in the case of these playing cards, making the two sides look like the same person... which is an additional challenge) so I go slow, lightly roughing in the features and planes of the face for each side before committing to any dark pencil lines I won't be able to erase.

I double check the opposing faces against each other as I work; I like to take a snapshot of one face with whatever camera/phone/iDevice I have handy, so that I can compare the two faces side-by-side and adjust as needed. In this case, the version with the crown is meant to be a bit older, so I have a little leeway with the features... but I still want them both to look like the same character.

I start my painting with a wet-stretched print of my sketch to preserve my precious pencil drawing, and prevent buckling (paper hates water).

From there, I ink my drawing with a mix of black and brown acrylic ink, using a combination of near full-strength line art and diluted washes. I try to keep things soft and fairly low-contrast in the faces, which are easy to get carried away and overpaint on. I put down a layer of watercolor tint (in this case, red) before the inks.

One dry, white charcoal pencil adds some contrast, and helps "sculpt" the forms to give the illusion of three-dimensionality. Sealing is necessary to prevent the watercolor and white charcoal from smearing; I use three coats of diluted matte medium in a spray bottle, then brush on a few extra coats at full strength to protect the paper from the layers of oil paint to come.

 It's faster to build deep values in oil than in ink or watercolor; I use a contrasting greenish-teal oil paint - thinned with walnut oil - as a base tone to push the overall value range of the piece. I brush the mix into the darkest areas of the piece at full strength, then blend over the rest of the piece for an even midtone that coats all but the lightest areas of the composition.

I use small pieces of kneaded erasers to clean up the edges and pull paint out of highlights - intensifying the lighting effects that I establish in the white charcoal stage. The end result is a lot tidier, but still lacking some contrast...

 I go back in with the same mix of oil paint, darkening up some of the key outlines, filling in the background, and generally touching up any important details that have gotten lost since the ink stage.

 The end result is a nearly-monochromatic underpainting; one that's completely dry, I go over it with transparent glazes in the final hues - in this case, a single shade of brownish red on the hair and robes, and (applied very thinly) on the skin.

While the glaze is still wet, I use a tiny round brush to add small highlights and details in slightly pink-tinted white, thinned with walnut oil. I'm basically just adding a tiny bit of extra impact to the white charcoal highlights from earlier in the process. A final, very thin pink glaze helps knock back the green tones and unify the color scheme for the royal family...

Updated delivery estimate for Postcard Print Packs
over 8 years ago – Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 12:21:16 AM

A quick update on estimated delivery timeline for the Postcard Print Pack tiers:

I'd originally planned to ship the postcard print packs immediately after the end of the campaign (separately from the decks, which will take a few months to print), assuming that most backers would want either a deck OR a postcard pack. Turns out I was exactly wrong - the Postcard Print Pack + One Deck reward tier has turned out to be one of the most popular, and a good number of backers at the basic Postcard Print Pack tier have increased their pledges to include add-on decks.

In an effort to simplify order fulfillment, the revised plan is to ship the postcard print packs in November along with the decks. I'm hoping this will streamline the process of getting all 1400+ orders shipped in one fell swoop while (hopefully) keeping the entire operation in-house.

I hope my art will be worth the wait (and I'll be using the extra couple of months to make sure the postcard packs are absolutely awesome) but if pushing back the August delivery date is a dealbreaker for anyone, please let me know in the comments! Delivery estimates for the other early-shipping tiers (limited edition prints, drawings, paintings) will NOT be affected.

Thanks again to everyone who's backed the project - keep an eye out for more art and some other, slightly more uplifting updates this week...