Painting a Pack of Cards
Inspired by a gift, I decided to paint my own pack of cards in a Hollow Knight theme.
James Pagen
2/1/20262 min read
This project was inspired by a gift from my brother: a pack of custom playing cards designed with Hollow Knight characters. The artwork was brilliant but I felt the "suits" where a little under though out. When several characters in Hollow Knight and Silk Song naturally theme together, why not group those into the same suit?
At first, I was planning to add characters to all the cards, not just the face cards, more in the style of the original deck. And I was planning to paint over the suits symbols themselves and replace them with the Hollow Knight themed symbols for Soul, Silk, Dream, etc. But I thought that risked turning the project from an exciting design piece into a slog to get it done, so I scaled back my scope a little bit.
So, I focused on the face cards and on which characters I wanted to include across both games. Hearts became 'Dreams & Nightmares', with the Nightmare Heart fitting the suit. Spades became 'Soul & Shade', with our King & Queen of Hallownest being easy choices. Clubs became the 'Weavers' and Diamonds became the 'Silk' of Pharloom's Citadel and those loyal to Grandmother Silk.
Picking the characters was the hardest part. There are so many characters that I love from the games, but only so many spaces on face cards. And I couldn't necessarily add a favourite if it didn't fit together with others. I considered doing a second pack as well, with suits like 'Nail' or 'Pin', but kept it narrower for the time being. Even though that meant I didn't get to include my favourite boss - Paintmaster Sheo.
To create the cards, I bought myself some acrylic brush markers. I wanted to use paint for these as I thought it would look most effective, but I don't tend to enjoy the act of painting as much as I do drawing. So the paint pens offer a great middle ground to achieve a different style whilst working in a way that is comfortable.
This was partly inspired by lots of social media clips I'd seen of people painting their own cards. So, after several test attempts on a spare deck of cards, I taped down the faces and got to work. Jokers as well, because that gave me an opportunity to include some of the fun and wacky - not to mention beloved - characters from the games. I started by going over the existing design in white to avoid that being visible through the paint. Then for the Jacks, Queens and Kings I added a background colour to theme them and match the characters. Then onto painting the characters themselves! I decided to avoid black outlines to make it feel more like game art and less like a screenshot from the games themselves.
Soooo happy with how these turned out! Not sure yet whether I'll play with these much or just consider them a "display" pack. Maybe I will do another deck with a design that I don't mind getting scratched or cracked? I do need to find another place to use my acrylic pens, lest they become a one project purchase!
