Creative Process: Adding Dimensionality to Card Paintings

There's a healthy and growing  card art community on Twitter, with an ever increasing number of artists doing all kinds of creative things with sports cards. I try to profile them occasionally on this blog and on my feed here, and I'm continually amazed by the diversity of forms and views that they create.

Brushstrokes in Flight, 1984 (fabricated 2010)
Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ray Bailey does some truly impressive things to add dimensionality to his cards (by that I mean creating a three-dimensional piece that involves elements cut from two different cards, with different colors and styles of paper backings, sometimes even using the wrappers from wax packs. It's an evocative style that brings to mind both card designs from yesteryear and the pop art styles of the 1960s and 1970s -- think of Roy Lichtenstein's massive outdoor sculptures that brought two-dimensional brush strokes to life in a three-dimensional space.

The original ToppsNOW card.

I wanted to try something similar but didn't want to duplicate Ray's work, so I started with two basic ideas. Firstly, I wanted to create a true baseball card with a front and a back, which meant that I needed two copies of the same card. For this one, I used a Juan Soto Topps NOW card. (These are a little more expensive than the one or two-dollar cards that I prefer to work with, but I like the photography and the design elements on the card, and they're also on very heavy card stock with a holographic watermark. Secondly, I wanted to incorporate the painting into this card.

I had a fairly simple design in mind; I wanted Soto's image, the ToppsNOW logo, and the border design elements (including the connected year, name, team logo, and caption, as well as the stub on the left with the day and month)  to be above the surface of the painted background. I'm going to raise them with foam, glued with acid-free rubber cement, the idea being 

To begin, I took one of the cards and cut out the background and manufacturer logo with an X-Acto knife. I'm not planning to do much of anything to the Soto figure itself, but I do think that I'll paint most of the background on the uncut card.

I'm fairly happy with the results. The blade I use is narrow and fine-tipped, so it didn't leave much extra cardboard outside the lines that I cut.

Cutting out the part of the card that I wanted to stand out.

Next, I painted the surfaces that I want to be painted on the bottom card in gesso. (Gesso is a matte white paint that forms a base for the colors to go onto). It's useful when painting a surface with a hard gloss, because otherwise it's hard for the paint to adhere to the card. I don't always do this step; I leave it out in case I want the ground to be visible next to the figure, which I don't usually paint. As you can see here, I used two coats of gesso to make sure that there's enough of a surface to accept the acrylic colors.

The ungessoed surfaces are going to be where the foam will be glued, and the upper card on top of that.

The actual painting in acrylics.

The next step is the actual card painting. I have different kinds of motifs that I like to evoke in them: sometimes a field of colors which complement the card design or the player's uniform, sometimes a composition in golds and other metallic colors that evoke Russian icons, and sometimes just splashes of color that produce a spray of movement and energy. For this one, I wanted to create a landscape that evoked the late spring which is so beautiful here in Washington, DC, and the energy that Soto brings to the game. I'm pleased with the way this one turned out--I was able to create motion in the sky and clouds, and the vegetation is like subtropical flowers with purple, yellow and red blooms, like the ones planted in and around Capitol Hill. I covered some of the area that will be covered by the cutout areas, because I want there to be some overlap between the cut surface that I'm about to glue onto the raised elements.

The next step is to build the raised areas. I do this with black foam sheets, which I bought from Amazon and read some reviews of them that mentioned being used for different kinds of crafting. I don't know how acid-free they are or if they will deteriorate over time, but it looks like it's a material that's often used for special cards. I suppose time will tell.

Cutting out the craft foam

I used an X-Acto knife to cut the foam, using the card elements that I had already cut out as a template. I'm of two minds about how well this worked; on the one hand, initially it gave me a truer cut, but I still had to trim the shapes so that the foam wouldn't be flush with the edge, at least on the inside surfaces (the ones not touching the outer edge of the card, like on the bottom or the lower right edge. I cut out three foam pieces; one for the Juan Soto image and the bottom edge of the card; another for the tab-shaped piece on the left; and a third for the Topps NOW logo.

Now I was ready to assemble the card. I glued the foam pieces to the card first, using rubber cement that I applied with a small paintbrush. (The brush that comes attached to the cap is too wide, and it's important to be careful when applying it so that excess cement doesn't get on the card, or on the holder when you put it in at the end. The rubber cement is acid-free, and I thought that it would adhere nicely to the card and the foam. Then I glued the card cutouts to the foam pieces and let it dry for a few minutes before I put it in an UltraPro One Touch 130 point magnetic case. 

The 130 point refers to the thickness of the card that the case can hold. (A standard case for a regular card is about 35 point.) The One-Touch cases are on the expensive side-between three and five dollars each, but are worth it because they showcase the card very nicely. 

The completed project

I'm very happy with the results--the card in the case is fun to handle and turn around, and I like being able to see the front and the back like a regular card. I tried something similar with a Rickey Henderson 1989 Topps card. This one was a little more complicated; it was harder to align the upper card with the foam, but the shadowing effect is still there and I really like being able to still have the experience of looking at the back of the card to see his statistics.

The lesson of these dimensional cards for me is that we can always learn and build our own artistic techniques. I'm going to making more of these, and look forward to sharing more of them. In the meantime, click here to see more of my galleries.