In November 2010 I launched a campaign with Kickstarter.com to make my vision come to life.
It worked.

Since first release in November 2010, each printing has been signed, numbered, and limited.  Early printings were limited to 100 decks.  In the last year I’ve distributed thousands of decks of handcrafted cards printed in Portland, Oregon.   I started drawing Portland scenes to be made into greeting cards, postcards, calendars, and coloring books.  Eventually I had sketched over 50 landmarks and neighborhood places.  One night I was wondering how best to present my drawings to the public.  It occurred to me that there are 52 cards plus 2 Jokers in a deck of playing cards.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is really not about playing cards.  It’s about Art.  But I still hope you will play them.  Even if you don’t play cards, you can still hold them in your hands and shuffle the deck.  They can be arranged, displayed, or framed in different ways that showcase your favorite places.

 Now is the time for a Handmade Revival.  It is my intention to contribute to a growing local movement towards beautifully made household objects that are usefull as well as pleasing to the eye.  My drawings celebrate history and place in an old-fashioned way that is influenced by the Renaissance etchings of Albrecht Durer and Andreas Mantegna.  William Morris, Howard Pyle, and the Arts and Crafts Movement, including the Pre-Raphaelites, have inspired my sense of design.   I draw on location, sketching the composition with a ball point pen.  Later I embellish and crosshatch the details at my studio (1627 NE Alberta), using my Great-Aunt Ethel’s 1910 ink pen.

By drawing on-site, I become a participant of each place.  The rain of the Northwest has an influence on almost every composition.  An average sketch takes less than an hour.  Usually I can pin down the initial sketch within a few tries, but sometimes I abandon the location, defeated, maybe to return later.  Most times I accomplish my goal and it’s like getting to the summit of a mountain.  Then I start looking for another one.  Since June 2010, I’ve drawn over 200 places in Portland.  Since February, I’ve illustrated 52 places each for Vancouver B.C., Seattle, and Astoria.  Recently I returned from Europe where I drew Paris and Torres Novas (Portugal).  In the near future I plan to draw DC and NYC.

About the Jokers
There are 2 Jokers in this Deck of Cards.  The first Joker is an illustration of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.  It represents the direction I plan to take: illustrating 52 landmarks in every major city of the world.  The 2^nd Joker is a tribute to the Renaissance engraver Albrecht Durer, after his famous printMelencoliaor Waiting For Inspiration to Strike, which depicts an artistic angel in deep contemplation of a truncated rhombohedron (a Geometrical Solid).  For Illustrated Playing Cards, I drew my own version of Durer’s print as a Portrait of the Artist at Work.  The Artist sits in his studio, considering the polyhedron shape that occupies his workspace.  Within the solid are 3 Primary Shapes (Triangle, Circle, Square) that form the structure of all other shapes in nature.  Around the cluttered studio floor are books, paintbrushes, pens, half-finished projects, and cards spread on a table.  Above his head, the Artist thinks about an Hourglass, Money, a Key, and a Boat.
~Aaron Voronoff Trotter