Playing Card Portraits

Presented for your amusement, here are seven miniature portraits painted on the backs of playing cards, one for each day of the week. Four of these retratos were made from memory and the other three were done from mass-circulated celebrity photos. Which are which should be easily discerned.

I began painting portraits on playing card backs after reading, and later viewing a reproduction, of a portrait of Elizabeth Tudor by Nicholas Hilliard, done in this way. My work is much different from that of the great British portraitist and confidant of this sixteenth century queen; but it does possess this lineage, none the less.