2006-08-11 Illustration Friday -- Play

2006-08-11 Illustration Friday -- Play
Originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

This week's Illustration Friday topic is 'Play'.

I searched stock.xchng for 'poker' and 'cards', and found two reference images which I combined in CorelDraw. One was A good poker hand for me by MarkB1000, and the other was The Winning Hand by Cjcj.

I opted for a compressed middle-ground, not caring too much whether or not the perspective was right. I wanted the drama of the cards on the vertical and horizontal thirds, with a diagonal stress set up by the speech bubble, leading your eye to the guy's look of resigned desperation.

I like the story in this pic...

The guy in the foreground is winning big. And he's slow-playing to dishearten his opponent.

The opponent is down to his last chips.

And our foreground fellow has a TEN-KING suited, which is a decent opening hand in Texas Hold-Em. But he's pretending to take his time, pretending in this hand that he's NOT playing solidly.

And his opponent KNOWS he's being bluffed. He KNOWS the guy's solid. And that he's going to lose. He just wants the night to end.

This painting was made using ArtRage 2.11 on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc in the middle of the night.