It has been almost a year since I drew, printed, and launched my very own deck of playing cards. I printed almost a hundred, which at the time felt like a spectacularly reckless number, especially given my limited artistic ability. But friends and family have been kind, and I’ve been shameless in sending my cards around to art galleries, stores, strangers, friends, friends of friends, and even those people you follow on Instagram, who you kind of know, but also don’t. Quite simply, I made a thing, and I wanted people to have it, not because it was great, but just because.
They sold a lot quicker than I expected. The reprint that followed was nearly five times the size of the first.
So this is, mostly, a thank you.
Thank you to the friends and family who bought a deck early, when buying it was clearly an act of charity and we both knew it. Thank you to the people who bought a second one to give away, which I still don’t entirely understand but am not going to question. Thank you to the shops and spaces that took a punt. Thank you to the strangers, genuinely, the ones who had no social obligation to me whatsoever and bought them anyway. And thank you to the Instagram people, the ones you sort of know and sort of don’t, who turned out to be far more generous than the category suggests.
I know for a fact that the cards are in homes across seven countries and four continents, which is a sentence I enjoy typing far more than is reasonable. So thank you!
Now, two other things. Especially if you work in finance, or if you realised at about eleven that you were not exactly artistic. I am both.
1.Make something. A drawing, a doodle, a painting. Anything, really.
The trouble with working in fields like finance is that so much of it is out of your control. You build the model, you buy the stock, and then the market decides. Nothing is ever really finished or definitive. You can be right for three years and still have absolutely no idea what is going to happen tomorrow. A drawing, on the other hand, is wonderfully simple. It might be terrible. It might be good. But at least it is finished, and you have yourself to blame for it. There is something remarkably liberating about being bad at something and being completely alright with it.
2.You make one thing badly and you cannot stop noticing the people who make things well.
People who spent years on a craft and came out the other side making something beautiful and real. So when you like some art, tell the artist. Follow them. Support them. And when you can, or when you want to, buy the actual thing from the person who made it.
They will be pleased. Properly pleased. In a way that no shop has ever been pleased with you.
Thank you, again, for all of it.
If you would like to purchase a deck, or just want to know more about them, reach out at heyfromdhruv@gmail.com or have a look at this.