Why I Designed My Own King of Hearts Card

Mark your calendars! The “KING OF MY HEART” print drop is coming…

June 27 - July 1 (5 DAYS ONLY)

Newsletter subscribers get 24 HR EARLY ACCESS on June 26 at 9:00AM EST. Next week, I’ll be sharing more details on print sizes and pricing! ✨

Why did I design my own King of Hearts card?

This is a question I’ve received several times before. To answer this, let me provide some context…

As a Christian artist, my faith greatly influences how I view art and my purpose for creating, which is to tell God’s story one drawing at a time.

I really enjoy dreaming up ways of merging my faith into my art, portraying it in a manner that is relatable (e.g. through everyday objects) and perhaps offers a different perspective in understanding Christianity and the gospel.

The concept of “King of My Heart” was one that pretty much fell into place by itself. One day, I was randomly thinking about the King of Hearts card and how he is commonly depicted as stabbing himself in the head with a sword, which I found to be really intriguing. Upon googling it some more, I learned that for this reason the King of Hearts is sometimes referred to as the ‘suicide king’.

I immediately thought of Jesus and all the parallels. Jesus willingly died on the cross as the sacrificial lamb to pay the debt of all our sins. Instead of a sword, he bore nail-pierced hands, and he wore a crown of thorns. Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Revelation 19:16), sits at the right hand of our Father.

Therefore, to be able to portray Jesus in the way I envisioned, I needed to design my own card. I made many tweaks to the original design, some of the obvious being replacing the sword with nails and adding a crown of thorns.

But did you know, I also made some intentional design changes to his robes? The patterns in yellow imitating sun rays symbolizes Jesus as the light that overcame darkness. As well, the red sashes symbolize his blood poured out for us and healing received by his stripes.

This piece is my proclamation that Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, and the King of MY HEART ❤️