A CREATIVE PROCESS
The Making of a Danny Brown Trading Card
5 MINUTE REAd
Follow the steps of making a custom trading card with me while I navigate creative trouble and uncover what they mean by “trust the process.”
STEP 1: DAYDREAMING
Duration: 12 months
For larger projects, there is always a very long period between my initial idea and the first rough sketch. There’s no particular reason for this extended timeframe besides that I’m an over-thinker. I thought about making a Danny Brown trading card about a year ago, and it remained a distant idea until I felt ready to put pen to paper. During this period of daydreaming, I watched his interviews and tuned into his weekly podcast, all of which became invaluable research to the process. I frequently listened to his album, Quaranta, front-to-back to gain inspiration for the card. I’ve taken the same approach in the past by using an artist’s recent album release to build a theme for their card. (See previous cards here.)
Daydreaming is necessary active work for artists. There is never a moment in my life that isn’t a part of the process to create more art. I’ve learned that ‘artist’ is, and should be, more of an identity than a job title or status. With this understanding, I am always working. While planning for this Danny Brown card, I’ve also found myself in a misty reverie over projects I dream of working on another year from now. I can sometimes envision these projects at completion. Other times, I can’t see beyond the very early stages. The mystery of it all creates an insatiable desire to pursue the idea.
STEP 2: ROUGH SKETCHING & BRAIN MAPPING
About 30 min.
I love this step because it’s not the time or place to flex any art skills. This stage is purely for mapping ideas from my brain onto paper so that I can begin thinking clearly about space and composition. I like writing words down that help me think about mood and intention. Sketching allows me to imagine freely and wildly. If the artwork were a living organism, this would probably be the stage of early embryonic development.
At this point, I knew I wanted Danny to appear as if he were plugged into a motherboard. This would work as a visual representation of his connection to music. Hip-hop is designed to evolve, adapt to new influences, morph, and fluidly reinvent itself. These qualities are also innate within Danny, so it felt appropriate to illustrate his soul connected to the creative source. It’s safe to say that throughout Danny’s long and successful career, he has stayed true to the inner workings of his mind. A project can only come to fruition by trusting our ideas wholeheartedly before they even exist.
STEP 3: FINALIZE FRONT DESIGN
8 hours
To end up with a final pen drawing, I usually redraw it until I’ve cleaned up the lines to my satisfaction. For this card, I drew each draft digitally so that I could rework it easily. When I arrived at the final draft, I printed it on paper and traced it with a pen. I photographed the pen drawing and colored it digitally in Procreate. I found the weight of a real pen adds some depth that a digital drawing cannot replicate.
Regarding the subject matter, Danny is holding his hairless chihuahua, Ditto, whom he speaks about on his podcast with a tender heart. Danny and Ditto, the twin flames, are flanked on either side by Vitruvian skeletons wearing purple MSCHF boots. The computer and keyboard that frame the central image reference Danny’s obsession with video games and internet videos.
STEP 4: MAKING MISTAKES AKA FINDING CREATIVE TROUBLE
4 hours
While preparing the artwork for print, I realized I made a big mistake: I didn’t measure my artwork to account for the bleed! (Learn about bleeds here.) I had to go back to the drawing board (literally) in Procreate and expand my artwork by hand. I tried using an AI generator to expand the background, but it didn’t work. The angry Process Gods demanded that I take no shortcuts. I accepted my defeat and resumed about five hours later when I felt ready to face the consequences of my miscalculations. I turned on Mac & Devin Go to High School to play in the background while I spent hours meticulously lengthening each tiny line to the newly defined edge.
I realize now that my mistake played an integral role in the creation of the card. We can alleviate unnecessary pressure on ourselves by letting go of a perfectly streamlined process. If we can accomplish something with ease, I believe we aren’t pushing ourselves quite far enough out of our comforts. By welcoming creative trouble, we can strengthen our problem-solving abilities and tolerance for uncertainty.
STEP 5: FINALIZE BACK DESIGN
4 hours
Designing the Quaranta tracklist and discography ended up happening off the cuff. I included start and quit menu buttons to symbolize Danny’s love for video games and a health bar in the lower left corner to represent his full recovery. I added a drawing of the stop-motion character in Danny’s Y.B.P. music video as well as a reference to XXX, the precursor to Quaranta.
STEP 6: CARD PRODUCTION
2 hours
This trading card uses a serial numbering system, which means a number is printed on the back of each card to identify its place within the limited run. This process is labor intensive because I need to type each number (i.e., 1/50, 2/50, and so on), and it requires me to upload each card sequentially on the trading card production website. The website does have a built-in numbering system, but its fonts are limited.
While in the home stretch of making a custom trading card, settling for a random font from the built-in editor didn’t feel right. Taking a shortcut would be counterintuitive at the end of a long journey. In an age of instant gratification and solutions at our fingertips, taking the long route doesn’t necessarily imply unnecessary hard work. Taking the long route oftentimes ensures a quality product. Some inexplicable force gnaws at me to do the absolute most. I don’t question it.
Production Preview
Total Duration (Concept to Completion): 18.5 hours. (1 year and 18.5 hours, including my daydreams.)
Trusting the process is about tending to ideas that seem too bizarre or too large, leaving space for our inevitable mistakes, and believing in our work through every stage of its emergence. Allow yourself time to think and daydream. Copious amounts of patience will do you good as you unravel more creative trouble. Understand that the process doesn’t happen without conscious effort and some self-encouragement. By accepting each stage of your work as it progresses, you will be less preoccupied with the final result.
My partner recently pointed out, “If you didn’t like how the series ended, you didn’t appreciate the entire show leading up to the ending.” All forms of artmaking require us to surrender ourselves to unknown outcomes. Our creative urges guide us into strange territory, where embracing the unknown leads us to innovative and original solutions. We can nurture safe experimental environments by leaning into unfamiliarity and inviting mistakes into our routines. Trusting the process is synonymous with trusting ourselves. Our evolution doesn’t depend on increasing speed or artistic skill, but rather on how much we learn from experience and apply that knowledge to our craft.
Thank you for reading <3, Chayna
