CMYK - the secret to authentic sports card art.

Let’s talk about the miracle of mixing cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

1983 Topps Wade Boggs rookie recreated in photoshop to illustrate the magical alchemy of CMYK spot printing.

I had a breakthrough recently with my art, and I can’t stop thinking about it. So I wanted to share it with my 850,000 followers here on Substack.*

*Give or take 850,000 subscribers

Since falling massively back into collecting the past couple years, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to silkscreen my favorite cards. And I’ve had some success. Here’s a picture of a 1988 Fleer Michael Jordan All-Star card that recently sold at C Parker Gallery in Greenwich, CT.

While I’ve experimented with different techniques over the past year, I knew what the answer ultimately would be: learning how to make sports card art the way the cards were originally printed: CMYK printing.

CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and key, which is the printing term for the color black.

Each color goes on one at a time to create the illusion of the entire color spectrum. You start with yellow, then add magenta, then cyan and finally black.

But there’s moire! I mean, more.

Each of those four color layers must also be printed at different angles to avoid creating a distracting print pattern known as a moire.