The idea taking a deck that has been telescoped with an incomplete faro and brushing it over the rubber side of a close-up mat to leave behind single cards was first published by Douglas A. Wicks in Apocalypse, Vol. 6, No. 9, Sept. 1983, p. 820, under the title “Rembrandt Aces”. Wicks's idea was to “paint” the four Aces to produce them, one by one. Wicks's built this on a “painting” production shown him by Michael Weber, who used the idea to “paint” a selection on someone's hand. Weber did not claim the idea. It probably came from Roger Curzon, who came up with the idea to produce four of a kind. This was in the mid-1970s. Curzon may have published this somewhere. His invention of the idea is well-attested to in the U.K. Chris Kenner expanded the use of the Ace-production idea to produce four royal flushes in a “Rollover Aces” variant effect (“Paint by the Numbers” in Out of Control, 1992, p. 140). Different handling of the Kenner trick were published by Doug Conn in his Tricks of My Trade, authored by Paul Cummins, 1999, “Flush Brush”, p. 99; and in MAGIC, Vol. 21, No. 12, August 2013, p. 58.

A marketed trick capitalizing on the principle, “Card Artistry”, was released in 2011 by Justin Flom. This uses specially printed cards to produce a “grid” version of the Mona Lisa holding a selected card, or a “brain scan” (an x-ray of a head) with selection in brain.