blue_fusion
I don't think I've shared this project here before. It's an old project I've put off finishing in the past because I found the coloring style rather taxing - I felt I had to take a break from it every now and then and maybe do it in batches. I'm just wrapping up a Lenormand project and then this will be one of the first decks in my to-do list.
I wanted to do a RWS clone since I haven't really strictly tried creating one yet (well, actually I have - Tarot 2-12-1-3-11, but that's a majors-only deck), but I also wanted something with a unique twist and look to it. The (strange) branching/thorny brushwork in the art is a digital coloring technique I developed years ago and was something that I wanted to try out on a deck. Dark-to-light coloring scheme is something that I have never tried before so I also opted to use that for the look of the deck... and it totally owned me! :-/
I worked on the deck systematically, going through each of the majors in numerical order (the Fool being the first), then it was the aces, twos, etc.
Here is my old blog for this particular project - It shows the majors and the minors up to the fours: http://bluedtoy.blogspot.com/
You can see development of the deck's art as the project progressed - The majors were cruder, a bit darker, but, by the time I had gotten to the fours, the style had become much light and lost a lot of the... tenebrism and shadows of my original intent (because dark-to-light coloring messes up the mind!).
And then there's also the substantial gap in between the batches I'd get done - the style of the images also ended up a bit different from each other. The attached image are some samples of other cards which were not featured on the link I provided. They look a bit different from the samples in the blog and even from each other! So... in the process of creating the deck, several styles have emerged. In just the attached image, for example, 5 of pentacles has a monochrome-y feel and subtle "brushwork" going; 5 of wands features (unfinished) silhouettes holding what seems to be glowing shafts of light; 6 of swords has a more rustic texture and vintage colors, and 8 of wands has a not-so-shadowy feel and a crude texture. I may have to do a lot of retouching to get a more unified look in the end...
Anyway, I just wanted to share this project here and maybe get inputs regarding the art (e.g. which direction should it go, etc.)...
-Ly
I wanted to do a RWS clone since I haven't really strictly tried creating one yet (well, actually I have - Tarot 2-12-1-3-11, but that's a majors-only deck), but I also wanted something with a unique twist and look to it. The (strange) branching/thorny brushwork in the art is a digital coloring technique I developed years ago and was something that I wanted to try out on a deck. Dark-to-light coloring scheme is something that I have never tried before so I also opted to use that for the look of the deck... and it totally owned me! :-/
I worked on the deck systematically, going through each of the majors in numerical order (the Fool being the first), then it was the aces, twos, etc.
Here is my old blog for this particular project - It shows the majors and the minors up to the fours: http://bluedtoy.blogspot.com/
You can see development of the deck's art as the project progressed - The majors were cruder, a bit darker, but, by the time I had gotten to the fours, the style had become much light and lost a lot of the... tenebrism and shadows of my original intent (because dark-to-light coloring messes up the mind!).
And then there's also the substantial gap in between the batches I'd get done - the style of the images also ended up a bit different from each other. The attached image are some samples of other cards which were not featured on the link I provided. They look a bit different from the samples in the blog and even from each other! So... in the process of creating the deck, several styles have emerged. In just the attached image, for example, 5 of pentacles has a monochrome-y feel and subtle "brushwork" going; 5 of wands features (unfinished) silhouettes holding what seems to be glowing shafts of light; 6 of swords has a more rustic texture and vintage colors, and 8 of wands has a not-so-shadowy feel and a crude texture. I may have to do a lot of retouching to get a more unified look in the end...
Anyway, I just wanted to share this project here and maybe get inputs regarding the art (e.g. which direction should it go, etc.)...
-Ly