the urnash tarot

Vetch

I'm just coming from a thread at the RWS board, titled soemthing like "things I just noticed after I own the deck for 28 years", so, I don't think you need to change the magician. Unless you feel the need, of course. Poet is Priest. :)
 

Egypt Urnash

11: Justice

If several people in different places comment on the Magician's choice of tools, it's definitely standing out! Whether or not I want it to stand out to the viewer is the question; it's a subtle nuance in the overall message and it almost seems to be screaming...
 

Satori

Egypt, I love your stuff.
 

Vetch

The Hermit.. oh wow! Here I am, in this German small town, with narrow lanes, rivers and old old buildings from the middle ages. I am a stranger, living here for 10 years now, but I am a traveller, coming from great cities, and sometimes I do feel -- as if I knew things the people here don't; as if I carry my light, my own vision with me...
Oh, I know, we all have felt like this. Specially in our puberty. :D
BUT
I am just now at a friends' shop, coz I got no net at home, but will soon sneak through the narrow streets and past the ancient buildings; and it will be like in your card.

Hm, apart from the stuff I wear. But still... :D
 

Egypt Urnash

6. the Lovers

I also did 3/4 or so of the Devil today, but she's got a ways to go. And I've been playing with the Fool on and off for a few days as well.

The Hermit's background is, indeed, a sort of caricature of old European construction - though I've never seen it in person, it just felt right. I think everyone goes through periods of being the stranger, looking for some thing, some person, some knowledge...
 

Egypt Urnash

6. Lovers (borderless experiment)

Flipping through the discussions here on folks cropping the borders off of their various decks made me try this. I suspect I'll go with borders in the long run; I can see that I'd have less options for color of the text - something I'm playing with for each card. Plus of course the considerations of printing it; printers tend to be happier when you don't have a full-bleed image. Eventually, I suppose I'll have to just try them in the real world and see how it works.
 

Egypt Urnash

7. The Chariot

This bears almost no resemblance to my original sketch. See, I did this as part of a larger piece last month and just loved it. And after doodling out the other Chariot sketch, this immediately sprang to mind. I thought it was for Strength but it wasn't; some contemplating of the layered meanings of the Chariot (especially the mind/body dichotomy reading) made me realize this was a pleasant visual inversion that brought in my own themes. So I pulled it out, touched it up a bit, and added a few details.
 

Gooneybird

I think I kinda prefer the lovers with a border... unless the coloring is tweaked a bit, then it might work nicely.
Can you explain your vision for that card, by the by? Its not quite making sense to me! Is there any reason for the choice of 2 primary colors and one secondary with the red, blue, and green?

The chariot looks great. The Hermit makes me think of the premise of the sci-fi show Sliders (where a group of people accidentally fall through a wormhole and have to jump to many other dimensions looking for home), only her journey was begun voluntarily to find what she's looking for!
 

Egypt Urnash

There's a couple reasons for the Lovers being red, blue, and green.

The personal, and initial one, is that I'm in a triadic relationship; this is why I drew three Lovers in the first place! We have a few playful metaphors for ourselves, and they tend to end up with those colors as part of the symbolism.

The visual one is that I wanted them to all be about as bright as each other. I did try making them red/blue/yellow, but yellow is innately a lot brighter than blue and red; the yellow Lover either became the focus of the whole image, or looked dirty and unpleasant when I darkened her.

The deeper visual reason is that R/Y/B aren't the only primary colors - they're just the subtractive primaries, of reflective pigments. R/G/B are the additive primaries; if you add red, green, and blue lights together, you get bright white. If you mix subtractive primaries, you get mud.*

Waite makes this card about the Eden myth and gender duality; Crowley makes this card about... um... my, he does go on about this one, doesn't he? Creation and sex magic and duality. Most of the duality-themed cards, in my hands, become invitations to transcend dualistic thinking, to look off of the single black/white, yes/no, male/female, true/false dimension and into wider realms of possibilities. (Note, thus, the black and white hands reaching up for them!)

* If you look deeper into color theory, you will discover that "red, yellow, and blue are the subtractive primary colors" is, in part, a lie. Four-color print process uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. And if you shine red, green, and blue lights on a white surface, then turn off the lights in varying combinations, you get... cyan, magenta, and black. Mix CMY inks together and you get something closer to black than the muddy color of RYB paint. It's still not pure black, mostly due to our inks not being absolutely perfect in their absorption spectra, so printers add the black ink. Plus of course we do like black text on white paper a lot and it's pretty awkward to print the same text three times.

My, I do go on.