daphne
I love the magician, it looks like he`s already doing some magic, modifying facts and universes, all that beautiful blue background is starting swirling.
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The Wickwillow Tarot formerly the Stained Glass tarot
I love the magician, it looks like he`s already doing some magic, modifying facts and universes, all that beautiful blue background is starting swirling.
daphne
HP card
This is what I meant with childish drawings, the HP is a bit...off, sort of drawing I could see on a fridge put there by a proud parent.
Yes, the symbols are there, but the HP herself does not look too intuitive or mysterious. In fact, she has a sort of ingenuity (naive) appearance, and also a very day-to-day, girly vibe. I see her discussing more about the newest and coolest purses and shoes, then anything else.
No attachment...here 'tis:
This is what I meant with childish drawings, the HP is a bit...off, sort of drawing I could see on a fridge put there by a proud parent.
Yes, the symbols are there, but the HP herself does not look too intuitive or mysterious. In fact, she has a sort of ingenuity (naive) appearance, and also a very day-to-day, girly vibe. I see her discussing more about the newest and coolest purses and shoes, then anything else.
daphne
Here's another: the Empress. Probably won't be her title, tho...she's more of a mother nature type...open to ideas...she's not depicted as a queen or empress...the emperor is more of a cheiftain, as you will see.
Here we see a different style of "stained glass", too. I will be using several. Many glass works are an entire painting etched on the glass and then jointed up with grout. There is so much imagery associated with this card that i like to "get in there".
I need to do work with the stump at the bottom of the harp...it looks like it's not rooted in the ground...it is supposed to be rooted.
Emperes made my smile. May I say she has sort of Machiavellic smile, proud, showing off?
daphne
My but these are creating quite the stir. One day someone will notice and come in and help me out.
Here's the Emperor...though I want to call him something else...he's sort of a clan chief or something. A "husbandsman" in the old sense of the term. The antler connects him to the stag in the previous card. Further, it's a tool for tilling the soil. He's the gardner..the caretaker of the Empresses growth. He says...yes, but we'll have it growing in straight rows...in nice square plots." He's the architect and framer of thought.
Any ideas for names for my empress/emperor cards that are not so far removed from our own modern experience?
A funny thing happened when I was designing this card. The card was originally smaller...just the center part of the "photograph" and not the frame....but, as i mentioned earlier, I had sort of accidently slipped away from my stained glass paradigm...as you can see by looking at that central part of this portrait. But I liked my image so much that i really wanted to go with it. So I came up with the notion of "framing" him in stained glass. As I was working on it...it came to me how perfectly symbolic that was of "His Fourness". All the little squares and rectangles... and the "frame" itself, with the emperor being the "framer" of constitutional thought, etc. Further, as I worked on the frame, the EMPEROR HIMSELF (my inner critic) was leaning over my shouldeer..."sure you don't want to use a straight edge for that" (I did). "That doesn't look plumb to me...remember, I have to sit in that frame for a long time looking out...I want it to be JUST SO..." LOL.
Anyway, the Emperor, by any other name:
I like the framing!!! But what about his expression, there is some fear, some wonder and some doubt in his eyes. He looks more like he`s defending.
daphne
Lovers
This is another one I like a lot! Great job, simple, expressive, effective.
There is such an intimacy and tenderness in it!
The Lovers
This is a card with deep imagery, even though it looks fairly simple.
Card 6 features the 6 pointed star. Latin for six is sex. Not without reason. The 6 pointed star is fire and water combined...love and lust. When fire and water are combined we get life...BLOOD.
The rose, being a symbol for love and life, drips blood; in myth, love, and orgasm were equated with death...the death of the individual ego.
We only see the hands of the Lovers...they might be same sex. We see they are interracial as well. If I'd shown more of their identities, we would lose this ambiguity. This card can go lots of ways.
When I did my original deck 20 years ago, the love card was a lot like this.
This is another one I like a lot! Great job, simple, expressive, effective.
There is such an intimacy and tenderness in it!
daphne
The Storyteller is my Hierophant. This is quite a departure from traditional Hierophant imagery. I have a more positive take on the hierophant, I think, than many people. Lots of folks take the NEGATIVE meanings and put them for the upright meanings.
My storyteller is the tribal keeper of oral tradition...I hesitate to say whether the Storyteller is male or female. But the stories that are told are the old myths. The Ancestors look on from the carved idols/totems in the shadows. The storytellers audience is rapt. They hang on every word...but are these stories JUST stories, or are they true? They have shaped the way the tribe has walked for countless generation upon generation.
Even today in the digital era, we LOVE our stories...the stories that move us in movies have the same underlying themes (love, romance, tragedy, redemption, sacrifice, infatuation, creation...) that they did hundreds of years ago. They are the themes pictured in the Tarot! So a negative spin on the Hierophant card is just a shame...at least upright.
"Tradition" certainly can become a prison if it becomes just form and practice with no glowing shimmering inner meanings...but the storyteller's eyes glow with inner light....the storyteller has something AMAZING for you....will you listen, or yawn and go away and play a video game filled with swords and epic battles?
I like the idea, I like the depiction, I like all, except the face. Barbie-like big eyes and brown lines on a flawless skin to depict wrinkles? No.
I think I know now what it bothers me at this images. The faces you draw, they are not "right" and they are distracting me, in a bad way. I hope you don`t mind I am saying this, it`s just my perception.
Maybe that is why I loved your Lovers card, no faces, meaning fully provided by powerful depicted gesture and symbols/environment.
daphne
I think I've done this one now 3 times in color. The chariot is carried along by genii... before the chariot passes thru the cloud, it is differentiated, but after passing thru the wheels, the colors are "blended".
The background is getting closer to looking like glass...but it's funny, the laptop screen I use doesn't show the colors as "yummy" as a desktop monitor...anyhow, it's the PRINT that will count.
I'm using jpeg here...though the original scans are .bmp bitmap. Anyone know if TIFF or GIF might look better? I haven't tried them.
My charioteer is supposed to look a little full of himself. I equate the chariot with the teen years...when we get away from mom and dad and get the keys to the car! He reminds me of prince charming from SHREK. And here is another example of the stained glass NOT extending to the character himself...just the background.
Beautiful chariot!!! And the face is stylized, minimalism drawing, and still very expressive, excellent done!
daphne
This card was based on this video.
http://youtu.be/8XGIRLwcw4o
I know it's nothing new around here. I wanted to put a twist on the card...and she certainly does it...she has such perfect...balance! LOL.
Again, stained glass in the back, which adds color to the card....
Justice has always been a very "stark" card...and I see no reason that the notion of JUSTICE need be so unapproachable... are we all so out of balance that we fear cosimc retribution? It this why the justice card has always seemed so cold? (I get the same when I read what others right about Geburah on the tree...) Correction and adjustment is a GOOD thing. (This is perhaps why I ask for your criticisms!) This card took a long time to get the figure to be proportional...i'm only starting with figure drawing, but I don't think it's too bad....sometimes the her right arm looks a little long...but then, maybe that's the "long arm of the law?" LOL.
I thought the black of the costume and the temple would "pop" against the window. Personally I'm thinking of breaking up the colored fields in the window with some irregular grout lines. I think it needs that.
Oooo, Justice, what a delight! Indeed, you get better an better!!! Love it!
Look, what a difference between Justice and HP, no comparison.
Maybe that is the secret, don`t do close up at the faces, you are not yet very good of it.
The coloring in the backgrounds, the moons, it looks just some coloring, dull somehow. Can`t you make it...sparkling, life-ly, like you did the blue glass in the background of the magician?
daphne
I'm getting better. This is probably the best one yet. Again, the laptop monitor is sort of dulling the glowing colors down.
This is a pretty basic hermit image...but he has the hourglass...that's ALSO a lamp, and ALSO incorporates the controversial snake, here as a lemniscate, which is going to be a major component of the deck and the writing that goes with it, as I feel the lemniscate is a key form of layout for the major arcana.
The hermit represents that point on the lemniscate where we are about to leave the first, outward facing circle and plunge inward to the inner facing realm.
I wanted the rusts and earth tones because of the Virgo associations of the card.
Comments? Critiques?
Beautiful Hermit!!!! You will need a little of a glossy finish to the cards to let these vibrant colors pop out.
Why only orange-red the background? And not some darker green, blues?
daphne
Here is a SKETCH for the wheel. (As I mentioned in the critique thread, perhaps more interaction will come in if we were included in the composition of the image itself...instead of looking at a finished product).
It's basically to show the depiction ive chosen out of many (I've sketched the card about a dozen times at least).
The kerubs are only to show where they will be, not what they will look like.
The jagged lines will be lightning...probably white; but I'm thinking I'd like to try to have the lead lines be lightning. There are clouds at the bottom, and fire. very simple. Deviod lots of letters, symbols and sigils that could be there, but this makes it simpler. More iconic.
Thoughts?
Ok, I'm adding a silly sketch I just did for a "lady luck" version. Quite contemporary, yes, but very down to earth, as compared to the "cosmic" wheel of ezekiel. I'm not sure about this one, when mixed in a deck with tribal storytellers. Such people exist on the earth today, however....storytellers are sort of "old school" you know? this wheel of fortune emphasizes chance and fate and gambling...which I like.
So what do you think...obviously the art will be MUCH better than these little quickies.
I`d go for picture 3. Picture 4 is a little to... cheesy, it remind me of the Wheel in Robin Wood.
