Drawing Cards

How long does it take to draw a card and put color in it? I'm aware that it varies but how long like in hours does it USUALLY take?

Mike Gorth

That's totally dependent on the artist and what medium they work in.

I can tell you that for me, a detailed pencil sketch can take 20-30 minutes in about a size 5x7", and won't include everything I wanted. This is after MANY many ball point ink practice sketches positioning the elements in different ways and point of view. I work off the best 'rough' to do the final design. Some of them are pretty rough too.

The inking of the sketch will probably take 40 minutes with three different width pens -- .005, .05 and 2. That's if I have no 'help' from the cats jumping up and shaking the table I'm working on, and my hand cooperates (I type all day) and my eyesight isn't getting fuzzy (I type all day off size 5 font pages). Wait 24 hours, erase the pencil guidelines, add more pencil work if you want to add something else.... Put it on the computer & 'clean it up' which takes 30 minutes usually because you're doing pixel work at high resolution. That's just the black and white side of things.

Color now.....oils? Acrylic? Watercolor? Multi-media? You'll have layers, drying time, adjustments...then when you put that back into the computer there's the fixing of the layers, adjusting color, etc. Unless you went directly to color addition by machine only, which is a whole nother story.

Thanks hudson,

I've tried to do cards in like 30 minutes but it looks like it could take a couple days with the drying and all.

I think I'll just buy tarot decks. I can barely draw. I'm working on it though!

Mike Gorth

so far it takes me three to four days at the most

Mike, what's the hurry? Half the fun is the journey!

By all means keep doing it if you enjoy it, these sorts of things just aren't 'done' in 10 minutes. Marie with her Mary-El tarot has redone whole pictures several times, repainting them till they feel right (she's got a blog, it's worth checking out for the art process she's going through). The Gaia tarot has a blog on it's page where the artist talks about how she does things too, those paintings are not done in a few days---I think she mentioned that each was about a month in the works.

There's no rush here. Take whatever time you need and do the best to your ability, that's all that counts. 30 minutes is nothing. I did keep track of MOST of the time spent doing clean up on the computer for the Ferret Tarot... 90 hours of taking out stray black marks, smoothing pixels, adding black bits here & there. It was all done in short bursts, not in one long marathon, I just kept jotting the times down on a piece of paper, out of curiosity. Sort of like the appliqued vest I made (and only wore twice) that had 60 hours of hand work in it---but done in 15 minute segments at a time.

Don't sweat the time you put in. Just have fun.

"Don't sweat the time you put in. Just have fun."

+++++

Yeah, what she said.

It's not a marathon, after all. It's something you go back to and go back to, whenever time permits, or whenever inspiration demands.

I'm currently working on a deck, and it's one of those things where I'll get a couple of hours in on it every couple of days... And bit by bit, it's getting done-er and done-er.

So, you should show us what you're up to, sometime.