I want to make a deck

kuwaizair said:

hmm thanks. its just I don't feel I coud do it, even If I was raised on such things. apparently 14 year olds can make and run neopet knock offs and I couldn't do this deck.

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Why are you giving up without trying? If you want to design a deck from an artistic-promotional standpoint, then go ahead. I think what most of the feedback is trying to tell you is that the path to what you seek isn't easy. However, it is never wrong to strive for a goal. It is never wrong to create art. From what I gather, you are not trying to create a working tarot; you are looking to create a promotional piece to advertise your artwork.

My bit of advice is: do the art first, THEN worry about promotional stuff. Check out Amazon for books on creating portfolios and marketing your work. Since this project is about you and not tarot, use the cards to showcase your skills.

Just don't go into this thinking you can make a working tarot without knowledge of tarot, because you'll just be setting yourself up for disappointment.

The only one saying you "can't" is you, kuwaizair.

I say you should give it a try. What can it hurt?

Back around 1985 an artist in the midwest started doing 8 1/2 x 11" size art of cards from a standard playing card deck, only he illustrated each one with some bizzaar scene. The 9 of Hearts was an operation by 3 doctors removing 9 hearts from this strange alien. It was fantasy oriented, and his art style was a little wobbly on a few, but every convention he'd have copies of prints up for sale, all the previous cards he'd done and some of the new ones too. It took him a year but he got a whole 52 card playing deck done and actually had it printed up and was selling it (and all the originals) at a Windycon in November. I bought the deck (it's packed somewhere from 2 moves back) and won't ever give it up, I thought it was hilarious. (I just have to find the box it's packed in).

HE started out just doing one made up card, then two. Then a third. It went on from there. I think if you pick a card, check out what it actually is supposed to mean, and give it a try, you can come up with something. All it takes is that first step. If you want to do it, then do it. Don't let anyone else tell you no you can't.

And don't let you tell you you can't. This sounds like a serious self esteem issue first and foremost. If your sense of self worth comes from outside of you - from others, you will never be happy because we cannot satisfy all people all the time. Your sense of your value as an artist, as a person, must grow within you. You need to seek out what it is about you that you feel good about, and build your own internal (and realistic) picture of yourself from there.

Not only does this work (and it is hard work) result in a sense of your own value, it means that you are able to take negative comments and choose whether to own them or toss them. Your belief in yourself will feed your artwork. You don't need the whole world to laud your talent ... you need to believe in yourself. Then, if the whole world lauds your talent, that then becomes a wonderful bonus, rather than a reason for creating your work.

Try the Excercise Five Things I like About Myself http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=59120 This is a great way to begin really building a sense of your own magnificence, a feeling of strong self-worth, healthy self-image and healthy self-esteem.

Weird critiques and odd tastes are part of the world of art. You need to be able to put on your own mental armour for self-protection, and do what you do ... study, create, and sell yourself and your product. Nothing will happen if you give-up. A heap will happen if you believe in yourself and do the work.

Good luck!
mythos

Todo a tarot deck properly, you do have to know about tarot.
Or it's just 78 (or 22) pictures, with no relevance to tarot.

But, making a deck is a good way of learning about tarot.

Find out about a card, think about it, what it means, how you would show those ideas, draw it.
Then do the next one.

Course you can do it!

Give it a go.

well like i said. i thought, a microraptor gui would make a good hanged man only because its the only dinosaur I can make hanging upside down in a tree.

If the story with the Strength card mentions a maiden and a lion, maybe a "compy" and an allosaur? the little one sitting on the nose of the other like its a nothing.

Herrerasaurs is one of the first dinos so I figure its the good for the fool.
maybe a approperatly colored oviraptor for The High Priestess (seeing how oviraptor had the biggest discovery, that being it was laying on its own nest not robbing another and some think it could of beeen a omnivore)

I don't know why painter is messing me up with my 'liquid ink' layer. i wantes a wood cut look but apparently I haven't masterd that filter tool or just drawing ala wood cut. maybe I should try for intagalo.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v190/Eaoraptor/art/stren.jpg

The Strength card shows a lady and lion, but it MEANS using things other than physical strength to 'tame' something. Think 'horse whisperer'. Or Ziegfield & Roy with their animals. The lion would represent wildness and brute strength, yet the woman can keep it calm by just being quietly in control using the mind to anticipate and forestall the force of nature. If the compy and allosaur fit in this meaning, then yes, but people who don't know dinosaurs are going to have to somehow get the message, which is where your ability as an artist comes in.

Sometimes the first thing to mind isn't the best pick. The Hanged Man holds himself away from what's happening around him and looks at it from a new perspective. He's up there for a specific reason and nobody tied him up there to do it, except himself. A bat, woodpecker, squirrel, etc. might seem the first choice for an animal deck for this card, but the hanging position is something done on the card as a specific action so I'd be more apt to go with a grackle hanging upside down from a perch too small on a bird feeder, trying to see if he can hold on long enough to check out the feeder opening one level below--that to me would be more apt than a bat on a branch doing what comes naturally.

The Learntarot.com site is a great place to look at the meaning of a card and to build from there. The situation your dinosaurs find themselves in will be what's best portrayed on the card to get the message across. You can be very innovative about it. For instance one of the biggest surprise 'Hanged Man' cards I saw was online, where the person on the card was upside down floating in the ocean with his hands tied or held behind his back. He was still in suspension and pulled out of his normal element, just floating peacefully in the current.

yeh, it will take loads of brain power.
maybe I shold just do cartoon dogs insted?

kuwaizair said:

yeh, it will take loads of brain power.
maybe I shold just do cartoon dogs insted?

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Just checking. Are you serious? Or are you doing 14 year old's sarcasm? The response will be entirely different depending on which it is. No non-verbal signals like facial expression, tone of voice, speed of speech etc to go by online.

mythos

kuwaizair, here's a question for you.

If you could see into the future and know that you'd never be successful, never sell your art, never make a living from it, would you still feel the need to create? Would you still be driven by the urge to put images down on paper? Wouldl you still be haunted by pictures in your head?

Don't answer straight away. Have a really good think about it first.

If the answer is Yes - then don't ever give up. Close your mind to expectations and the distractions of what others are doing and just create.

If the answer is No - then I really think you are doing this for all the wrong reasons.

I asked myself that question some time ago when I was, like you, feeling that I would never be successful, would never be able to give up my dull day job and paint all day, and would eventually die with a portfolio stuffed full of images no one else had ever seen. I thought long and hard about it. And ultimately the answer was Yes I would still need to paint. And with that all the constraints I'd imposed on myself dropped away. I stopped trying to make the art I thought other people might want me to make and began painting the ideas and images that truly inspired me. I may still be working that day job and have to snatch a few precious hours a day at my desk but I'm much happier for it and my art has improved too.

There are no guarantees in the art world. It's fickle, faddy, and full of people who get away with ridiculous self-indulgence with very little apparent talent. But that's just the way it is. Shut it all out and follow your own muse.

kuwaizair
Can you just tell us why you picked Tarot as your main intereted for this project idea, it just seems to me that you think without having any knowledge of Tarot is going bring you some sort of recognition, although i think your Dinosaur idea sounds very good and original, how are we able to understand each card image if your not able to interprete the meaning's what you see yourself.

Why not just read something on Tarot first and then decide where your Dinosaur idea can develope from, this might even give you alot more idea's on what Dinosaur images could be used.