An Animal Tarot Deck - black and white fantasy

The Black Fantasy Tarot

UPDATE: Nearly three years from starting out, and I've printed my first copy on thegamecrafter.com. The deck is FINISHED, and can be easily purchased at https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/black-fantasy-tarot! It is $19.99 plus shipping. The shipping fee is insanely high for non-US people, so if you are having problems with that then if you PM me, I'll see if I can find a cheaper postage option from a different print-on-demand company.

The card blog is at http://blackfantasytarot.wordpress.com/. I haven't written a booklet of meanings to go with the deck yet, so I'm doing a couple of cards a week and posting my interpretations on the blog. When I've finished (might be a long time), I'll try to get it printed to go with the physical deck.

Also, see the first post of page 3 for my "it's finished!" post, which contains a lot of sample pictures. Here's one of them:


XDDD

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original post from many months ago:
Hi!

I'm very, very new here - as you probably could tell by the non-existant post count - but I have been lurking about Aeclectic and this forum for rather a long time. In fact, I was inspired to start creating my own Tarot deck by this site, and that was almost exactly a year ago.

I've only /just/ realised that I could sign up and post my work here, though. -.-

So this is my as-yet-unnamed Tarot deck [edit: now the Black Fantasy Tarot]. This is drawn completely in ballpoint pen on paper, and the theme is along the lines of "slightly creepy fantasy creatures" - there are no humans in this deck. In the last year, I've completed the whole Major Arcana and the Daggers suit of the Minors, and made a start on the Cups. That's exactly halfway there to a full deck! Who knows, I may finish this within another year - hopefully.

In this, I've chosen the Daggers to be associated with fire rather than the Wands. I feel it makes more sense this way (I've always thought it that way round, actually, and the idea of swords/daggers equalling air just seems alien to me), but the meanings of the cards may therefore seem a bit jumbled up to others.

I'll link to the deviantart page of each set of cards (I post them in groups of four). General deviantart page is sapphirecrow.deviantart.com. Be aware that much detail is lost using my non-professional skills of photography and scanning...

The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-I-128861746

The Emperor, The High Priest, The Lovers, The Chariot
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-II-129107212

Stregth, The Hermit, The Wheel of Fortune, Justice
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-III-129574218

The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-IV-132684181

The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-V-133693898

Judgement, The World
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-VI-134574831

Ace of Daggers
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-VI-5-141436633

Two, Three, Four, Five of Daggers
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-VII-141437438

Six, Seven, Eight, Nine of Daggers
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-something-151742950

Ten, Jack, Knight, Queen of Daggers
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-161406961

King of Daggers. Ace, Two, Three of Cups
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-10-162062363

Four, Five, Six, Seven of Cups
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/Tarot-cards-part-11-166455310

Eight, Nine, Ten, Jack of Cups
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/some-more-tarot-cards-190007858

Knight, Queen, King of Cups. Ace of Wands
http://sapphirecrow.deviantart.com/art/finishing-off-the-cups-190635883

Phew. Comments are greatly welcomed (but specific critique of a card might not be too helpful in this case, since ballpoint pen is not easily edited!), and if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

[edit: rest of cards are FINISHED, as stated above, but not posted here yet: you can find low-quality unedited versions at sapphirecrow.deviantart.com, if you'd like.)

Hi, Saffi, welcome to AT!

Your cards are wonderful--nicely rendered, good composition, interesting images--they made me smile and say "these are wonderful" to my computer screen!

Hi Saffi!

Great to have you hear Its always great to see new tarot decks, especially ones with animals I love your take on the cards so far.


Beautiful work

x

Little Hare

EDIT: Just out of curiosity are going to try and get them published?

Saffi, those cards are wonderful! I really like them. I am a big fan of Black & White and your art is just lovely. I really like the Wheel of Fortune. And the Hanged Man, so cute. And many other cards too. I will definately keep following the progress of your work.

Welcome! Love the moon, you are very talented

I REALLY like these!

They are well done, and whimsical...but with a bit of an edge! which I love.

And you seem to know your way around the tarot as well, which is a great! I like many of your associations...especially the World card.

The black and white is cool, especially with the detail the ballpoint creates...but I can't help but envision them in color...they would look cool with a soft watercolor that would complement the pen strokes.

That's just me though...

I think you are off to an amazing start...and I really hope you keep going with it!

Thank you!

I'd LOVE to get them published but I know absolutely nothing of the hows of publishing, contacting publishers or self-publishing, printing, professional scanning, laminating, etc. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it... which may be in another year or two anyway. Of course I'll be reading around this forum to get some help on that aspect when the time comes.

The problem with painting over the top is that it'll make the ink run too, since I'm pretty sure that my ballpoint pen isn't waterproof... maybe it'll be okay with a scanned&printed copy? Hmm. Also, I'm terrible at watercolour anyway. -.- I did experiment with coloured pens, actually, but that didn't turn out so well either. So... for the time being, I suppose it'll just stay in black-and-white - in any case, I think the monochromatic part does go well with the general atmosphere of the deck.

Saffi said:

So... for the time being, I suppose it'll just stay in black-and-white - in any case, I think the monochromatic part does go well with the general atmosphere of the deck.

Click to expand...

The Black-and-White is just what I like about this deck. I think your art is great and doesn't really need colouring. But then again, so many people, so many preferences .

I like them, they are cute, I think Judgment was creative

Saffi, these are great.

I like your use of symbolism. I am going to echo DevilishAngel, very creative with the Judgment card.