Job interferes with tarot appreciation

I do digital imaging in photoshop. While it's not so much of an issue with my current job, I was occasionally putting little things together for web pages at my previous job. Photocollages and the like.

And being in art history, that meant a lot of Renaissance art.

I just got my Touchstone Tarot.

I want so badly to like it.

Her skill is far greater than mine.

But. I can see too many seams....even in artwork I'm not so familiar with.

I can see where the pixels were blurred. I can see the cut edges.

Mainly only because I've done it before, and my own attempts were much more clumsy.

But. I can see it. I cannot ignore it!

And yet it's such a wonderful deck.

*Whimpers*.

I know the feeling. I also do digital work in Photoshop, and 3D work in other applications, and it does dull your enjoyment of the decks sometimes when you see things that are done a bit clumsily. It's not so bad with 3D art, most of the time, but photomanipulation - I tend to avoid those sorts of decks if at all possible, simply because I know I'll see the cut pixels and blurred edges etc.

I know EXACTLY what you mean. This is why there are a couple of Magic Realist Press decks that I cannot use . . . I instantly see the "edges" and the manipulations. And I have exactly the same problem with the Touchstone, sadly.

Decks of this sort are so lovely - and Baba and Kat and the others who create them are infinitely talented and creative and do FAR better work than I can ever hope to do.

But still, I see the edges and the seams. SphinYote, I'm so grateful to you for having posted about this. I thought maybe I was the only one with this problem!

Annabelle said:

I'm so grateful to you for having posted about this. I thought maybe I was the only one with this problem!

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You most definitely won´t be the only one with this problem...

It bothered me with the Golden the first time round, I traded it, got it again and this time round I love it. And Im sure I shall buy the Touchstone at some point in the future.

Does it bother you when you look at a Giotto and the perspective isn´t quite right? Does it invalidate the artwork? Ive studied Art History/ Renaissance / Baroque art for years and sometime I see odd perspective, or anatomical oddness (even in the great masters. Rembrandt´s dead Christ just doesn´t look anatomically possible) but it doesn´t bother me anymore. There´s more to art than it looking seamless. And what about Picasso? Some of his profiles are "a bit clumsy." But we won´t mention that...

Admittedy, one of the strengths of a deck like the Victoria Regina (not done as photocollage but real cutting-and-pasting-with-glue collage) is that it is quite brazen about weird juxtapositions. Things don´t always match up. The perspective jolts a little. But, hey, enjoy it. It makes it unique, flawed, human. Art history is littered with things that aren´t perfectly executed. It doesn´t always need to distract from the expressive power.

I do the same and have a similar problem but on top of it I had a printing company so in the beginning I couldn't get past the poor printing quality - or the wrong choice in paper and varnish etc! Or the poor die cutting....the list was endless....

It took a while but I am much better now.

It can be done.

I think you can tune those things out, if you learn to let go and focus on Tarot rather than Image Details. I know it's hard, but really, it's a trick of the mind. I used to do technical writing, editing, proofreading. Yes, I had to be a perfectionist at work. But I found that in order to enjoy reading fiction I had to let go of that perfectionism and simply focus on the Story. I certainly wasn't going to give up enjoying a good book just because there were some typos in it.

Probably the worst experience I had in that regard was early on when I worked in layout, and I read a copy of Dune that had been printed from some worked over originals, with a different size type and slightly different typeface pasted into parts of it. It was the most distracting thing I ever read, and I think even a non-expert would've noticed -- or should have. I enjoyed the story nonetheless, once I stopped trying to read something into the use of the different type and differentiated it from the italics that were deliberately used for Princess Irulan's little tidbits. But later in my career, I just let it all go when I was reading for pleasure. It didn't matter. The story was what mattered, and if that was good I read on. I then only noticed those things if the story itself wasn't good.

I think you can do the same with Tarot, provided it's a deck you love aside from the image manipulation details. But it is an adaptation.

I agree with the others who say that you can learn to overcome your "nit-pick-itis" if you just step back and look more at the Tarot instead of the way it was made.

My grandmother made quilts all sewn by hand. If I look at the stitches, they're slightly crooked in some places and the stitch length isn't always uniform. Some of the fabric pieces look more worn than others because the fabric from a particular item of clothing had been worn more than another or had faded more when hanging out on the clothesline after being washed. The piecing isn't always perfect, either. But if I step back and look at the quilts for what they really are, which is beautiful works of folk art, then the uneven stitches, variations in fading and slightly faulty piecing become a wonderful part of that art form because they reflect the maker's heart as well as her creative use of whatever she had available at that time in the mundane world of everyday life with which to create beauty.

Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, you know, and if you choose to behold photo-shopped art work in a Tarot deck as the beautiful creation it is using whatever materials were available to the creator at the time it was made, then you can get past the little details that might otherwise be seen as flaws.

Hmmm...interesting situation for the photo-artists in the crowd. Makes me feel kind of blessed for NOT have any skills at digital imaging (though I'd like to learn!) Because when I look at such a deck it's all magic for me, and I can't see "the man behind the curtain".

Has anyone seen any flaws like this in the Quantum, or is it as seamless as it looks to a non-professional non-print-person?

nisaba said:

Has anyone seen any flaws like this in the Quantum, or is it as seamless as it looks to a non-professional non-print-person?

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Interesting that I haven´t actually looked for any! That says a lot!