Working on a recreation of the Mamluk cards

gregory

What a fantastic project. :thumbsup:
 

dancing_moon

I do see your point. It's just that the cards keep shouting "constant ratios" and "symmetries" at me so loudly that I can't not respect that :laugh:

Actually, the beauty of hand-drawn cards (for me) is in the slight asymmetry that adds a human touch to it. If you've seen early Marseilles decks, you know what I mean. :D It adds character to the cards, makes them living pictures rather than computer-generated patterns. :) So, do consider it as an option.
 

BrightEye

I do see your point. It's just that the cards keep shouting "constant ratios" and "symmetries" at me so loudly that I can't not respect that :laugh: And I like the thought that the people who created the mamluk cards in the first place might have done the same if the technical tools had been available back then. Pure speculation of course.
You could trace the basic design and then draw the rest by hand. That's what I would do.

But I like the reproductions you've done.
 

trzes

What a fantastic project. :thumbsup:

Thx! :)

Actually, the beauty of hand-drawn cards (for me) is in the slight asymmetry that adds a human touch to it. If you've seen early Marseilles decks, you know what I mean. :D It adds character to the cards, makes them living pictures rather than computer-generated patterns. :) So, do consider it as an option.

You could trace the basic design and then draw the rest by hand. That's what I would do.

But I like the reproductions you've done.

I was about to say that I went down the path of constructing instead of drawing too far now and that I was getting more and more confident that this is what I really want to do. But then I reached the flower patterns. And those may look repetitive at first glance, but in fact they are all different and not symmetric at all because they have to squeeze in the spaces that are left. Constructing from basic symmetrical shapes didn't get my very far yet.

So I will either manage to come up with something slightly different than the flowers from the originals or I will draw those by hand indeed.
 

trzes

Here is a complete King of coins. Flowers are constructed. I am not entirely happy with them yet, but for the time being it was the easiest for me to construct them too instead of drawing them.
 

Attachments

  • KingOfCoins2.jpg
    KingOfCoins2.jpg
    75.4 KB · Views: 233

dancing_moon

This is so beautiful and neat. :heart: If you're going to improve it even further, it's going to be breathtaking. :thumbsup:
 

eltarot78

this is very, very, very very beautiful


these are just my two cents

all the traces of these working fine, once you've drawn, retocalos with a digital pen, to give a touch of handmade, do not hesitate to break them or that they are not very proijos, that will give the touch of fact by hand

on the card when you made ​​this, have a layer above the blue bands to work (you can regularle transparency) and make writing strokes in gold above.
 

trzes

this is very, very, very very beautiful


these are just my two cents

all the traces of these working fine, once you've drawn, retocalos with a digital pen, to give a touch of handmade, do not hesitate to break them or that they are not very proijos, that will give the touch of fact by hand

on the card when you made ​​this, have a layer above the blue bands to work (you can regularle transparency) and make writing strokes in gold above.


Thanks very much for your input, eltarot78. Positive feedback by a true master of card making really means a lot to me!

Unfortunately I don't have a digital pen, I don't even have software that can deal with it properly. And the tablet that I want (large resolution, write on-screen) costs more than 2000 Euros, so I'll have to wait until I saved enough money to afford it. In the meantime I will go on with everything else but flowers and arabic calligraphy and leave the tricky decisions about "formal" versus "hand-crafted" feel for the very end.

I do work with many different layers, specially to be able to correct all elements having the same color in one go. I could also hide all flowers for example and have alternative versions in the same file. The arabic text already consists of multilines in a seperate level as well, but I'll have to redo it completely as my clumsy and inaccurate copy probably made the old-fashioned calligraphy entirely unreadable. It's not only the lack of a digital pen, but I'll also have to learn the very basics of arabic writing before I start again.
 

eltarot78

I'm still using my old faithful G-pen 4500 of genius, whose cost is no more than u$s 20

which should be delicious, you want to buy