The InnerCity Tarot - Gonna give it a go.

SarahLikesPink

I don't like to disagree with your friend if you feel this is the direction you'd rather take your work in, but I found your hand rendered work far more beautiful. It really captured something. You have a real skill in bringing emotion into your work, there was something dark and dangerous about your pastel work that I could really relate to. We have these, for want of a better word, 'yobs' where I live - and I thought you really captured the sense of intimidating but somehow sad aura these people carry about with them.

I found your artwork stunning to be honest. I can only dream of having that much life in my drawings! I think that the photo card is also beautiful, but somehow doesn't have the same feel. The guy looks like one of my cheeky stoner friends, very approachable! The work put into it is beautiful, but you seem to have a real skill at hand rendering that it would be a shame to discard. Perhaps you could combine the two? Photographs of your home juxtaposed with the amazing characters you create?
 

Little Baron

Thankyou. I appreciate what you say.

For me, the pastel one is almost too sensitive in that he doesn't match the vision I have in my mind. But yes, my friend taught me how to put a hand drawn picture in and work with it in the same kind of way - I think I could probably do that better than with the pastels. This might be what I try and do this evening. Drawing first with pen might give me the option of making it scratchier and then adding the more sensual colouring in layers behind. Therefore finding a happy medium of the two.

The photo one, as you say does have that 'happy stoned mate' look to it, but that was just a random image off of the net that we played with as an example, so he is, by no means, an ideal character for the deck. He was just a face. But I was excited about how I could get the gritty emotion going on behind him. I think that future faces, if I did it that way, would be photographed by myself.

I might try mixing the hand-drawn with the computer technique and see what style develops from that. Where as the pastel one is a little limp for me, a pen will give me the opportunity of being scratchier and edgier than I knew how to be with the pastels or paint.

What I like is that nothing is set in stone at the moment. I am not going down any route completely but I am finding out different avenues and ways to overcome problems. I am kind of mixing stuff about as a solution which I think is necessary in my exploration. I am really into doing this deck, so I want to try out a whole load of stuff before I decide which way is most effective for me.

But please continue to comment. I very much like your artwork SLP and your opinion, like many others, is extremely important to me.

LB
LB
 

Little Baron

Just to illustrate what I mean, here is another of out practices. It is dreadful, yes, I know. We literally doodled the face in less than a minute so that he could show me how to colour it. And also, this is after we had gone way to far with experimentation, but it does show how I could build up mood around a drawing. This one actually makes me feel a little sad. I hated dumping this girl into such a horrible landscape, lol.

It seems that there are a million different ways to tell the same story ;)

LB
 

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Little Baron

Looks like it is working in previous post now.
 

Satori

Hi LB,
I like the drawings, even the one you just posted.
It ihas an edgy feel to it, and so does the other one.

So far the faces you have here speak to me of some pain and inner torment, and on the fully drawn guy with the cap, well he looks like he could do some harm...I wouldn't want to run into him! Those ice blue eyes...very cold.

I think you are onto something...will check in again to see what you are coming up with.
 

Little Baron

Thanks Elf.

It is funny you say that because I have felt pain in most of what I have done so far. But it is like necessary pain.

I have just tried yet another approach. First is the handsketch, which took just a couple of minutes. The second was putting what I learnt today into the colouring. It may be too cartoony for some but I do like him. He feels like a Fool - naked and alone, within the walls of the urban jungle at night. To make him the right size, the second one might be a little pixle-y here and blurry, but I just printed him out and the details are great. The purple colour is so rich in reality and on photo paper.

LB
 

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Little Baron

Uploading jpegs seems to be a bit of a problem, for some reason. The sketch in the last post works but the colouring doesn't.

Try again.

LB
 

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SarahLikesPink

This last image is amazing! It really shows everything you have been trying to show, and is also a beautiful image. The colours are bright and vivid, which is in glaring contrast with the harsh reality of the piece. You've really hit the nail on the head with this one!
 

Little Baron

SarahLikesPink said:
This last image is amazing! It really shows everything you have been trying to show, and is also a beautiful image. The colours are bright and vivid, which is in glaring contrast with the harsh reality of the piece. You've really hit the nail on the head with this one!

Oh, that makes me happy to read SLP. I was expecting to hit some harsh critisism with this one. Even from myself.

Looking back over the last couple of days work, I can see that my first pastel drawing needed to be done. I needed to realise that it couldn't be done - not by me, anyhow. But I think that a lot of people [here, especially] would prefer that style of art, possibly because that is how we expect to see a tarot deck worked through - in paint or a medium that is soft and not too modern. But it didn't allow me to get accross the harsh edges of what I wanted to convey.

The photograph was the next step. It 'edged' everything up and made it sharp enough to be a little dangerous. I realised that I was comunicating what was in my soul, regarding the subject matter. But my own feeling about photo-decks is that they often can look cheap and as though the deck has been knocked up in a couple of days. Also, my 'subjects' would probably not be the easiest to photograph or ask to photograph, so I would have two options left. I thought that finding my own models and photographing them would be unauthentic and a little lame. I thought that taking them from other sources would be potentially risky - such as the web.

But with this last try, I feel the start of something, once again. I am sure it will not be to many people's tastes as he is quite cartoony looking and a little computer-generated. But I feel that a good deal of this has to do with the fact that this is the very first time I have tried to colour up and put together a picture like this. And as you can see from the line-sketch that I drew in a couple of minutes, it isn't the worst first attempt ever - I am quite proud of it as a first try. But what I am saying is that with practice, I will get better at doing it and my future artworks will hopefully become more sophisticated.
As a character, he is almost where I am coming from. He is a good Fool for me - the Fool that the others were not. His nakedness just happened and amongst the harsh realities of the urban jungle, he is extremely vulnerable - something I hadn't seen as such a problem with The Fool before. But knowing these estates, I can feel the danger for him. Sezo was saying last night that he may have come to the big city, in search of his fortune. This was interesting to me, because I also considered that his 'leap' might be to try and get out of it's trappings.

So, a new beginning for me again. I will continue to experiment. I really appreciate all of the opinions here. As much as I know that I am moving in a direction that will be of less interest to a 'buying and using' market, I still encourage all opinions. I am not doing this to 'buy and sell' especially. I am kind of doing it as a creative outlet for myself 'firstly', so it is more to do with how the images make 'you feel', rather than if they would be a great tarot deck of the future. I will think about that at a later date, when I actually have a handful sitting here.

LB
 

Little Baron

Still playing. This one feels better. Creepier, more vulnerable and generally enotionally darker. More shadows. LB
 

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