What cards do you find challenging?

Babalon Jones

This has two questions, either from the point of view of tarot creator or tarot lover. (You can be both!)

If you are a creator, what cards do you find challenging and why, especially in relationship to the small cards. Is it because of the number of suit symbols (too many or too few), or because you are not really grabbed by the archetype, or? Do some cards seem more interesting than others. They are all interesting, I mean seemingly, in the moment, some are more so and some less.

If you are not a creator, are there cards you just normally find hard to connect to, boring, or difficult to get? Conversely, are there minor cards that you always look at to define the deck? I will post this in the Talking Tarot Forum, as not many people look here.

What I am noticing is that some are definitely harder to do than others as I work my way through the minors.

What I find the most challenging is just that with each one, I am trying to do something new. Not an RWS, not a Thoth, not a Marseille, but still instantly recognizable without a title, and with the right esoteric symbolism and feeling tone. And hand drawn not digital or collage.

..how many "pierced heart" variations have you seen for 3 of Swords for example? Sola Busca started it, Pamela took it, then even Frieda did a variation if you consider the pierced rose as a heart.

I am a traditionalist who is bucking tradition, apparently as I do not like decks that I would not know what card it was without the title, but I am bored with the same ol' same ol'

Added to say, I really hate drawing swords with permanent marker. Too many straight lines, so much concentration!
 

Padma

As an artist and a reader, cards I *most* hate in the deck (i.e. cause they are so f***** neutral and meaningless!)

Magician ( he has lost his way - he is now considered Mr. Used Car Salesman, which he is not...); Strength (Yawn) I am SO over patience, honey!; Temperence (oh my goodness, dahling, just make up your mind!!!); World (yeah I get it. Over is over, done is done.) And why - WHY? do most of the women in the World card look like they need to go to the bathroom??? WHAT is with that? (Hello Illuminati, among others!!!!)

The Wheel drives me nuts, too. Some people *never* go to the bottom, and some people *never* rise. It needs to adapt to modern life. Same could be said of the Stars. It's freaking internet, dude. Get with the picture! (Stars most often indicating internet exchanges).

In the minors, pray merge 2 of Wands and 3 of Wands together...and for goodness sake some one get that three and ten of Swords a doctor!!!!!!!!!!
 

wooden-eye

(I just posted in your talking tarot thread. Here would have been better.)

I know what you mean about the swords. For me it was Silver blades....more silver blades.

I have found, not so much the painting the minors a hassle, but writing about them. I am doing a handbook for Bonefire right now. I have a pretty full understanding of what I think about each and every card, but getting that down to say 400 really great words is a huge effort of editing, kind of like trying to compose a tweet.

Then you get the odd card where a couple of paragraphs and you are out eg 6 of Coins and other cards which are a massive struggle, for me the 10 of Coins. This was I card I changed hugely from the RWS. I see how it relates to my own understanding of the cards meaning, but I have to explain the card, as such I guess it does not work.

If I make another Tarot I will probably not feel the need to paint all of the wands on 10 of wands, constantly checking to make sure they are all there.
 

Babalon Jones

Thanks for the laugh, Lotus! (Though I love most of the cards you mentioned.)

Wooden eye, you have just reminded me of all the joy to be had when I write my next book :)

I have visions of epicness interspersed with the cold slap of Saturn reminding me of how much work it will be!
 

danieljuk

I know 2 and 3 of wands seem quite similar but I see them quite different! The 2 is about future planning and horizon expanding, the 3 is things beginning to come in but keeping going with those plans. I think the court cards confuse many people, especially if there is no visual clues to the personality or characteristics of the figure. My thing is most of the 7's and 8's in court cards! challenging! Eventually I work out my challenging cards, especially when they keep chasing me :)

my tip is to really think about the court cards, how can you show aspects of them visually?
 

Babalon Jones

I too think the 2 and 3 of Wands are different, though I see why Lotus said that in a way, both being decans of aries, ruled by mars and sun repectively, both fiery planets. But to me the energy of the two vs the three is what sets them apart. Chokmah vs Binah.

It will be awhile until I do the courts as I am working through the minors first. But I have a tentative plan, and that is a start.
 

Padma

Thanks for the laugh, Lotus! (Though I love most of the cards you mentioned.)

Babalon, thanks so much for taking it in the spirit intended! :laugh: I was on a bit of a tear last night! :D

I love your artwork. I feel I will have to get your deck, once it is complete :) I know you will do a fabulous job with all of the cards! :love:
 

LupaGreenwolf

I've been tempering the "One Wand, Two Wand, Red Wand, Blue Wand" repetition of the minors (especially the pips) by trying to give each card its own personality. Because I'm using assemblage instead of a 2D medium I can play more with not just color but texture, and add in all sorts of materials to add to the unique nature of each one of them. I do admit I draw some from the RWS symbolism, especially when it's something fun to build in 3D like the canopy in the Four of Wands. But there's a lot of personal symbolism in there, too.

The biggest challenge I've had so far, though, was with the Court Cards. The Tarot of Bones centers on--you guessed it--bones! Each suit has its own type of bone--ribs for Cups, vertebrae for Pentacles, etc. The Major Arcana each get a complete animal skull; Temperance, for example, used a (resin replica) burrowing owl skull, since it's an owl that A) is active both at day and nighttime, and B) hunts both from the air and on the ground. But for the Court Cards, I didn't want to just keep piling the bones up (eleven long bones for the Page of Wands, etc.)

So I ended up with a sort of compromise--each Court Card will have its own skull, without an intact mandible (the Majors have intact mandibles). Then along with the skull there'll be one bone that represents the suit. So the King of Cups, which I recently completed, features a red-eared slider turtle skull, and the carapace from the shell (a turtle's shell essentially being a very advanced structure made from the animal's rib cage, pelvis, etc. So the skull represents the Court nature of the card, and the shell (super-duper rib!) represents its place in Cups.
 

Kees

Since I've been doing my dinosaur deck and have a specific idea of what I want to do with it, I've mostly been struggling with cards that on the surface have very human meanings and imagery associated with them. Things like Justice, or the Emperor/Empress. I've gone through several iterations in my sketches for those cards but haven't quite settled on what it is I want to do with them yet. I might end up branching out a little bit from the typical majors in order to make the concepts feel more at home with my illustrations. (I'm also struggling with whether I should go with the obvious go-to on the Emperor and make it a tyrannosaurus rex, or do something a little different.)
 

goldenquince

I feel like I'm having a similar problem...with each card I create, I want to do something new! I'm trying to keep with the RWS symbolism, and I'm trying to make each card recognizable without the label, but it's definitely a challenge not to rehash what's already been done. Right now, I'm on my 13th card, drawing them in the order that they speak to me; whenever a composition forms itself in my head when I look at a card, I sketch it, trace the sketch onto bristol using my lightbox, ink it out. But I've noticed looking through my decks that there are a number of cards that don't necessarily resonate with me the way I need them to in order to get those images in my head. I know that I'll eventually have to tackle that issue when I run out of the cards that imprint instant ideas.

I've recently researched the symbolism of a few difficult cards and found that if I know more about the deeper meanings contained within each card, the images come more freely.