tarotbear
working away ....
The holiday, the heat, and other distractions are toiling away on me as I toil away on the cards. Today I sketched the 70th of the 78 cards! I have also included a couple of alternative 'concepts' and sketched those, too, as I go along. Several cards have been entirely re-composed. Today I also found out drawing a staircase in correct perspective took longer than the other three cards in the set! I'm so glad I have mechanical drafting skills! Why did I start this project?
Making a character for each of the suits has been quite interesting since you tend to start seeing them as personalities instead of just random cards. 'Mr Workout' who is Cups/Water is also the only man with long hair which is braided, and it started making him look Native American, so I am letting that run through the suit. You also see the characters progress even farther when you see 'Mr Outdoors' transform the wedding/celebration 4 Wands card into a picnic beer blast! In the 5 Swords where 'Mr Buttondown's' aggressive behavior overpowers other characters, the men from the other suits appear, defeated.
I will admit one thing, though; Pamela Coleman Smith who created the original RWS illustrations - which have been called shallow and cartoonish - in them she created some of the most expressive hands I have ever seen, and I am unable to duplicate them.
'Traditional' and 'Purist' this deck IS NOT! Except for the Queens, (for the moment - anything can change) which reside as tributes to Miss Smith, I have diligently worked at removing the Medieval clothing from the characters. Perhaps someday I will redraw the Queens into something more contemporary; I was a costume designer, after all! However, I need to look at the whole before I get too nit-picky about it's 78 separate parts. I tell people "I am NOT designing a deck! I am designing the illustrations for my books!" It will be a flawed product by its very nature. It's a lot of work!
But it's a damn lot of fun!
The holiday, the heat, and other distractions are toiling away on me as I toil away on the cards. Today I sketched the 70th of the 78 cards! I have also included a couple of alternative 'concepts' and sketched those, too, as I go along. Several cards have been entirely re-composed. Today I also found out drawing a staircase in correct perspective took longer than the other three cards in the set! I'm so glad I have mechanical drafting skills! Why did I start this project?
Making a character for each of the suits has been quite interesting since you tend to start seeing them as personalities instead of just random cards. 'Mr Workout' who is Cups/Water is also the only man with long hair which is braided, and it started making him look Native American, so I am letting that run through the suit. You also see the characters progress even farther when you see 'Mr Outdoors' transform the wedding/celebration 4 Wands card into a picnic beer blast! In the 5 Swords where 'Mr Buttondown's' aggressive behavior overpowers other characters, the men from the other suits appear, defeated.
I will admit one thing, though; Pamela Coleman Smith who created the original RWS illustrations - which have been called shallow and cartoonish - in them she created some of the most expressive hands I have ever seen, and I am unable to duplicate them.
'Traditional' and 'Purist' this deck IS NOT! Except for the Queens, (for the moment - anything can change) which reside as tributes to Miss Smith, I have diligently worked at removing the Medieval clothing from the characters. Perhaps someday I will redraw the Queens into something more contemporary; I was a costume designer, after all! However, I need to look at the whole before I get too nit-picky about it's 78 separate parts. I tell people "I am NOT designing a deck! I am designing the illustrations for my books!" It will be a flawed product by its very nature. It's a lot of work!
But it's a damn lot of fun!
