Color Study of RWS?

rwcarter

I'm feeling the need to start studying a deck to refocus my tarot energy. (Betcha can't guess where it's currently focused! And, yes, that's a rhetorical question! :D)

I'm aware of a number of sources of color studies for the Majors (PF Case comes immediately to mind), but no color studies of the Minors immediately come to mind. Would this be an insane undertaking on my part? Anybody willing to hop on the insanity bus with me (or at least talk me out of boarding the bus myself)? I believe yellow is the color for thoughts, so what does that yellow sky do to the interpretation of the 9 Pentacles with its huge yellow sky? She thinks too much about her physical security and ends up alone? :confused:

A color study of the RWS is sounding really intriguing to me! But it's also sounding like a major commitment. I either need compatriots or someone to knock some sense into me, so have at it from either or both viewpoints! :D

Rodney
 

bogiesan

You must declare a single issue or version of the deck. Even the country of origin for any given version may become important because ink types vary so widely.
Frankie Albano's version may actually be more fun. No subtlety there.
 

Cerulean

Hali Morag did a color study book of the Waite Smith...

http://books.google.com/books/about/Tarot.html?id=OmoJAAAACAAJ

But I do not remember if it was that good--I think I ended up giving it away...but you'd have to check if you have this book or not already.

Chances are you may have discarded it as well 8).

Cerulean
 

rwcarter

bogiesan said:
You must declare a single issue or version of the deck. Even the country of origin for any given version may become important because ink types vary so widely.
Frankie Albano's version may actually be more fun. No subtlety there.
Click to expand...
Well, if I wanted to do the study by myself, I'd choose my Pam B! }) (Well, maybe truelighth and Le Fanu would join me.) Most likely I'd choose ye ole yellow box USG Rider Waite as that's rather ubiquitous. (But you do bring up an interesting point about the various versions having different coloring and therefore different interpretations!)

Rodney
 

Richard

A historical thread about the coloration of the Rider-Waite Minors would be most interesting. Posts about one's intuitive impressions of individual cards might get a little lame. I think we might most profitably delve into what originally motivated Waite and Colman-Smith's choice of colors. The Campbell-Roberts book Tarot Revelations has some scholarly information about the coloration of the Majors.
 

Zephyros

I agree with LRichard, such a thread would be fascinating. I'm on the Thoth, but have not gotten to study of the colors yet. DuQuette writes that the colors of the Golden Dawn were taken from a Windsor and Newton Designer Gouache Series paint box, which was popular at the time, and is still sold today, and also suggests that some of the colors may have been chosen as a result of deep states of trance and skrying. I suspect the RWS follows the more basic colors, while Harris allowed herself to mix them, but both follow the GD scale.
http://www.winsornewton.com/products/gouache/designers-gouache/
 

Richard

LRichard said:
.....Posts about one's intuitive impressions of individual cards might get a little lame.......
Click to expand...
I don't mean that such interpretations are invalid, but rather that they may be more appropriate for a readings forum than for a history and iconography forum.
 

rwcarter

What I was thinking of was something along the lines of finding out what each color meant in the Golden Dawn tradition and then applying that info as nuances to the card interpretations.

Going back to the 9 Swords as an example, this is what's written in the PKT for the card
A woman, with a bird upon her wrist, stands amidst a great abundance of grapevines in the garden of a manorial house. It is a wide domain, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly it is her own possession and testifies to material well-being. Divinatory Meanings: Prudence, safety, success, accomplishment, certitude, discernment. Reversed: Roguery, deception, voided project, bad faith.
Click to expand...
What effect does that huge yellow sky (USG yellow-box version) have on the above interpretation? I believe yellow is supposed to represent thoughts, so how do thoughts interplay with the interpretations above?

Not really an intuitive study, but not really a historical one either except that it would be based on historical color associations. And as bogiesan brought up, different versions of the deck have different colorings, so it would also be interesting to see how the change in color changes the nuance on the PKT interpretations.

Rodney
 

Cerulean

Perhaps it would be a comparative study for you

As one of PCS' teachers was Arthur Wesley Dow and he was an artist as well as a teacher, perhaps its colored paintings and the ink and pen painting/sketches of Pamela Colman Smith gives a rich feast of personal meaning and thought to you as an observer of Pamela's world and the works of one of her teachers?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Wesley_Dow

There was a study booklet I once encountered where the author was trying to get students to look at a work of art and draw some personal observation or meaning from the picture, to 'connect' to the message and the viewing experience, I believe. Actually it was more like a way for a student to ask questions of if they liked or didn't like a form of art, etc...

Anyway, comparative art study adds peacefulness in the contemplation. It would be fun as a viewer to draw your own meanings as you look at purple or gray mountains and yellow skies, rich red robes and also the greens and golds of a radiant spring day.

Would it be fun to choose some form of color pigment, just to splash on a page while you look at a picture. In a small journal with page you might note--say 8C...maybe splash some of the colors and a few notes...dark gray blue, melancholy figure, full moon as an eclipse...that's my take, of course. Of course if you had yarn or scraps of cloth or magazine pictures, tearing out bits of color and pasting them in the notebook could also be a color study on it's own...

(chuckle)--yeah, there's silly side of me coming out to play.

Cerulean
 
famous faces Rider Waite Reversed