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