Greetings all!
Hi everybody! Thank you for your interest in the Tarot D. I hope you enjoy it!
Yes, I've been told that the deck is masculine. As I am a heterosexual male and the deck was filtered through me, i guess that was inevitable. The female characters are athletic and very muscular to match their male counterparts (in the case of the pip cards in particular, which depict twin demiurges, the females are sometimes even more muscular if the suit in question has a traditionally yin/feminine attribution). I opted for this rather than drawing them extra curvy and over-sexed as they are often depicted in comic books (though, admittedly there are a few images where they are depicted in this manner if libidinous energy is included in the card's meaning). I wanted there to be an almost androgynous tension between the characters while keeping them superhero-ish and stylized rather than realistically proportioned. I had originally drawn them before as having no primary sex characteristics, but it felt like I was "wimping out" and not being honest with myself or my vision. I teach figure drawing classes and I have to spend a lot of time working students through their stigmas related to our American "culture of shame" surrounding anything dealing with sex or nudity. I could not, in good conscience, omit these details of biology. So, I added the symbols of gender, while keeping both on each card and combining their physiology to keep the meanings as polyvalent as possible. Reproduction is a theme throughout the deck and hence the binary (0/1) is played upon, though not held aloft as an exclusive ideal.
I did not include watermarks purposefully and am not particularly worried about it. If my publisher tells me I have to, then I will. Otherwise, I'm not going to. If someone wants to print out one of my images and hang it on their wall or whatever, great! I didn't create this deck to try and make money. I love the symbolism and the inspiration the Tarot has given me over the last 15 years of my life and so this project was both an exercise in creativity and an offering back to the universe, an act of gratitude, if you will. I appreciate you looking out for me though. I've been exploited for my art since I was 12 years old. I kinda got over it and just stopped caring. Rest assured, as an art educator, I often remind my students to protect their work, since many of them intend to pursue careers in illustration, graphic design etc.
