Here’s the beginning of my Majician card for the Tarot. Its quite a project, but I seem to be getting the hang of it finally. I have gotten several tarot decks to get more of an idea of what to do.
This project I think will be life changing in some ways, since its undoubtedly going to improve my ability to remember which card does what in a tarot reading–which I believe will get me more consciously in touch with my unconscious (a good thing for an artist like me)–which likely will influence the rest of my artistic endeavors. I have an intuitive ability to pull significant cards and interpret them fairly well, but my memory hasn’t always been the best, especially what they mean in which order–so I usually have to look it up.
Of course I need to add in more color, shadows etc. Plus its likely some of the colors will change a bit (am thinking of lightening the blue sky–and darkening part of the cape). Nevertheless, I think its all there for this Majician.
I chose red hair to help represent the Goddess. Even though this is a mostly male card, it is displaying some of Her symbols–as well as the traditional symbols for the rest of the deck (which often equates to about the same thing!): cup, sword, staff, pentacles –as well as Sun, quill pen, book, bird, Moon, jar, Mercury–and even the old snake Wisdom. Plus the project many had of turning lead into gold…also representative of the Goddess.
This time I am using acrylic on canvas, and checked the size to make sure its right. I decided to make it a regular playing card size (i.e., that reduces to 2.5 x 3.5 inches). The top and bottom will have a border so I can number and name the cards. The left and right border will be cut off, but is here for now for the purposes of the painting. There is no need for a border for the width of the cards. Am thinking of making the border for the painting gold as in the old Renaissance tradition–though I could leave it white or make it some other color…
bgarthart.com 