10 of Swords

10 of Swords

: shatterstripes; February 28th, 2008

Ruin, imprisonment, the downward spiral. One of the darkest images of the Minors: the sun sets on your dreams, here.

I said I was going to stop working on these for a while and get back to Absinthe, but I've been having trouble getting up to steam on the comic. I need to figure out how to trick myself into throwing myself into Absinthe again. I've done it before; I just have to remember the right self-engineering methods.

Oh yeah: I should also mention that i finally got off my ass and did some rudimentary research for these swords, instead of drawing whatever crap I could dig out of the sludge of generic fantasy art residue on the bottom of my brain. With ten different swords in the card I kinda had to.

Print available on Artspots.

Tags: tarot

( 25 comments — Leave a comment )

circuit_four

2008-02-29 01:55 am (UTC)

Christ, you even make doom pretty. *envies/covets you* The piece of paper is an interesting touch -- random image, bit of traditional symbolism, or some bit of narrative you had in mind? I want to imagine the setting of the sun in this scene and the springing of the deathtrap are causally, as well as metaphorically, related here for some reason, like someone failed to rescue/appease/outwit someone... the fact there's already blood on her face and near the parchment is intriguing, too -- not the first time she's failed at this, and now she's not even going to try to dodge the blade?

shatterstripes

2008-02-29 03:06 am (UTC)

Mostly the paper is there to break up the symmetry and provide a bit of life to the background. Same with the blood-splat on the floor. When I drew the original rough, I indicated something dripping from between her hands - and I'm pretty sure I ended up thinking 'blood' instead of 'tears' pretty quickly. Adding a bit more blood only seemed natural.

I kinda wanted to put a bit more symbolic reference to the Layers Of Meaning to the card, but all my references pretty much agreed (except for the floofy-bunny-death-is-NEVER-really-Death ones) that this is about ruin, betrayal, disaster, letting go. If this card were an image macro it would have "FAIL" across it in 60-point Impact Bold.

I couldn't not be aware of the Smith-Waite imagery here; it's one of the ones that sticks in my mind. Corpse on the ground with ten swords sprouting from it. I had to not do that - and yet reference the same themes.

"Leela? Are we boned?" "Yeah. (sigh) We're boned."

circuit_four

2008-02-29 03:08 am (UTC)

Impending and not entirely uncooperative corpse-to-be. *shudder*

Re: "Leela? Are we boned?" "Yeah. (sigh) We're boned."

shatterstripes

2008-02-29 03:11 am (UTC)

Yeah. Not a happy card.

EPIC FAIL

Re: "Leela? Are we boned?" "Yeah. (sigh) We're boned."

circuit_four

2008-02-29 03:13 am (UTC)

Wow. The whole fail meme is very different when the pathos is pushed right up there in your face. o.o

I still wanna make one that casts me as a weary, humorless old man abused by rapscallions and whippersnappers. "I FOUGHT THE WAR FOR YOUR SORT!"

waterotter

2008-02-29 02:09 am (UTC)

You could always cheat, and incorporate the tarot cards into Absinthe.

shatterstripes

2008-02-29 02:52 am (UTC)

Nah, Absinthe really isn't that kind of story. Plus I'd end up with furry Tarot cards, which I want to avoid - the things are enough of a niche market as is!

aintesduck

2008-02-29 03:00 am (UTC)

Another awesome one.

And now for some reason I have "The Sword of Damocles" from "Rocky Horror" stuck in my head...

shatterstripes

2008-02-29 03:10 am (UTC)

Thanks!

I'm not surprised at that. Thankfully I have a bad memory for most songs, or it probably would've been running through myhead for all the time I was working on this one...

circuit_four

2008-02-29 03:16 am (UTC)

Number Ten needed peace of mind.
She didn't know
she'd been doing just fine.

circuit_four

2008-02-29 03:19 am (UTC)

Oh, yeah, that was the other bit of implied symbolism I wanted to comment on: it's also interesting that what "traps" her into her demise is just a flimsy bit of cloth with no great power to bind her.

If she'd been willing (or able?) to see it as such, she could've very easily saved herself. But she consents to her death, probably because of some previous trauma we'll never know about. Perhaps she thought her injury -- or whatever caused the blood stain on the floor -- was a sign of her weakness, when it was really par for the course and she still could've won. Hell, she could still win at the moment of this "snapshot," except she's clearly elected not to.

The doom in this 10S is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's not a card of "overwhelmed by superior forces," but "injured and insulted into surrender." SO VERY APPROPRIATE, unfortunately, for a tarot so heavily themed around geek culture and psychology...

Edited at 2008-02-29 03:46 am (UTC)

perlandria

2008-02-29 04:28 am (UTC)

I had noticed that if she sat up straight and leaned back a little, the sword would fall between her knees. But I didn't THINK about tearing away from the circle. Oooops.

I love the lace edging. It makes the dress ambiguous on whether it is a nightie, slip/underwear, or a summer overdress and each answer would completely change the space of the card.

shatterstripes

2008-02-29 05:10 am (UTC)

I think one of the messages hidden in a lot of these images is something about choosing your own destiny, intentionally or accidentally. Choosing it deliberately generally gets shown as good; drifting into it is generally bad. This is not without precedence in my own life. *grin*

If she wasn't bent over mourning it would land between her legs. If she wasn't worried about ruining the dress even more she could've just left. But she stayed there weeping. Or is there something else keeping her there? Who put those swords in there? I dunno. Fill it in with a story from the cards you deal around it and the things you're not quite willing to say right now; that's what Tarot cards are for...

anaisdjuna

2008-02-29 05:14 am (UTC)

Gorgeous! I love the sword hanging by a thread over her head. Love the paper in the background and what looks like blood coming from between her fingers over her eyes creating the splotch on her dress.

You rock. I'm absolutely gonna buy a deck for myself and my witchy homiez when they come out. Can't wait!

shatterstripes

2008-02-29 05:29 pm (UTC)

Look again - the last thread just broke. I wonder if I should make the gap a bit bigger to make it obvious... or leave it as something you might not notice until the third or tenth look!

Fifty cards left to go. Plus 2 or 5 more, depending on what I decide about doing extra Fools and the other three 99s. It'll probably get done sometime this year, if I have a couple more bursts of doing two in one day for a few weeks. Then publishing...

circuit_four

2008-03-01 01:14 am (UTC)

Ahem finish Major and submit FIRST plz. ^_^

shatterstripes

2008-03-01 02:19 am (UTC)

The Majors will get finished when they get finished. They seem to need to ferment a while longer! But I have the sheets-o-samples laid out in Indesign, ready for a once-over for the text (ahem) and then to print and send out!

trianine

2008-02-29 05:21 am (UTC)

I've only taken a few light steps onto the tarot, but I find the research and symbolism you put here to be VERY refreshing. After so much of the usual even skilled character art, it is really nice to see an image with perceivable depth and story to it. The fact that your summation is more than half the size of the image, and that the image is arguably easier to look at makes me happy. I consider it an effective icon, and I will definitely take some time to observe the rest of your series.

I'll be honest, in a lot of cases I rarely pause for your work, even though you have proven technical ability. This may have to change.

shatterstripes

2008-02-29 05:11 pm (UTC)

I've been pretty good about using the 'tarot' tag on these cards and the occasional bit of related text, if you want to catch up on what I've done so far.

The narrative nature of the cards is a lot of what makes them an interesting subject. As a long-time fan of Edward Gorey, I've always tended to draw stuff that implies a past and future, rather than just being 'an interesting character posing for the artist'* - and the nature of Tarot cards as 'something to use as seeds for telling a story to yourself' is perfect for playing with this.

edit to add: as to the research... that's half the fun, really. Digging through as many versions of 'meaning' and 'truth' as I can find to create something cryptic and fraught with oblique meaning. Realizing just how much one "respected" source plagarized from another (read Book T then read Crowley's better-known Book of Thoth for instance), seeing how much it's changed over the centuries... there's a lot of delightfully rich source material here to play with.

* though a while back I experimented with aping the look of someone holding up a digital camera and photographing themselves posing, which created a narrative in its own way... I really should try that again.

Edited at 2008-02-29 05:31 pm (UTC)

heavenscalyx

2008-02-29 02:52 pm (UTC)

This is really beautiful.

An interesting aside -- I have a dark screen here at work, so I don't always see the details of an image until I squint. When I first looked at it, I saw the blood in her lap and thought of menstrual imagery, which led me merrily down the thought path of Conservative Reproductive Rule and imprisonment by that and...

Yeah, it's a really beautiful card.

shatterstripes

2008-02-29 05:20 pm (UTC)

Oooh, I didn't think of that at all. My gender situation means I'm missing out on that whole complex of reflexive associations. I think I may need to deliberately invoke that somewhere in this project...

Thanks!

heavenscalyx

2008-02-29 09:07 pm (UTC)

Hee. That's why you have the rest of us around who've ruined underwear/trousers/dresses/sheets/mattresses/etc to help out!