shatterstripes

I think I like this one so much because it is so different from the others. There's also this feeling that the cowpoke in the background is in for a really nasty surprise.

Yeah, I was really surprised when the watercolorey, faded thing started to come together. I ran with it because it seemed appropriate to the sketch. And hopefully to the card as well.

Sometimes, looking at sharp contrasts like this against the Kirbytastic 10P, I wonder how this will look as a deck overall. Will it all hang together, unified by the underlying style? Or will the different executions make it all fall apart? We'll see. I won't really know until I make a test deck, will I.

Once there's a test-deck, from a spiritually-jibbly-squishy-unscientific perspective, I'd love to try reading on it and see if I can get a voice off it. All the decks I've had the best experiences with have had a distinct voice in reading; a sort of way the images and metaphors come together in execution to give certain kinds of messages in readings. Would love to try and find what that is for this one.

(By the way, it's feeling like it'll gel so far, at least to me.)

I definitely need to see what people who actually use Tarot decks on a regular basis get when they try it. I've been thinking of assembling one once I have all the sketches done and fooling around, though it's not something I've really done in the past anyway, and I might be too damn close to the images for it to work!

I think you might actually do better by making more images like this one, in that it doesn't fit the mold. If this is the only standout, I don't think it will work but if there are other more random-referenced images, I think your style and approach will be the unifying factor, which I think would be far more interesting as your take is already so different.

I've mostly only got Wands and a couple each of the other suits left to do, so we'll see what happens! (And the court cards.)

Most of the patterns I break are only broken once, so far - one unsuited Minor, one Major and one Minor that's not a full-body shot (mostly I think the court cards are gonna be medium shots, which helps justify the pattern better), one unnumbered Major, one untitled Major. One B&W Major. One pseudo-watercolor Minor goes right along with that all.

There's also a fair amount of variation in general - I have comicsy ones, I have ones with no modelling at all, I have a lot of different looks going on. I need to look at them together soon, even if it's just by updating my all-the-cards image, and see if this sticks out too far. If it does, more wispy ones must happen.

Pictures like this intrigue me because they make me want to know the story behind them!

That, IMHO, is really what makes a Tarot deck work. Unless you're doing very very very analytical readings, it's about looking at the pictures as a metaphor for your current situation, and telling a story based on them.

This is one of your most striking cards yet. Very moody and has a similar feeling as the original Waite Rider card did. Only the mood is raised to a much higher exponent. The colors are very bleak and they really make the card work.

Was the "Kill Bill" reference intentional? Everyone's gonna see that whether it's there or not. In any case, don't change a thing on this. It rocks!

I realized after it was all done how similar it is to the RWS version. Working off of similar starting places (Swords, crossed; Libra/moon) brought me somewhere similar, though I changed the wateryness to a dry, arid desert.

I thought of doing a new sketch after realizing that everyone was going to see "Kill Bill" in my choice of a sort of bridal gown for the main figure, but well, if they see it, they see it. An avenging bride is a pretty powerful image!

Yeah, the nature of bleakness is a national difference. In Britain, it's the moors under the moon. In the US, it's Arizona or someplace similar like Southern Jersey.

I'm glad you kept with the original sketch idea because it really does have a lot of force behind it. There's another undertone that I like as well. It's sort of a feminist reply to the macho Western genre. Either that or I've spent way too much of my career in post modern universities(they're all postmodern actually).

I'd say that this deck is pretty postmodern, except someone already made 'the postmodern Tarot'. I sort of wanted it to be the postHUMAN tarot originally, but I drifted from that.

I think that's exactly the right way to do these images, really: metaphorical uses. Take a latent meaning you aren't allowed to make overt without violating a taboo -- and turn it into something else that *alludes* to it. Images created that way have CRAZY amounts of magical power...

That icon (plasma head)... Michel Gagne? <3<3<3

Also, never thought I'd see you use the phrase 'crazy magical power'. :-D

It is indeed! And how come? No, RIK's the one who won't acknowledge any fantasy that takes place before the Spanish Civil War. ;)

Agreed.

See 'Kill Bill'.

Feel unsure about the blood spots. Swords work, but the menstruation would add a squick factor for some, while others would see it as a positive, and it'd really do... something... to the card. Not sure if it'd be a good or a bad something.

I'd almost suggest taking the two versions and throwing them on a feminist forum somewhere and see what they do to them/you, but that's really inviting disaster.

Striking. Very powerful image. I've always loved the Two of Swords in the Rider-Waite, and none of the other decks I looked at seemed to capture the eerie pause so well. Here, you've captured it and described it even more clearly than the Waite image.

Maybe it's just the combination of the West and a bride, but it reminds me of "The Mexican." Which is odd, since I can't remember much about that movie, except that it was about the history of a haunted gun. I think it's more the aura of the thing: a story where people really die, but in ways make everybody fall silent with awe because secrets are being unlocked, one by one.

I don't see any reason why you wouldn't have menstruation on some card or other. If you want to, I mean. You've been unflinching in addressing other subjects that are important parts of life and problem-solving, but which some other Tarot interpreters shyly sugar-coat or censor. In that context, it would seem okay; it's not a deck for the squeamish. Menstruation doesn't fit this particular card, though. It would make the apparent story too complicated. There's enough for us to deduce a story from, with the avenging bride and all, without making us wonder: "Is that blood from an injury, from her period, or from losing her virginity? Or is it someone else's blood, as they were dying on her lap?" Seems to me that, if menstruation turns up anywhere in the deck, it would be somewhere in the Cups suit (all tides, emotions, and feminine Grail) not here in the Swords (all icy wind and lethal words).

Thanks!

Honestly, all the things you wonder blood on her dress could be kinda makes me want to put it in! I just feel that it's something I don't know enough about from the inside to do right. I have subtle reasons to feel it belongs here; I'm not really sure it belongs in Cups at all.

I am SO glad to know this reminds someone of a movie that is not "Kill Bill"; this reminds EVERYONE of that despite that not being my intent at all. The Western just seemed to be the right way to present how I read its meaning; the ritual of The Gunfight is buried in American cinema culture, and thus in, well, most of the world's myths now. The stylized pause, the moment where the characters and the audience hold their breath. The calm before the storm; the eye of the hurricane. And then the burst of violence, without the balletic drama of a swordfight - a moment of reflex followed by bullets too fast to dodge, that may leave both participants dead and wounded.

(Which means that either this woman is about to die quickly, or has magic that trumps flying lead...)

You've been unflinching in addressing other subjects that are important parts of life and problem-solving, but which some other Tarot interpreters shyly sugar-coat or censor.

Oh, definitely. The last thing I want this deck to be is 'my relentlessly nice and fluffy Tarot'. Some cards I may be getting completely wrong in ways I don't see yet, some I may be finding joy in sorrow (Death, 3S come to mind), but I'm really proud of how nasty yet pretty I've made some of the others. My goal is for this thing to be as gorgeous as I can make it, and as potent.

(ooh, and that makes me want to see if there's a card left to do where it would be appropriate for it to halfway disintegrate into abstraction...)

Cosmic Tribe Tarot

You might have found this deck in the course of your Tarot research already, but I thought it's relevant to the whole 'relentlessly not nice and fluffy' deck idea. I found it since it's the deck that Indi has. Okay, so it's a bit technopagan, but I rather like the abstract design sense, plus the photographic unabashed full human nudity. It's also got three different 'lovers' cards, for each gender pairing (m/m, f/f, m/f, though no poly).
I liked it enough that it's the first tarot deck I bought, though yours will be the second when it's done and tangible.

Mostly I'm just looking at it and being surprised that I can very quickly tell that it's a Crowley-Harris inspired deck! I am fuller of this kind of stuff than I realize; I could get that from a random walk through the Minors, not from the obvious telltale of having "Art" and "Lust" and "Aeon" in the Majors...

Yeah, he kept a lot of the same names of the major cards from the Thoth deck too, though I guess the rampant elemental symbolism is a good indication.

You're becoming a regular semi-expert on Tarot! Which is kinda neat in itself. Probably the reason that Crowley had expected people to eventually create their own decks. You own the symbolism so much more deeply.

The surprising thing was that I could tell just by looking at a couple of the minors that Crowley's version diverts on. And this deck doesn't even have the card titles to give it away. I'm an accidental expert!

"Make your own according to the spec" was pretty much standard Golden Dawn procedure. Everyone looking for the Enlightened Wisdom through them was expected to do one; probably to help them pick up all the correspondences and patterns.

'Accidental expert' seems like a good term for it. The closest I get to that is I guess in music. Sometimes I'll hear a soundtrack on a movie and go 'I know where that's from!' or 'I know who composed that!'. (Most recently it was a particular song in The Truman Show that I /knew/ was composed by Philip Glass and specifically in the Powaqqatsi soundtrack, and I turned out to be correct). It's especially relevant in songs that sample other songs as a base. It kinda scares me and thrills me at the same time, how accurate instant recall can be sometimes (I know the memory of a thing is far greater than we can actually recall, most of the time).

Also, while I'm tossing around Tarot decks, here's another interesting modern one, based on corporate culture: http://cartomanzia.precaria.org/index-eng.html