shatterstripes

The next time I see you at Cathedral remind me to dig up the octopus haiku I once wrote, so you can read it.

I want a depressapus.

It's subtle, but it almost looks like there's one tube that loops through her mouth, out the back of the head, and into her stomach. Only by looking up at the back of the head did I see there were two tubes. But I'm liking the entubation in general. :-}

I was tempted to add in a third one that up went somewhere between her legs, but decided to stay "tasteful".

Guess it's relative to the feeling of the card. I mean, three swords through the crotch isn't as 'tasteful' as a tube going somewhere implied.. *grins*

I gotta say, this isn't my favorite. Two major reasons, that I can think of:

1) I don't think she fits in as coherently with the other courts as well as your July 18th sketch did (I like it when a given court feels 'related'), and

2) I absolutely fell in love with the July 18th Chev of Cups. That petulant little conniving pout! I loved the bar, too! And the greater front-on detail on the squidipus. She so looks like someone who's bad news but I'd totally get involved with.

If I had the spare dough, I'd totally commission you to finish that piece! She'd make the perfect moody foil to the perky Chev of Wands!

This one's nice too (and brilliantly executed as always!), but conceptually, I'm just not feeling it...and imagining what the other sketch could/would have been, it just doesn't compare.

FWIW.

I did actually start on the earlier CoC, but it just didn't... feel right. She felt too wicked and not dreamy/detached/flighty enough.

I'm certainly going to be doing revisions of a handful of cards before it goes to press as a formal deck; I dunno if this will be one. These last few Courts were all done in a big hurry!

Oh yeah - on point 1, if I'm reading you right, part of the reason she isn't working for you is the fact that the rest of the Cups courts is a bunch of lilly-white Nordic types, and she's very definitely not?

This is a semi-deliberate choice. See, the Crowleyan model of the Courts (as I understand it) is "heredity comes down through the Princess; the Knight is some guy questing from the tribe over the mountain who comes and marries the Princess, to be her King". There's an explicit urge to exogamy going on in that. So here, we have this woman who has perhaps come a long way from the hot place she was born in, to the cold climate that suits her more, who's going to sweep that innocent, pale, Prince of Cups off his feet. Scandal will no doubt ensue.

The gender twist of course makes it a bit more complicated - is she gonna drag him home to the kingdom she comes from, in that reading? but it still makes sense to me.

Hadn't thought of it that way so much. I think I was reading them as Father-Mother-Daughter-Son (though I am aware of the Crowleyan viewpoint.)

I think perhaps Lily-Chev looks a bit more like Daddy's little girl....whe does have that whole Scorpionic Air-of-Water obsessive intensity thing going on about her. Energetically I suppose she should be more dreamy-Piscean...hmmm...maybe a *slight* facial expression change (wider eyes looking up more?) to make her less bitchy would work. Also, I think she could totally work as a black chick (she can keep her long hair -- maybe two-toned red-black--throw in a braid or two). I just think she's so much hotter. Must be the wide-set eyes... I think I like the layout for 7/18 better, too -- the bubbles are nice. I realize the Octopus is backwards...it would be neat if the Octopus didn't change, but she's facing the right way, but turning around to look back....thereby giving the camera a good view of her body...

I don't mean to obsess. It's just hard to let go of that one!