Monday, February 16, 2009

Tarot Cards pt. 1



I got my first deck of Tarot cards from one of my best friends. The beautiful artwork of tarot had always inspired me and it was after I discovered my talent for doing large scale paintings that I thought I might try my hand at painting tarot cards that I could hang on my wall.
This piece is my latest one and my new re-attempt to begin the deck. I've done many card paintings int he past but I did them for someone else and I've decided to only do them for myself from now on. This is the High Priestess card, represented with my first cat cat, muse and companion, Gummitch. I brought her home when I was oen and she decided to stay. She was my first best friend and a great inspiration to me. She died at 21, a well loved and spoiled creature. This card represents knowledge, spirituality, the supernatural and self growth and discovery.

The pictures uploaded out of order but you can see the sketch and the progress of filling it in. It was a lot of fun to paint. I always do research into the various symbols represented on each card I paint. I chose to make the pillars twisted, gnarled trees instead of marble posts. The torah seems to be one of the symbols that cannot be lef tout of the card and I really liked balancing it's placement ont he canvas with the swirl of the rainbow. The moon was probably my favourite thing to paint as it's somethign i've wanted to do for a while now.
I'm currently working on The Fool and The World and the next oen i plan to do is the Lovers.