My project: Tarot of the beckoning night

So here's this thing I am working on, a Tarot deck. I have been planning on doing something like this for a long time and have even started on it a few times. Now I am actually going through with it. At the moment I have seven cards ready and my head is spilling with ideas for the rest of them. There are however a lot of choices yet to be made.

Am I going to do color, I think so but I am not yet sure how. I am planning to make specific drawings for all 78 cards, not just the greater arcana, but that is a massive amount of work, am I up for that? I am also trying to figure out how much of my own ideas I can put in, Tarot comes from a centuries old tradition, which symbols, which specific meanings am I going to out in, will it be accessible for all readers, beginners and veterans alike. And then there is the fact that some imagery might even be age restricted like the Devil.
Whatever outcome these questions may have there is also the actual getting the whole thing printed and if possible distributed. Right now I am thinking of pushing the black and white greater arcana forward and do a few cheap ass printouts and see if I can get a few people to review them in use and spread the word.

I will be using this page and my facebook artist page to promote the thing and get feedback, so keep an eye out for that. www.facebook.com/MayTheMoonLightYourPath

Now to find time between work, diabetus induced couchcoma and xbox to keep up my two-designs-a-day commitment.

Death

the Tower

the Hanged Man

the High Priestess

the Devil

the Hermit

the Fool

Aleister Crowley portrait

Some may know him as the possible anti-Christ, some may know him as an inspirational philosopher. He founded the religious philosophy of Thelema and was the designer, though not the artist, of my favorite tarot deck, the Crowley Toth. But above all, he is to spirituallity, the occult and the esoteric what the Beatles where to music. Some live him, some hate him, some wrote songs about him. I did a portrait, even now... even without knowing him, his visage leaves an impression, an impression I tried to capture.

What you see here, is an edited version from a smartphone capture. Enjoy....

so full I feel empty, poem

I’m so full I feel empty

So please let me be

I don’t feel like feeling

But stay close to me

I just want to sleep, deep beyond dark and light

Continual dusk, no day and no night

Clouds in my head and mist fore my eyes

Comfortably numb in self force-fed lies

Too much effort even, to give up the fight

Fantasy in ballpoint

I consider myself to be somewhat of an artist. I have had expositions and done some design work, other than that hundreds to over a thousand people are walking around with tattoos designed by little old me.

Now I can handle all sorts of materials, watercolors being a favorite… but somehow I can’t seem to find the time to paint much, so since a few years most of my “work” is quick ballpoint or pencil sketches done at work or in public transport. The drawback is that I have little time to do sketches or studies, so anatomy-wise for instance I am making little progress in developing my skills. This is one of my new years resolutions, to invest more time in my artistic skills, both in drawing and painting as well as training my tattoo skills.

Here’s a few of my quick sketches, if you have me on facebook it’s nothing new though, enjoy!

 

Da Vinci inspired tattoo set-up

Wings are a recurring theme  in my art work, most of the time they are connected to some sort of creature, angels, dragons and faeries, I draw them a lot, I'm a sucker for fantasy.

D&D- esque desing for online store

Dragons, claws, wings. Inspired by "DragonOrb" the name of my wife's online shop

Sharing my "appreciation" for unicorns and carebears.

I did this to shock and annoy, didn't get the reaction I wanted though, maybe I should have drawn more blood.

Somwhere between Alien and a Dr Who episode

Dr Who fans have probably seen the episode "silence in the library", which was an inspiration for this image. A skull in a space suit felt like a very powerful symbol to me, the protective suit becomming a prison. In my mind this is the result of some sort of alien infestation, some sort of evil fungus like mass creating webs in space from which they slowly digest their victims, quite probably keeping their dinners alive through the process.

Not my first Dragon queen

 I like drawing women and while I try to keep the eroticism of the female form I always try to empower them in some way, making them warriors, demons or goddesses. Where the contrast between power and vulnerability creates a powerful tension.

Rising frome water, I use that a lot

I imagined her as flying underwater, like a stingray or something. But in the end, having wings drove her to reach for the sky. As she emerges from the water, she is enchanted by the sensation, the lack of pressure from the deep almost unbearable as her whole skin is tingling from the soft winds and water droplets falling from her body.

It takes patience, but you can draw on the train.

The abuse of power always lurks, this is a sorcerer or wizard with a lot of power. He has lived beyond the years mother nature would have given him, his immense power unnaturally prolonging his life. The more he cheats death, the more he fears it. I did this drawing on the train and used the accidental lines created by the movement of the train to create a sort of underwater like flow that would be created by the magic surrounding this wizard.