Rescanning

Ok, so I have been rescanning all of the images.  It has been going really well, beautifully really, a lot of these paintings I haven’t scanned for years and years and my scanner is much better now than a decade ago.  Last night I smacked against the wall with the 7s though.  They refused to go for it.   

Illuminated Looking

Switching gears a little again.  What do you think about this?  I was working on this before but never could get the font right.  Then while looking for fonts for the last title design I found this – it isn’t exactly what I was looking for but very close.    I did the illuminated roman numerals, I like them.

Marie

A New Border

This is what I have been working on.  Very simple and clean.  (The black around the whole outside is only there to distinguish the card from the white background)What do you think? 

Marie

Bordering on Insanity

I’ve been trying real hard but I just can’t stomach a white border, or a black one, or a colored one for that matter.  I have tasted the forbidden fruit of borderlessness and now everything else is diminished in comparison!  Plus, I keep imagining the combination of any border with the card back and I don’t like it! 

Now, I don’t know what the limits will be on the final publication, but for now I should be able to manage a borderless handmade edition shouldn’t I ?    I am going to keep working towards that and see what happens. 

No time for chit chat!  Hasta!

Marie

Card Titles & PCS Dream

Unless I change my mind again this is what they are going to look like. 

This is something cool!:  A week or two ago I had this really nice dream where I was sitting on a mountain in New Mexico looking over the desert at sunset and writing a song to Pamela Colman Smith.  There were a lot of other little things going on too which have happened in real life since then like; in the dream the kids were playing on the edge of the mountain and I was telling them to step back from the edge a little, then when we were unloading a moving truck for my mother in law there the kids were looking exactly like in the dream playing on the edge of the truck. 

Winged Disk

Another Try at the Titles

I got almost done with this last set of titles when I decided I didn’t like it.  Some of them looked so beautiful, but, it was too busy and distracting from the main image.  I want a balance.  So I had what I thought was a good idea yesterday and started on it, did a mock up last night and it looked pretty good.  Simple, not too masculine or feminine, not cliche, hand lettered, in style with the cards, mystical yet readable.

Hopefully I’ll have a sample to post by tonight.

Today I need to finish the banner itself and then start on the lettering.  I’ve been playing with all my pens and brushes and have finally settled on my good old crow quill pen and black india ink.  There is nothing better!  The ink is so black and the line so expressive.  I really love working in pen and ink.  I had been avoiding it because I didn’t want to mix mediums but the painted banner really was too much, I fear people wouldn’t be able to read the words.  This should be really clear though.  And it does give it a little bit of that old book illustration look that I like so much….not exactly but reminiscent of, and I don’t want exactly anyway, do I? 

Marie

What’s going on these days.

I am going through another one of those times where I don’t have time to post much.  Sometimes I start writing and then don’t finish and by the time I get back to it it is redundant so I delete it.

But here I am.  Been having interesting times!  I finally have my head back on straight.  I was just thinking that if you must find a reason for all things that having all these family issues and crisis’s and even having our heater break down when its so freakin’ cold has served to really ground me. Sometimes it takes extreme things to ground me! 

Aeons

I’ve been working on the lettering for the cards.  So far…..it needs some tweaking.  It’s hard to find that sweet spot, I don’t want the lettering to be too pretty or fancy, but I don’t want it too plain either.  And I want it to look hand-done but not bad.  I would like it to be somehow historical, like Ive been experimenting with some lettering from some of PCS’s contemporaries.  Or perhaps those scripts used when tarot first emerged?  Maybe I am asking too much!

I just had to show you this.  I did it totally by accident, I was testing some lettering I was working on and made a magician layer transparent so I cold erase some of it while seeing the underlying area….then I looked up and saw it, wow I said, and Michal was right behind me because we were chatting about something and he said, yeah I noticed that too, wow.