Color-Your-Own Tarot Card Project: Round One

[ladyseishou]

As proposed on Monday, this is the announcement post for round one of the Color-Your-Own Tarot Card Project.



...the soul in search of experience
Arthur Edward Waite

Round One posting begins: Wednesday, May 20

Who may participate: all interested members of the tarotcommunity


For anyone and everyone who has thought about designing their own tarot cards, the Color-Your-Own Tarot Card Project was conceived as a fun and friendly way to try your hand at coloring the tarot images of the familiar Rider Waite Smith deck (line art found here).

Begin by downloading the artwork of The Fool and then let your creative instincts and inner voice/intuition guide you as you color the image. Medium and colors are your choice!

Then come back here by Wednesday, May 20 and share your work with the community by posting your card as a comment to this post. As well as your work, it would be very nice if everyone might also share a little bit about their experience: why they choose the colors and medium they used and any insights they experienced.

The feather, the rose, the youth’s tunic and belt, the dog… what colors will you choose?

Have fun as we all join The Fool in “search of experience”!

Comments

[ex_lindsay366]

I decided to get a head start on this after your last post, so i'm already done. Took me a few hours to do it - it went much more quickly than i thought it would. I colored it using Paint Shop Pro (i have no coloring pens/crayons, and i'm out of printer ink anyway).

I decided that the Fool should be more colorful than his surroundings, at least only partially because he is the subject of the card itself. He is wearing an orange undershirt; his overcoat looks as if it was made from his grandma's old curtains, and it is lined with pink (leftover from a dress his grandma made for her youngest granddaughter). His clothes are hideously mismatched and lurid - but he sees beauty in them, because they are full of pretty colors.

Alas, he has forgotten to wear pants! Now, isn't that a bit foolish?

I wanted him to be extra pale, because has spent a goodly portion of his life behind closed doors, behind high walls. He has stepped ignorantly into a world far bigger than he has ever experienced (he'll be bright red by the end of the day - he didn't even think to use any sunscreen).

Is he about to walk over the edge of the cliff? Or is he really dancing there, perhaps finding exhilaration in the fact that he is so very close to peril? Is he aware enough to know the trouble he's in? And if so, is he foolish for taking such a risk?

Is he aware of how foolish he appears to others? And if so, is he doubly foolish for not caring what people think?

In some ways, this card poses more questions than it answers. I rather like the open-endedness of the chap.

[siliconsara]

I like your attention to symbolic detail when coloring, especially when it comes to his skin tone. Wouldn't of thought about it that way until now.

[ladyseishou]

I really like the gradient you applied to the sky and the colors you choose for your background - a great backdrop for the colors of the Fool. Your comment about "his grandma's old curtains" made me smile! And the Fool's need for sunscreen! All-in-all, I like your card!

My results...

[ladyseishou]

To me, the Fool represents "everyman" as he travels out into the world on a journey of self-discovery (represented by the other cards of the Major Arcana). He is also, paradoxically, both wise man and child - first and last - alpha and omega - mother and father - yin and yang.

To capture this intrinsic dual nature, I decided to color the Fool's inner clothes (his tights and shirt) a shade of purple - to represents his inner wisdom and spirituality and his outer tunic green - both the shade of new growing things (new journeys) and a darker green to represent more mature growth and the Tree of Life. To further emphasize this duality, I added the yin-yang symbol (also as a nod to my own heritage). I colored the flowers in the tunic's design as red poppies - both to represent life's passion and vitality but also its fragility.

The Fool's boots are brown as a "grounding" color (down to earth) to offset his "head in the clouds", his oblivious, flighty nature (once again, the child and wise man theme).

Both the dog and rose were left white to suggest the innocence and purity of the natural world that the Fool brings with him on his journey through life/the world. I colored the feather of his hat orange to symbolize joy and happiness and also to tie it to the sun symbol. His purse is brown to bring to mind the earthly things that we carry with us (a slight nod to the Buddhist thoughts regarding possessions).

One last thing I played with was the idea of shadows: that the sun shines on man and in turn, he casts his shadow on the world - something that is both there and not there (man's accomplishments?). That the Fool's shadow precedes him and "falls" over the cliff... will he notice before he himself falls from his lofty position? Eh, too much (or too little ;-) philosophy.

What didn't work for me was the "purple mountains majesty." Too dark, too purple. Too many hours to redo it and choose another color.

Like the Fool, I took this opportunity to begin my own voyage of discovery and tried to learn Photoshop. In a week. All my artwork to date has been color pencil, water color and a few attempts at oil. But I was determined to journey forth into the brave new world of CGA. And it was... interesting... frustrating and joyous in turns. I spent hours coloring a string of pixels and then recoloring the same thing. And then later, spent only minutes adding a photographic image to the sky.

Overall, I had a lot of fun and learned some things. It doesn't get much better than that!