IX / XXI
The tenth in my series illustrating the Major Arcana of the Tarot.
Designed to work as a 3-colour risograph print.
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I’ve been keeping these posts pretty lean (text-wise) as I don’t want to give the impression that I’m an authority on the Tarot. I just think they’re beautiful, and wanted to see if I could draw my own set (the Major Arcana, at least) that would work at small sizes in a limited palette. So far, I’d say I’ve been pretty successful. But as I was working on this card, I reflected a little bit on this project.
When I started out with The Fool, I hadn’t looked too far ahead in the deck as I wanted to kind of go in blind. Looking back at that card, the design is extremely simple because I could get the major elements of the card across in a relatively simple way. But as I moved on, the number of important elements in each card increased, and the designs got more and more detailed – The Chariot and The Lovers are great examples of this. So while my original intent – simplicity – has sort of gone out the window, I think I’ve been able to make this work. It’s just a little jarring (at least for me) to see The Fool side by side with all the other cards I’ve done so far. But I guess that’s just life – you never really know what you’re getting into until you’ve started. It’s also kind of poetic that The Hermit – who represents someone in the middle of a journey – was the card that made me reflect on The Fool – who is at the start of their journey and (quite literally) blindly and naively heading out.
I guess I’m just learning on my journey as well.
