Fun with Cards

I was browsing decks of tarot cards for a gift for a friend and once again thought of making my own cards. I wouldn’t make a tarot deck. I simply don’t know enough about the subject. But I’m aware that many artists make inspiration decks and thought it might be fun to give it a try. Coincidentally, I ran across an online class from Laly Mille on that very subject and thought I’d give myself a holiday gift of it.

It was fun and inspiring to watch, and was excited to begin working on the project. In general, I followed her process but made a few changes along the way. For one, Laly began with stamps, including a text stamp. I don’t have many stamps, but I do love to draw with both pencil and ink, so decided to create my own initial motifs.

The first step was to add motifs to a large sheet of paper which would later be cut into individual cards. As it turned out, I made four of these sheets. Here’s the first one. (The gray vertical stripe about 2/3 of the way to the right is a result of merging two scans and doesn’t appear on the original piece.)

The next step was to add random marks of something to resist watercolor. (I used one of those clear wax crayons that used to come in kits for coloring Easter eggs, but you could also use a white crayon or white gesso.) Then I washed watercolor randomly over the whole piece. Not only did this add color, but it also brought out the white areas with the resist.

I really liked the soft way the watercolor worked out.

Now it was time to cut the piece into cards. In Laly’s method, she draws the cutting grid on the back of the large sheet of paper, and I did the same. For the types of images Laly used, it didn’t much matter if some of them got cut in half, but it did matter to me for some of my images, most notably the animals. So I thought that for future efforts, I’d try marking the grid on the front—if not the complete lines, at least the corners.

Here are some of the cut cards and the stack of the rest.

At this point, each card is a partially complete painting, ready to finish with more watercolor and whatever else comes to mind.

Here’s a before and after for one of them:

and another.

This is my favorite so far:

I thoroughly enjoyed every part of this project—drawing the motifs, adding the initial color layer, and finishing each little card. I haven’t written anything on them or done any finishing on the backs. I don’t know if I will, or if I do what it will be.

One thing I especially liked was that each step could be worked on little by little, in short spaces of time. In other words, it’s a perfect project for “filling in” between other things - always having something on hand to work on in bits and pieces. I'm definitely having fun with cards.

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