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A Knowledge Of Comic Book Illustration I consider my first real education in art to be a book by Stan Lee and John Buscema called “How to Draw Comics The Marvel Way” which I later gave to an autistic child who was really into drawing comic book characters. What a book that was. Seeing John Buscema’s illustrations made me believe I could also be a comic book artist. His illustrations seemed effortless. After that I bought myself a collection of Burne Hogarth’s “how to draw” books. I practiced, practiced and practiced some more. I have great memories of staying up in my parent’s attic which was converted into a studio for me. |
Surprisingly enough, our tarot deck didn't take too long to produce compared to other hand drawn tarot decks over the years. It took about a year and six months to complete all of the illustrations. Hand drawn tarot decks can take up to a year or more to produce due to the huge number of illustrations that need to be planned out and created from scratch. With there being a high percentage of decks created nowadays using photo montage, photo manipulation or even creative commons illustrations, as a community we've grown more accostomed to a faster form of deck creation. Photo/illustration montage has also become a more favoured form of expression in the world of deck creation because it's easier to work with something that is already in existence, rather than work from the ground up.
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My partner Christine has been reading the cards for over 30 years and has maintained an interest in collecting tarot and tarot art. One of the things that Christine feels integral to tarot art is the symbols and we've found that most tarot readers we've talked to prefer a number of 10 cups in their 10 of cups card, or 7 swords in their 7 of swords card etc, and while there are now many variations of how to portray tarot cards, with some decks leaving out cups/ swords etc altogether, or having orbs in place of figures, we feel that to stay true to the traditional imagery of Rider Waite, which our deck is based on, it is best to include the appropriate number of elements to the corrosponding card. This is no small task. In fact, it is the minor suit cards that probably took us the longest to finalise because for the most part you want the scene to look natural. How do you make a scene look natural with 10 pentacles? Perhaps it doesn't matter all that much in a reading, but for the artwork itself I always feel that trying to
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THE CARDS ARE GREAT FOR THOSE SCHOOLED IN THE RIDER WAITE SYSTEM AND INTUITIVE READERS ALIKE
The great thing about Twisted Tarot Tales is that while it's based on the Rider Waite system, it's also borderless, which means that it's great for intuitive readers who can see images by combining cards. The cards are also packed with lots of detail, not only making the cards vivid and visually interesting, but also aiding in the toughest of readings. For the intuitive reader there's nothing worse than reading with a deck of cards where the images are so vague that nothing springs to mind. Our cards minimize this with card imagery that is busy and overflowing with life. Take a look at our video and you'll see what we mean! |
THE MAJORS
The Majors consist of the full 22 cards you'd find in most tarot decks, along with our "Waldo" Querent card and 4 bonus cards: Father Time, Lust (an alternative to the Strength card), Rabid Raccoon, and Psycho Squirrel (a twisted version of the card 23 "Happy Squirrel" made famous by the Simpsons). That's a total of 27 cards in our Majors set. |
THE SWORDS
Ah, the Swords suit. Well it seemed such an obvious choice to have all manner of blade wielding crazies in this suit, but we've mixed it up with shadow people in the 9 of swords, ghostly pirates in the 5 of swords, and an assortment of spiders, hungry green monsters and brain eating zombies |
THE FOUR ALTERNATIVE ACES
Our second reward level includes the full 83 card deck in the first reward level, along with a massive 34 extra cards, almost half of a tarot deck extra to integrate into the official twisted tarot tales deck. The four alternative Aces. As a bonus we went about creating a new set of aces with the focus set on hands. A small number of the followers of our deck expressed interest early on in the idea of having Ace cards that focused less on figures, and more on hands. These are great additions to the deck with the Ace of Cups showing a warrior's hand holding a cup made out of a skull, an Ace of Wands featuring a witch's broom and black cat, a surgeon's scalpel in the Ace of Swords and the ol "crossing the gypsy's palm with silver" in our Ace of Pentacles. |
THE GENERAL AUDIENCE CARDS
These six "General Audience" cards (created especially for those who love our tarot deck, yet may be a little squeamish and want to replace the more, ahem, "trigger sensitive" cards) are a great addition to the main Twisted Tarot Tales deck. Whether it's the Magician with the Ace up his sleeve, the giant rat in the deep dark sewers, or cute kid death, these are sure to brighten up any card reading! |