music

I'm sitting here working on the 3 of Pentacles and listening to a stream of tango music direct from Argentina. And I'm thinking, you know what would be awesome? Tangos built with modern synthetic noises. Slutty, fluttery, sultry, bleepy screechy phasey tangos. If anyone happens to have such things in their collection I'd love pointers.

Also, it looks like spring has finally come to Boston. I went out to meet Nick at the Diesel café today and it was gorgeous - I was out in a top with no sleeves and felt nice and warm. It may dip into the low 40s by the end of the week but for the most part it seems that the studio is habitable again - and so is the back porch. Whee!

win?

Zomg, your tarot arts. It's something I've always...

A L W A Y S wanted to do. And here you are, doing it better than I could possibly do it myself.

You win life. <3

- a shout on my FA page

The thing about this deck is that, to a degree, I've been wanting to do one since... quite possibly before the person who said that was born, if her age is given correctly. I have vague little notes in sketchbooks dating back to the late eighties for ways I'd approach the problem of creating my own approach to seventy-eight cards.

But when I was in my early twenties, it seemed impossible. It took me long enough to finish one piece in the media I knew, let alone 78 or more. I hadn't really found a color mode I liked; Illustrator was only a few years old and I wasn't going to encounter it for some time. Now? Most of these take, at most, a solid day's worth of work - for the hard ones. I know my tools, I trust my hand to draw anything I can think of. Hell, after the way Absinthe began to shape up* this is easier than doing a comic.

It's funny how the impossible becomes possible, over time. Sometimes it still amazes me that I committed to a project of this scale, or of the scale of Absinthe. I'm not young any more, and spending a half a year or more on something that matters to me doesn't seem like such a huge chunk of my life; I'm confident that I won't improve my art so much over the time this takes that the first and last cards will look like they were done by completely different hands.

I guess this is part of growing up. The view gets longer. And a year seems like less of my life.

And I'm in a situation where I can just about afford to spend half a year on this. Is this winning?

* and yes, that's still definitely happening, it's just gotten sidelined for this what with the exhibition deadline and all.

3 of Pentacles

Completion of labor. Pride, wealth, conceit.

On the other hand I think you're allowed some pride and conceit after building a ringworld...

This one makes me happy; it came together quickly as a sketch, and went through Illustrator without a single hitch. There's a lot of transparency going on here, plus some nicely layered live effects - the glows around the pentacles are simple circles, with zigzag, roughen, and punk&bloat stacked on them.

Print available on Artspots.