9 of Swords

[egypturnash]

Despair, cruelty, lying, subtle dishonesty. Yet another unpleasant card from the high end of the Swords.

I've been working on this one for a while; it was in progress when I had to drop everything to go down to New Orleans. I fooled with it in fits and starts over this very complicated week.

The swords-in-word-balloons was a sudden bit of inspiration that let me finish it. I didn't know what to do with the last couple of swords; I tried hanging them on a suggested wall but it wasn't working.

Edit: Less colors, slight composition/contrast tweak. Still not spectacular but much better. Less is, quite often, more.

Print available on Artspots.

Comments

[eriscontrol.livejournal.com]

I like the swords in word balloons here. What was the source of this inspiration?

Also, would you happen to still have a copy of the original? I'd like to see it for comparison. Always curious. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Desperation, mostly! I was looking at the bits I'd sketched in Illustrator and thinking "what the hell am I going to DO with these swords?". I didn't want to have them hanging on a wall because I wanted the setting to remain ambiguous; putting them on a wall put it inside and that didn't feel right.

It was 2AM, I was still kinda groggy from a long day, and inspiration just struck. Put 'em in balloons. Change them from 'real' swords to more symbolic ones.

As to the earlier version - nope, sorry, it's been saved over. There was some red and green here and there that just muddled the message, the left figure was about 1/8 of an inch to the right, and the sword just to the left of her was angled left, instead of right. A bunch of little changes that fixed niggling little errors.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

the left figure was about 1/8 of an inch to the right

Aha, I thought something had gone missing. I liked that, as it appeared to me, she was very quietly placing the dagger in her conspirator's hand, and the moment was captured when both their hands were on it.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

My intent in the drawing was 'steepled fingers' and I thought it was just waaay too confusing a silhouette in the earlier version. Though that reading of the original version certainly fits the card in general...