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

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's hard to count all the swords in this one - I kept on having to double-check as I was working on it!

Hopefully the whole scene is ambiguous enough that which way the knife is going will be decided based on the context of the other cards nearby! My intent was 'about to go in' but the change of the observer from serpent to human with matching gear tattoo makes it much more... complicated.