Tarot Cards II

Of the various projects I've dabbled in over the last couple of years, one of the most perennially popular was the handful of tarot cards I drew last year. Thanks to some recent encouragement from the lovely folks at Aeclectic Tarot, I've finally decided to revist that particular project, with an eye towards completing the full set. To start things off, here are rough sketches for the next eight cards in the set...


The Fool just popped into my head, and I drew it pretty much as it first occurred to me. The Magician is something of a departure from the classic magus-slash-charlatan, but he's supposed to represent the artisan and the master craftsman too...


The High Priestess is inspired in part by the famous Burney Relief, hence the lions and owls on the columns. The Chariot is blazing through the heavens over an army encampment; in hoc signo vinces, indeed.


The Hermit is another one that popped into my head exactly as you see it here. The Tower departs considerably from the classic image, with more than a little of Browning's Childe Roland mixed in. Is this a calamity for the knight, the tower, or both?


The Star changed dramatically as I worked on it. My first impulse was something along the lines of Gustav Klimt's Danaë, but I think this version is much better at conveying the idea of capturing inspiration. The Moon is depicted as an underwater scene on the grounds that, as a symbol of illusion and confusion, it shouldn't be directly visible. And besides, the crab is so cute!

The Dark Age: Garlon

Another character from my little fantasy project: the invisible vampire ninja knight Garlon, brother and spymaster of the dreaded King of the West.

From the Archives

I've been working on another set of Tarot card images, one of which is an oblique reference to Don Quixote. At this point my wife reminded me about a project I worked on for one of my illustration classes, a group project that fizzled out before it had really gone anywhere. I generally don't like posting older work, but even though these sketches are a couple of years old, they're still pretty cute. Perhaps I'll revisit La Mancha's famous old crackpot some day.

The Dark Age: Labraid

More from the ooh, edgy, so so very dark fantasy project: Labraid of the Red Hand, war chieftain of the Fomorii. He actually developed a substantial back story while I was working on him, but the starting image was a rusty suit of armor with a hermit crab living in its helmet.

Being Inhuman

Still on an interminable treadmill of doing samples, sending them away into the ether, and waiting to see what happens. Hopefully I'll clear out the backlog this week, but in the meantime, here's a bit of time-wasting for you.

For some reason, last night I was pondering the Further Adventures of the Frankenstein Monster. Not the lumbering, virtually mute Universal movie version, but Mary Shelley's hyper-erudite, angst-ridden original, who's basically an eight-foot Goth who cannot die. What would he be doing if he were still around today? Well, if he were speed-dating, driving to work in a tiny clown car, and rooming with the Gill-Man and the Mummy, it might make a pretty entertaining web-comic.

It Came From The Briny Deeps!

Seems like ever since Comic-Con I've been working on stuff I can't show anyone yet, but just to loosen up the old drawing cells, let's have some silly fantasy characters. (Oops, did I say silly? I meant fashionably Dark! and Edgy!) Here's the obligatory scary invader from a faraway land, because xenophobia is one of the grand traditions of the genre.

My Comic-Con Highlight

A little memory from this year's San Diego Comic-Con: Meeting my childhood (anti)hero. Dig the crazy fisheye camera effect!