Tarot art experiment

[pyraxis]

I've been researching tarot symbology and art recently. I'm thinking about a Karnese interpretation, how it would work to use the tarot system as a vehicle for representing Karnese culture.

I did this sketch tonight as an experiment for the eight of swords, which would be a griff card. A story about a griff that may not fly. It's not finished, but I'm curious what people think.



Edit: slight update to the pic.

Comments

[pyraxis]

I find it confronting. Like really confronting. I read the eight of swords meaning and I realise why. Wow. Powerful. And powerfully interpreted in your piccie.

Thank you. :)

It's digital matte painting. Wacom tablet and Photoshop.

The broken feather was supposed to mean not being able to fly. That's why the sky-coloured cloth that's unraveling too. But I just looked it up and in Native American culture it's come to mean flight and messages in the spirit world too. In Central America it might be related to Quetzlcoatl. I found one source that says an eagle feather that's stripped right up to the black tip and then the tip is broken and dangling represents a scout who has discovered a lot of enemies (smoke-blackened housetops).

j-t, I don't really understand the connection/interpretation of the Karnese culture, but I would love to know what you mean by that.

I want to make a cleaner bridge between Karn and the, what's it called? Collective unconscious here. I think that would communicate the ideas a lot better than trying to translate everything into words. I've been getting screwed up a lot because I know how to make a piece of art appeal to one person, but not to people as a whole, and then when it appeals to the one person I get too scared to show it to them because they'll ask lots of questions that will hurt. So then it's like you said to me once, I don't show my art to very many people, and that's why it's not popular or successful. I have to fix that.

- j-t