Ideas

One suggestion (and maybe you’re already doing this) is to do test cards without committing to a full project. I’ve done lots of test cards in various styles, media and card sizes. I’ve also scanned and even test printed some to see what they would look like. If you want to eventually have your deck printed, it’s nice to learn more about how different papers, different pencils and colors (etc) work as a finished product. And it gets you going, which helps to give further ideas and inspiration! (If you don’t want to invest the money in printing test cards professionally, then you can print them with a home printer. It works great too).

Best of luck with everything, and don’t feel pressured to show us your artwork, it’s nice just to read your thoughts on the process!

Thank you, @Raggydoll !

22 hours ago, geoxena said:

The tricky part is the Majors. Do I have elements of each of these figures throughout the majors? Do I assign another historical figure to the Majors? Or do I create the Majors in sort of a generic way? I'm not sure "generic" is the right word, but I just mean less thematic, I guess. I'll just need to ponder this further and see what my imagination comes up with. Once I have the ideas for the theme and artwork solidified, then I will have to look into how to get the deck published.

The theme for your Courts / Suits, could be general day-to-day life and people. The Wands were labourers, the Pentacles merchants, the Cups were Clergy and the Swords were Aristocrats etc. The theme of the art can continue across to the majors. BUT, the Majors themselves could be considered to be archetypal 'journeys' or 'lessons' - patterns of behaviours and those sort of things that we're stuck in or need to reflect on. Our operating system is on autopilot in this area. You'd need to find the forces in play in your era and what's going on in the background to the day to day lives. I'd line up the majors from all your decks and look at the systems in those decks. e.g. Maybe in the medieval era they were all dressed differently, but the stories they read "romances" could be used for the majors. Or their astronomical celebrations. Or fear of witchcraft, inability to read, tinkers and wandering hermits/ascetics - real and moneygrabbing fakes, flat earth etc.

And as for showing your art, people steal others' good ideas all the time - it's happened to me. So share art and images you have collected that may match your ideal style, if you like, but that's about as far as you should go until you release! I like Raggydoll's suggestion. Get one sample image and copy it across your mediums. It will develop a life of its own.

Thank you, @JoyousGirl !

I should have explained my idea better. Each suit in the Minors would represent one particular person who lived in a certain time and place in history. So, Swords = Person A, Cups = Person B, and so on. The court cards will be easy, as those would depict the main person and the powerful or important people in their lives, and then the other cards would have other people, places, and events that took place. The reason I am stumped about how to do the Majors is because all these historical figures lived in different parts of the world and in different eras. So I am not sure (yet) how to make it all fit together cohesively. But I have time to work on it!

Edited August 30Aug 30 by geoxena