Design Updates and Unrelated Inksperiments

Hello once again!

I hope you’re all doing well in whatever weather you’re living in at the moment. I’ve been back in Seattle for a little over a week, and now have a few more progress updates to share, along with a few of the unrelated things I’ve been playing with, down at the bottom, in case anyone is curious.

We’ll start with the Chicken Tarot updates!

A month or so back I decided that hiring a graphic designer to help me was the right call. The designs I made myself for the box mock up and the card fronts last year conveyed my intention for the deck, but after completing all of the artwork for the cards, I wanted things to feel more harmonious. It was occurring to me that I might not have the graphic design chops needed to make that happen.

Thankfully, my friends make up for the skills I lack. Which meant the problem of the box and frame design became an opportunity to make the artwork really sing.

I decided the person I should reach out to was my friend Anna Posey. Some of you might recognize her name, as she has already been a HUGE help to me on this project. Last September I sent her my first draft of the Kickstarter campaign to look over, which she did, along with sending me back a fully edited and organized rewrite. She also helped me make a checklist (god bless), and in general made that first giant task feel considerably less daunting.

Specific to this task though, Anna was the perfect person to ask to help for a few reasons: First, and perhaps most obviously, she is good at design and illustration. I felt having an eye for both would be really helpful. She also has an amazing grasp of style and visual themes, so I knew I would be able to glob together a collection of inspiration images and we’d be able to talk through what I was going for. Even better, she would be able to see which of the styles I liked actually worked well with the art. To gather reference images, I simply went to the library and rifled through my own shelves, taking photos of designs I liked. Here are a few that I sent:

A collection of photos I took to communicate a design direction for the cards. You may notice the original chicken tarot box art is in there, but it’s been laser cut onto a piece of wood. So it’s way cooler.

This may not be the case for all artists, but I have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to my work. So having someone who could see it clearly and understand what it’s trying to say, then turn around and (in this case literally) frame it, was just *chef’s kiss*

The second reason Anna was the perfect person for this is that she actually has an eye for detail, which I’m told is important for graphic design. It’s also a compliment to my absolute disregard for detail. Centering things is boring as hell, and I can’t tell if it’s been done after the fact anyway. Other folks really really can, which is the exact reason why I should not be trusted with type layout.

In short, I’m very grateful to her for helping me out with this.

Now I’ve probably embarrassed her at this point (sorry) so I’m just going to share a few samples of the card frame redesigns:

What I love about this design is that it feels friendly, open, and a little folksy. I wanted something that felt handmade, which I had tried to accomplish in my first design by making a densely illustrated frame. This can work, but the skill involved in controlling how heavy and light the design is in certain sections is no joke. Perhaps with many many hours of work I might have accomplished something a little more successful, but that was too big of a perhaps.

Anna’s design on the other hand isn’t trying to compensate a lack of design awareness with more art. She gave time an attention to the each detail, like the font. Each card title was drawn out and tweaked for these cards. That, along with the white frame paired with thoughtful color accents for each card just makes everything look so clean and beautiful. I’ve never been so happy to have not done something myself.

Anna is now working to help re-design the box for these cards, which is very exciting. I was never quite sure what to do about the box, but it’s also what will make these cards feel like a real thing. It’s going to be the first indication someone will get of what’s inside. I have no doubt that the box design will amazing, and will share that with everyone once its ready. If you’re curious and would like to see some other work done by Anna, she has started a print shop selling her work. You can find it at Poseyprint.com

That leads me into the other big change I want to talk a bit about: the card backs.

With the card fronts looking they’re best, I took a moment to re-evaluate the backs. I had a number of people tell me that they really liked the card backs I designed for the Kickstarter samples, so I was originally hesitant to change them at all. But once I started to consider just tweaking the color palette in the backs a little bit, I had to admit to myself that it’s the difference in painting medium that made them feel out of place.

I reaaaallly hope this won’t break anyone’s heart, but…I made a completely new card back illustration. 

Before I start talking about my process for that, here they are side by side:

The first card front and card back, followed by the new card designs

This new design is still a mirrored pattern, so you won’t know which side is the right side up or inverted. I took the idea of using feathers from the first design, but also wanted to include nods to the other suits in this design. So now we have feathers, berries, eggs, and roses.

I may not have explained this yet, but roses served as a bit of a sneaky way for me to reference chicken spurs in the swords suit, when a literal chicken foot or spur would just seem too out of place.

The most important change, as I mentioned above, was using the same painting medium. While I drew and painted the first card back entirely digitally, here is a picture of how I started the new card back:

As you can see, I didn’t know right away what shape the pattern would take. The best solution for me was to paint pieces of the pattern in my desired medium, and then arrange the pieces digitally.

I do hope no one is too heartbroken by the loss of the previous design, as I’m really happy with the new version. I think it functions as well as the previous design, and really suits how I want the deck to feel when it’s finally complete. Overall I think these changes have made the deck feel more bright and open.

One of the hardest things about making a tarot deck is that one piece can’t stand on its own. Everything has to feel cohesive. I’m honestly a little amazed that the card illustrations seem to play together as well as they do. I feel this is a testament to my love of chickens. The card meanings may change, but that at least has remained consistent.

Now let’s move on to the final bit of work I’ve done for the deck: writing the guidebook.

Writing these card interpretations has been fun! They are very short, as it will be a wee little guidebook, but I think that’s has its benefits.

So much meaning can be lost in specificity (I say as a chronic over explainer) so boiling the cards down to their core meaning felt more accurate here than going on a longwinded diatribe. In the instance of actually using them, I think having space for the reader’s interpretation is much more important. As a bonus, I think the card interpretations at this length kind of sound like poetry, which I find charming.

This update is already shaping up to be a little lengthy, so why not simply share what I’ve written? Here are the current guidebook interpretations for the Major Arcana:

The Fool Forward momentum, consequences be damned. Jumping in, starting the journey. Naive but ready. 

The  Magician Power to conjure ideas into reality. Everything you need is in front of you.

The High Priestess Perception. Seeing the target, cutting through to the heart of the matter.

The Emperor Stability. A source of warmth and support. Using your energy to serve the community.

The Empress Self care, maintaining a rich inner world. Healthy productivity and creativity. 

The Hierophant Arbiter of generational knowledge. Trusted council, authority. 

The Lovers Tension of temptation. A web of relationships. Desires and their cost.

The Chariot Harnessing oppositional forces, moving from one world to another. Control.

Strength Finding your inner strength. Bravery and willpower in the face of a threat. 

The Hermit Separation in the name of contemplation. Rest, retreat, reconsider. 

The Wheel Connection to the Seasons. Rhythms that ease growing pains. Shift, grow, die, prune.

Justice Equal distribution, fairness, and balance. Seeing the truth. 

The Hanged One New Perspectives. Letting go, suspended in time. Epiphany. 

Death  The bones of what has passed guides what’s to come. A metamorphosis. 

Temperance A grounded, gentle approach. Moderation and healing.

The Devil Antagonistic forces, unseen weaknesses. Infiltration. Succumbing to vices. 

The Tower Utter destruction, loss. Starting from the ground up.

The Star Finding your true calling. Gifted and inspired. Unburdened. 

The Moon Delving into the unconscious. Contending with deep-rooted dreams and anxieties. 

The Sun Complete joy and confidence. Success and self knowledge. 

Judgment Finding where you belong. Being seen and understood. Attainment.

The World Grand accomplishments. Completed collection, feeling whole.

The Minor Arcana interpretations are also written, but everything needs another round or two of edits before I feel I can share.

That means we’ve made it to the end of any Chicken Tarot related updates!

If, somehow, you are not fully sated, I figured I would take some time here at the end to share more about the other weird projects I’ve been getting into. Writing and editing are all well and good, but I really need to be making art, or at least messes, to stay sane. Here are a few photos of what that has looked like lately:

To start, image number one is an absolutely unhinged mural I’ve been chipping away at in my office. The thought occurred to me a while back that people don’t have enough luxurious fantasy portraits of themselves hanging in their home. I had also been planning to paint a beautiful forest mural into this room…the two thoughts collided and boom, there I was, painting these ridiculously romantic portraits of my husband and I on the wall. It’s far from done, but the manic energy that brought it into being has passed, so I just pick it up every now and again when I’m feeling inspired.

Another huge source of inspiration to me right now is summer. Image number three is an herbal tea I’ve been making using sun dried herbs from my garden. Every time I pick something I dry it out and add it to the blend. I’m hoping this will be a lovely thing to sip later in the year, when all my plants are gone.

All the rest of the images pertain to my natural ink and art-tool making experiments. Image number four is a quick photo of me filtering out some blackberry ink. Images number five and six are ink swatches I’m making using the inks I have so far.

As a brief aside, natural materials really do emphasize to me the degree to which modern life makes control feel like the norm, when perhaps it isn’t.

Eight is a photo of some beeswax and indigo crayons I made, while seven is a spider sketch I made using said crayons.

Lastly, image number two is sketch using a combination of natural inks and gouache paint. This blood sucking moth friend is a drawing I made for a tabletop rpg my brother is working on. I think natural inks will pair really well with the themes of his game, and how we’re planning to approach the illustrations for it. It’s very exciting to have a project to work on with my brother, and I’m kind of tempted to dive into a long explanation of everything we’ve talked about….but that really is going to be a whole blog post, post Chicken Tarot. If any of you are tabletop fans and insatiably curious, my brother has set up a website that explains the game quite nicely. You can find that here.

I think that has all been a good enough summary of my recent shenanigans. So, until next time…

Thank you all so much for being here!