Aces

(please click the image to view the bigger version)

The aces. I was still vacillating between the dark "from the shadows" style and the more painterly one when I was doing these cards, and it shows, especially with the ace of swords. The twos have a more solid look to them, as compared to the aces and most of the majors. You might notice the unreal dramatic cloud formations I've used here as well as in a lot of the Majors. It was something I got around to doing accidentally and was pretty happy with the results so I probably will use more of that in the future cards for the deck. It might be one of the definitive elements in the deck (though some cards - like the 3 of pentacles - have indoor scenes, so that obviously won't feature clouds).

Ironically, I got too lazy doing the foreground clouds (the ones from which the hands appear) so they ended up having the original's swirly things. At least for now. I plan on changing that after I finish the entire series.

I can see the potential of the colouring style as something that I might use in doing Medieval-inspired works in the future, though I still have to develop a cheat that approximates sfumato more. I'm also having trouble making things look less CG, or at least something that doesn't exude a Posing Software feel, since the images weren't made with Poser or something similar! I guess I have to make the smooth dark areas dirtier, and not make light areas too... "glinty." We shall see how things go in the future.