Hello friends and happy SpooOOky Season. This is my favorite time of year- more so than December and all of those other holidays… ;) I like the turning leaves, the pumpkin treats, the Halloween decorations, and the thinning veil. It’s not too cold, but the air is crisp and feels like new beginnings, even though it’s also the end of the growing season and everything will look pretty dead, soon.
This Fall marks 5 years since we launched The Spacious Tarot on Kickstarter. Carrie Mallon wrote a wonderful post about the serendipity of our collaboration in 2016, and the different Spacious Tarot Eras. It would take 3 more years til August 2019, when we had a deck ready to print and share with everyone.
I call Carrie my work wife, and I’m so glad I married her! She’s talented, so very knowledgeable in the world of Tarot, a creative bosom friend, and a gentle spirit. It’s been a joy navigating these waters with her- the good, the weird, and the difficult.
I wanted to share some fun sketches from early on in the collaboration process. Let’s go on a jounrey, shall we?
The Beginnings
When we started the project, neither of us knew what we wanted. I had thought an oracle deck would be cool, Carrie liked the Tarot. I think both of us just wanted to make something together. When I’m lost I just have to start drawing. I sent her some illustrations to get a “feel” for a deck. It was helpful to make some art and look at it together. Eventually we landed on some images that felt good, and Carrie took off with these great concepts for some of the majors and the ace cards. From there, we’d hit some road blocks (the 4 of Pentacles, the Chariot), but most of the time ideas just started to pour out.
The Fool, an early sketch on paper.
Another sketch of the Fool, trying to get an idea for the look of the deck and what imagery would come through.
I used to draw a lot of paper back then. I guess I still do, but for bigger projects like this, I now use my ipad. Below are some very early pencil sketches when we thought, maybe the deck would be created in pencil and watercolor.
After a while we got into a nice rhythm with Carrie’s sketches and my final drawings. We enjoyed this flow and allowed ourselves and space to take time off, to mull over certain cards, and let life happen in general.
Carrie’s early concept of the High Preistess.
One of my early iterations.
As we sketched out more cards, we started laying them side by side. My eyes want to bleed now at the differing contrast of all these sketches, but hey. In a world where so many people now draw digitally, including myself, it’s realy nice to see the ole “pencil and paper”.
Eventually I did move into digital sketches with Black and white, and I still really like the look of these. When we got to this point, I knew I was probably going to work in Photoshop. It was so much easier to make changes and to produce all 78 cards. Plus, everything needed to get digitized for print anyway.
With lots of concepts done, we moved into color and things flew! The world had been established and I knew what I was looking for now. I kept my line art, added some texture, and didn’t think about it too much. I let me Spidey Sense lead the way (others would call it intuition). It’s a wonderful way to work, and I was able to do this because of all the early prep work.
Final images!
Carrie started printing them out and trimming them to look like real cards. When we were well on our way to having a finished deck, she started posting them on instagram. She’s smart, that one. She built a lovely community who would go on to support the kickstarter and help us really get our business going.
Finally we had most of the cards ready, and I went out to Utah. I got to pet all of her furry loves and see their beautiful mountains. It was a wonderful trip. We recorded a video of ourselves, trying to be serious and cool, wondered if we were “ready”, and hit publish together. You can still see the launch page here. We talk a little bit about our story, share the cards, and sweet Nanners makes an appearance.
The rest is history!
I love working with Carrie so much. Even though this current edition of the Spacious Tarot won’t be reprinted, we hope there’s a special edition some day, and we’re clearing some S P A C E to work on the next project. This feels good and right for us.
Thanks for walking with me on this journey. I hope you enjoyed seeing all the old sketches. Toodles!
-Annie