It started ok but once I start looking and reading about Tarot cards I go into imagination overload.
I routinely draw on tracing paper , it has such a nice surface, and then I can instantly reverse any reasonable ones onto the woodblock, or just let all the drawings fall on top of each other - a palimpsest of dreams...but always tending towards overload....
sometimes I agonise over actually which way round I prefer the images - usually i feel strongly the right psychological way round is best, but then the 'shock of the new' seeing them reversed sometimes makes me dither...
sometimes when I can't decide I cut them both ways - it can be quicker than dithering and I can try out other different things when cutting them too....
I did this image both ways for Ship of Fools and it was useful when I came to printing over newspaper images as sometimes one way round was definitely better than another.....
I did find it very annoying that the last batch of plywood turned out to be pink in the middle though...most disconcerting.
I studied the last woodcut I made last night first thing - The Hanged Man is also called sometimes Hanging Man in some packs; mine is definitely 'suspended' topically. is he caught up by his incipient bandages? My reading investigations told me that hanging from one foot was a punishment for debtors - climate debt for my Fool now maybe; or he could be hanging on the World Tree like Odin possibly - redemption by suffering; Odin tends to muscle in on my imagination frequently , must be my Viking genes....
I did loads of scribble drawings but not many focused enough to share even with you today;
it was more productive a day today perhaps in what I rejected in what could be seen.
I meandered around various enticing figures, Fortitude, Hermit, Wheel of Fortune and Magician....I am considering re-cutting the image below smaller for my pack - as the High Priestess perhaps, she was based upon Isis
She was on the cover and title page of one of the books I did with James Simpson - see post for April 2017......I think she might belong in the forest....possibly....
A Tree Hermit looked as if he might join these already done trees, I really need to sort out the dogs a bit.....; he also follows on from a Diogenes like figure I used in The Man in the Moon - see post August 2013 ( was it really that long ago?....)
And if you can decipher it I was interested in a Falconer figure; I liked the idea of a tree of birds, (which I did before based on an old German woodcut) placed on a fabric on top of what might be a man or a tree or both - the falcon is up on the top left hand corner - on a branch or arm.....
I love watching birds of prey when we go out for walks, and I did a whole installation back a long while ago called The Falcon Bride - you can see it on my website archive carolyntrant.co.uk and scroll down the left hand side til you see Falcon Bride Installation.....
By 5.30 I managed to escape from decisions and sat in the graveyard to sit and ponder life's big questions - like how long do you quarantine a TLS that came through the door, as a diversion, and was rewarded by seeing a green woodpecker at last - I know where it hangs out and it cackles non-stop, teasing me - but this time it came straight for me at low-level before suddenly seeing me and deviating at the last moment; it retreated a bit and hung out on some gravestones so I could admire it; and came back again later - bliss; finally felt more at peace again......
I did manage to cut a new block - The Magician
I'll tell you about him tomorrow....
Once I get these images out of my system it will feel like removing a splinter...
I ought to be binding the cartoneras and getting the cardboard covers off the printing press
then I will be able to see what I have actually got to play with next......
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