Here’s page 94 of the comic!

The tarot decks have been doing well so far!  I realized that this weekend is Dragon Con, and decided to extend taking orders out until Wednesday, to give folks a little more time to see the cards.  If you haven’t seen the post about the cards yet, it is here - http://djinni.livejournal.com/249266.html

Life is going pretty good.  I got my tetanus booster shot yesterday, and got very sleepy.  I slept a ton last night, and now I feel like I got punched in the arm.  I’ll take a little inconvenience over tetanus any day, though, so I can’t complain too much!

Here’s mine.  I can see plenty of things in there that I remember about the appearance of a real fox, and plenty of things that I know are short-cuts and stylizations I tend to use, intentionally or without thinking about it.  But, regardless… let’s be honest.  This doesn’t look anything like a realistic drawing of a fox.  Maybe your style is more based in realism than mine, but it’s still not a fox.

This is a fox.  Well, it’s a photo of a red fox, and what a sly looking fellow he is!  They really are neat critters, and I love their expressions.  This photo happens to be from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and is in the public domain, so we’re free to draw him!  So, now, with the reference in front of you, draw -this- fox.  Don’t stress about perfect realism, but try to draw what you see.  If you catch yourself changing things around, stop yourself and keep in mind what it was that you tried to stylize on auto pilot.  Was it the ears?  I always do that with the ears.

This isn’t a perfect copy, of course.  My realism’s rusty.  The point is, though, that there’s a big, noticeable difference between my two drawings.  Now I can look at the two, and make some conscious decisions about how I want to stylize the way I draw a fox.

Examining my first drawing, I can see the things that I remember the most about foxes.  These are the symbols I look for when I recognize a drawing as “a fox”.  I notice the big ears, the black markings on the muzzle, the white fur on the bottom and the darker fur on the top.  I tend to be pretty generic with it.  While foxes have relatively simple markings, and are pretty iconic, there’s still a lot of room to draw them in many different ways.

So, now that I’ve looked over these pictures and the reference photo, I’m going to draw a fox again, with my pictures in front of me, and the reference if I want it.

I’m actually pretty happy with how that one came out.  I noticed some new things about the patterning of the fur on the forehead that definitely make this fellow look more like a fox to me.  You may have noticed how I draw whiskers, floating off to the side of the face like that.  That’s something I started consciously doing a few years ago, because I wanted to find a way to keep the whiskers there in my cartoons, but not have them interfere with the facial expressions.  Of course, a realistic animal doesn’t have levitating whiskers, but I like it!  If you can make conscious decisions about what you draw differently from a photo-realistic representation, you’re taking control of your style instead of drawing things the way you assumed them to be.

I’ve found that doing exercises like this are like charging a battery, for me.  I’ll draw from a photo, notice new things about a critter, and go back to my usual doodling, where I incorporate these new observations into my style, and it becomes increasingly simplified as it becomes rote.  Then I “recharge”, and see what else I can improve!

Yeah, I’ve been bitten by the writing bug, this morning, and look!  It’s only noon!  Waking up ridiculously early is one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.

My conclusion, and the best advice I can give about getting started with cartooning: draw like a kid.

I think people become much more critical as they grow up.  I’m not sure where exactly that starts to come into play, earlier for some than others, I’m sure.  I know I’m pretty ruthlessly critical of my work, and how often do you come across artists you admire writing about their insecurities and criticism?

The truth of the matter is that drawing is a learned skill, and requires a serious time investment to hone.  It’s not something you’re born with, and it’s not something that you can perfect after a page or a whole sketchbook full of doodles.  The way you learn is to ignore the voice in your head telling you that you can’t draw, and that you should stop.

Kids are often good at ignoring that voice, because of course, play is how people learn, and that’s a kid’s job.  When I was little, I took an interest in drawing, and my parents encouraged me, praised me, gave me art supplies and helped me foster an idea of myself as “an artist”.  Look through my doodles as a kid, though, and you’ll see pages and pages of me gleefully “not being able to draw”, the kind of stuff an adult will scribble to prove that they can’t do it.

This is the kind of stuff I was doing in second grade:

At the time, I was reading every book I could get my hands on about art and cartooning.  I learned from them, and art class, about the concept of constructing a drawing from basic shapes, and played around with that constantly, trying to incorporate it into my drawings.  I didn’t stop at drawing the shapes the books told me.  In playing with what I’d learned, I was starting to develop the groundwork that I still use today, and never once did I feel like I sucked at art.  I had fun making characters out of shapes and writing utter travesties of spelling about space aliens and dragons the size of Mount Eferist.

That’s what you have to do.  I’ll talk to adults about learning to draw, and the excuses begin.  “I can’t draw a straight line!”  “I can only draw stick figures!”  “I tried learning to draw for a whole year and I still suck!”  If you feel like what I’ve posted above is better than you can do now, do what I did then - keep drawing anyway.

When you’re getting started with learning to draw, the only thing you need to concern yourself with is whether or not you’re having fun.

If you give kids an art project and they think it’s boring, they’ll change it to what they feel like doing.  I’ve seen this, and remember consciously doing this when I was in art classes, myself.  One time, we had a project to make an abstract image incorporating a piece of string glued down to the paper.  It could have one loop.

The thing was, that day, I really wanted to draw a unicorn.  I’d gone into art class inspired to draw a unicorn, and I saw glitter and paints and crayons being brought out, and gosh darn it, if the glitter and glue sticks coming out wasn’t a sign from above that I was meant to draw a unicorn that day, I don’t know what was.  So, I made the string into a unicorn, with one loop, and blew off the whole ‘abstract’ business entirely.  The teacher could have stopped me, and I do remember her being amused with my insistence, but she let me have my fun.  I think I still took away a great lesson from that project.

I’ve taught kids to draw cartoon animals and had them spend the lesson drawing swords and cars instead.  Great - we switched to learning about the shapes swords and cars are made of, instead.  The lesson’s the same, either way.

Now, there are things that you might want to learn that aren’t very glamorous to learn, but that all depends on what it is you really want to be doing with your art.  If you want to be able to draw realistic figures, you’re not going to get away with making unicorns out of string and glitter.  You’re going to have to find a way to apply that same spirit of fun and play as a tool to help you get through your studies, and to be open to feedback and to the fact that you can improve.

If you practice and practice, and don’t see the improvement you expected, don’t let that discourage you.  It may very well be that there’s something else you haven’t realized you could be practicing that will help you solve the problem you’ve encountered.  It’s not impossible for anyone to improve.  It’s all a matter of figuring out how you learn best, how to get yourself to keep practicing, and figuring out what it is you really want to do with your art, not from a commercial standpoint, but from the standpoint of personal expression.  I became worlds happier with my art when I decided to focus on cartooning - like I wanted to do when I was little - but that’s a whole other story.

I began work on this deck about two years ago as a sponsored project.  One of my viewers expressed an interest in a tarot project I’d mentioned, and offered to buy the originals in order to help cover my time.  We worked together to develop the cards, which were all drawn as 2.5 x 3.5 art cards with ink, watercolor and gel pen.  Even at that size, a 78 card deck is a huge undertaking.  A lot of research, planning, work and time went into the cards I am now holding in my hands.

This is a full tarot deck, with 22 Major Arcana and four Minor Arcana suits - cups, coins, wands and swords - with 14 cards each.  Each card features a unique illustration.  The back is an abstract design which is reversible.

I’ve named this deck Tod’s Creatures Tarot, because while many of the cards have a Halloween theme, it’s very much a cross-section of the sorts of things I draw: pumpkins, cats, monsters, animal-people… creatures!  The imagery draws inspiration from the Waite deck, but is not a copy, and I hope that you’ll enjoy my humble interpretation of the cards.

The cards are sold for entertainment purposes.  If you use them for fortune-telling, they do not constitute legal or medical advice.  I personally believe that the power of the tarot is the power of your imagination.  If you’re interested in the divinatory meanings of the cards, there are many great resources online and in print.

This deck is full of archetypal symbols combined with animal imagery, and makes a great creative toy for coming up with plot or character ideas for your story, or could be used as a role-playing prop. There are lots of games you can play with a tarot deck, too!  Search for ‘tarot games’ online to find some rules to try.  Of course, it is also an art deck which would make a colorful addition to your collection!

Here are a few examples of the cards.  Click on each thumbnail to see the full version.  You can also see a folder of the rough image scans and the preliminary pencil sketches for this project here, in my archive!

Here are some photos of my copy of the deck.

The deck is $20 plus shipping!

I’m getting these cards printed up through The Game Crafter, an awesome site which does print on demand cards and board games.  To launch my deck, this week, I’m going to be taking orders so I can send away for a big bulk order - hopefully with some additional decks to take around to local businesses - next Wedesday (Sept. 8th - this was originally going to be on Monday the 6th, but I realized Dragon Con is this weekend, and want to give folks time to see this!)  This will save early purchasers some money for shipping, and allow me to send out each deck with a tuck box to keep your cards in or give to your cat to play with.  After I make the order, they’ll take 7-10 days to get to me, and then I’ll do a quality check, get them packaged, and get them out the door via first class mail.  The first ten people to order a deck get a surprise art card included!

After September 5th, the deck will be available for purchase on TGC’s site.  They offer priority shipping, and will send your deck shrink-wrapped and in a large, sturdy box.  I was very pleased with their customer service, and want to support them as a growing company.

Here is a Paypal button if you’d like to purchase a deck!  Shipping is two dollars in the US, and if you’re out of the US, send me an email after you order, and we’ll work out the exact shipping cost.

Thank you very much for reading about my deck!  I hope you will enjoy it!

I got the tarot deck in the mail yesterday, and it seems that all my worries about the appearance of the cards were unfounded. They look great! The card stock and color is definitely pro quality, and the off-center issue, while it does show up on a few cards, is minor and something I think I only noticed because I was looking for it. Of course, I’ll have some photos of the cards so you can judge it for yourself, but I’m quite satisfied with this product.

So, later on today, I’m going to put together a post with photos and such, and start the whole preorder thing, to get this ball rolling!