Tales Through Time

Tales Through Time

Size: 15x21 inches

Medium: Watercolor

Details -here-
Original available for sale -here-

I realized I had forgotten to release this piece last year! Often artwork that is done for publication cannot be released right away, until the product itself is released by the publisher. And then as the months pass, I forget I have the artwork. This particular one was done as the cover for a children/young adult publisher. It is a collection of myths and folktales from around the world of heroes such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, Finn MacCool, and Ramayana.

I haven't really had time this month to get much painting done. It's been more of a writing month. The good news is that I've finished a rough draft of The Art of Shadowscapes Tarot: Minor Arcana, and it's currently sitting around for a week or two so that I can get some fresh perspective before going back to proofread it. Unfortunately I probably will not have it available for sale until Fall this year. Main reason being that this tiny house does not have much storage space. And though thanks to you guys I've emptied quite a bit out from the Majors book, the tarot decks that just came in and are awaiting my getting the special edition act together have quickly filled up that space once again!

The other thing that has been taking up my time is playing around with fabrics and sparkly gems, one of my expensive hobbies. I've put up a couple of these tarot bags on etsy as well, with more planned. I have some silk-screening ideas rolling around in my head, featuring the design down below. That should be interesting to try out. I haven't done silk-screening in about 18 years.

Llewellyn's 2011 Astrological Calendar

The Zodiac 2011 Calendar is now available for pre-orders! Looks like the release date is scheduled for July.

Also, several interviews & deck reviews:
* LLewellyn Journal interview
* Shadowscapes Tarot review by Bonnie Cehovet
* An Interview with my Shadowscapes Deck by Zanna Starr

The article I wrote for Llewellyn will be forthcoming next week too, and I'll post when that's released.

Special Edition (NOT YET, but some ideas)

Okay since I feel like I'm holding people up with my sloooowness, I thought I'd give you guys an idea of what I had in mind for the Special Edition of the deck, so that you don't have to sit by wondering whether you'll want it or not, or to go with the no-frills version available elsewhere. And if you're the impatient sort and want to get your deck right away, I'll warn you up front that I'll probably be slow with getting these out as well, especially since one of the items will be a sketched card.

Placeholder image over here, but it will be updated (and the order button will be turned on) when I've got things ready to go. -preview it here-

Essentially, $55.00 for the following:
* artist autographed kit
* a Major Arcana 8.5x11 inch print of your choice
* a special Happy Squirrel card
* a unique original ink sketch card (7x11 cm, deck card sized)
* a greeting card of the Page of Wands

What's holding things up at this point now is I'm still working on getting the bonus cards (happy squirrel and sketch cards) printed. I figured out a way to make it a fairly close approximation to the actual cards, but it won't be exact. I should hopefully get those in end of this next week and then I can turn the green light on this, but until then this is still not quite 100% for sure.

Shipping within the US is $10.00 for Priority Mail, will be more for international, still have to calculate it once I find out how much it weighs.

* * *

Also, to clarify for a few questions I've been getting a lot of:

Amazon lists it as a hardcover book, is this the deck?
Yes, this is indeed the deck/companion book kit that Llewellyn published, I don't know why they have it listed as a book though.

What's the difference between the book you sell on Shadowscapes, and the kit?
"The Art of Shadowscapes Tarot - Major Arcana" is just that, it's a full color art 8x11 inch book with full page reproductions of the card, as well as a lot of extra sketches and drawings and specifics about inspirations and insights into the creation and the symbolism of the cards. This was my own pet project, and something that I had wanted to do ever since I started the deck years ago.

The deck kit being sold on amazon contains the actual tarot deck of 78 cards, as well as a companion 5x7 inch book that contains the greyscale reproductions of the cards for reference, the card meanings, and tarot spread information and how to use the deck.

Busy Writing

I've been quiet here lately, but it's just that I'm busy writing! Finally getting around to getting that Minors book together. It's taking up all my writing brainpower, so I haven't had much leftover for blogging. I get to dig through my old sketchbooks again to find all the sketches I did for the cards.

Now that our very small garage has emptied out of half of the Majors books, there's a little bit of storage room for me to start considering having this next book printed sometime in the next few months. (Shhh, don't tell Dana, he's only starting to enjoy the reclaimed space again).

Hand It To The Bandit

A little spot of spare time, and a whole lot of silliness. A bit of a family joke....

Dana has complained for the past year about how I won't let him get a smart phone. Our split for household utilities and things is that among other things I get phone bills, and he gets the water/trash bills.

me: Your phone is never even charged, and when it is you don't pick up! You don't need a smart phone!
Dana: *whine*
me: No.
Dana: But-
me: No.
Dana: *whhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine*
me: When YOU want to take responsibility for the phone bills, then go ahead and get us smart phones. (At the time of this conversation, this would probably have necessitated a provider change as well since Verizon didn't have any snazzy good smart phones yet.) Til then you can be happy with a dumb phone.
Dana: I get the trash bill.
me: Yep, and I'm perfectly happy with EBMUD. If I wanted a different trash collector, then I'd deal with it, but since you handle it, you can pick whatever trash collector you want.
Dana: There IS no other trash collector!!! There aren't any other options.
Me: Sure there is...we could just...um...not pay, and then have Raccoon Trash do our pickups.

Well, "Raccoon Trash" became synonymous with, as Dana puts it, "bullshit service providers"...i.e. Raccoon Trash pickup would do it for free since they would get to root through the garbage bins ("hooray!") and make a big ole stinking mess of it all.

We also came to the conclusion that our cell phone service probably was Raccoon Cellular too since reception is so crappy where we are.

Well, when my father-in-law heard of this, he was tickled. He has since started using Raccoon Industries as an example in his lectures. He's an Economics professor at Stonybrook. In particular, RI's subsidiary Raccoon Refuse. Their motto: Hand It To the Bandit!

Sitting here at my desk trying to bounce Claire to sleep. Ran out of blogs to read and emails to respond to. So here's a bit of photoshop doodling.

The Happy Squirrel

The Happy Squirrel
Medium: Watercolor
Size: 7.5x12 inches
Details -here-

"The cards are vague and mysterious." - The Simpsons

I'm toying with the idea of seeing if I can get these printed on something approximating the actual cards to include as an exclusive for decks purchased from Shadowscapes along with some other goodies (to be decided) as a special edition. I can't compete with Amazon for price, so I don't begrudge anyone purchasing from there, but I do like to offer a little extra something whenever I sell commercial products from my own site. The Happy Squirrel card wouldn't be exactly the same cardstock...there's just no way I can duplicate it completely, but would that be of interest to people?