I was asked by John over at one of my favourite blogs Super Punch if I would be interested in contributing a tarot card to a deck he’s putting together in celebration of his blog’s third anniversary. Here’s my take on the King Of Coins. It doesn’t really show up in the scan but all the gold is actually shiny gold paint!
Here’s a bit of the process behind this painting. Starting clockwise from top left:
I do messy sketches of an idea first in my sketchbook. Then I usually blow up whatever sketch I’ve decided to go with to use as a guide for refined pencils. Once I’m happy with the drawing I transfer it onto watercolour paper with the aide of a light table. Using removable tape I’ll section off the painting so when I’m finished I can remove it to get a nice clean border to the piece. Then I get to the painting! I try to work back to front. While acryla gouache paint layers really well, sometimes it can be annoying to build up a lighter colour over dark, so I try to work so I have to do that as little as possible.
The bottom right is a scan of the blown up sketch that I use to test paint on to see if I like the colours or not and how they all look together.
You can check out more of the cards in the deck over here!
