Month: February 2019

The suit of Cups – before colouring…

The suit of Cups - Hes - Derua Tarot
The suit of Cups – Hes – Derua Tarot

 

Now that I am writing this post some of the cards are already coloured – and they look like real Marseille cards:).

But let us go through some of the interesting details… the two of cups was for me a puzzle for a while, than I checked the original photos, and realized that what seemed to be teeth in reality  is the texture of the aged card. So the “monster” , – originally meant to be dolphins? , – got no sharp teeth on my cards after all:).

The Seven of Cups is not numbered, and has three bigger cups where the red liquid  in the cups at the bottom and the top is rather in the upper part of the cups. I am not sure how to colour them, because in the upper part we can see the lines, but  the lower part is blackish as well , so at the moment I am not able to work out what was the reason for it – maybe a colouring mistake on the original card?

On the Seven of Cups of the Hes Tarot is a cross on the cup in the middle of the card.

The numbers on the Eight and the Nine of Cups are interesting – one of the numbers is depicted like the standard roman numerals, but the other is not. Till now it is a mistery to me…   I have no idea why they did it in this way. In my opinion, we can see the work of two different hands in the Hes Tarot deck. The  person who carved the court cards and the Major Arcana  is not  identical with the one who carved the pip cards. The pip cards are made in a more crude manner, maybe that is a reason for the impossible roman numerals?

Next time I am going to post the coloured suit of cups.

Have a nice day.

 

Page of Swords – bolder lines, natural paint

My pen arrived at last. So this is a first version of the Page of Swords , with bolder lines, and my plant based paints. The black colour I have not written about earlier comes from soot, which is not an easy paint to deal with, maybe because of the high fat content. Maybe nut or nutgall  and iron would be better…. On this card I did not painted the face, hands, the inner side of the cloak, – at least , the lower part seems to be the same shade as the page’s face – and the stockings. All these parts of the card are painted  in the original a slight brownish-pink shade. I decided doing it after I have coloured all the cards with the other colours. I think I have to postpone my decision, because I am really not sure….

Page of swords - Hes - Derua Tarot
Page of swords – Hes – Derua Tarot

 

The next photo is about the two versions of the Page of Swords. My first version , I have already coloured depicts a Page of Swords, not really typical for the this card. With this face he is a rather a Page of Cups:)  Anyway , I like him. …The card on the right is my new version , much closer to the original Page of Swords in the Hes deck.

first and second version of the Page of Swords in the Hes-Derua Tarot
first and second version of the Page of Swords in the Hes-Derua Tarot

Have a nice day.

Kings in the Hes Tarot – a comparison…

My last post was about the Hes-Queens…. This time I would like to write about the Kings in the Hes Tarot.

The Conver King of Swords holds a scepter in his left hand,  in the Hes King’s hand there seems to be rather a rolled document. This is my best copy among the Kings, I think.

The King’s crown on the Hes card is not only partially depicted in comparison to the Conver card. On the shoulders there are plates with flowers not with faces, on his right shoulder the flower emerges from the piece of clothing like a real plant. Again the flower pattern on the base of the throne is more elaborate than on the Conver card.

Generally  speaking we can state that on the Hes cards the clothes and props are depicted mostly  in a more sophisticated way, but nature in the background of the cards is represented more poorly – in contrast to the Conver deck. Finally I would like to mention that the title of the card in the Hes deck, similarly to the Queens, is written with I instead of Y.

King of Swords - CBD Tarot (left) and the Hes Tarot (right)
King of Swords – CBD Tarot (left) and the Hes Tarot (right)

 

 

King of Batons…. not many differences, maybe just one : the “skirt” of the Hes King covers his throne entirely, whereas on the left of the Conver card there is an undefinable something, maybe the seat.

King of Batons - CBD Tarot (left) and the Hes Tarot (right)
King of Batons – CBD Tarot (left) and the Hes Tarot (right)

 

The melancholic  Hes King  looks younger, than the Conver King of Cups. The intricate ground design on the Conver card is replaced with a simple checkered pattern.

 

King of Cups - CBD Tarot (left) and the Hes Tarot (right)
King of Cups – CBD Tarot (left) and the Hes Tarot (right)

I really like the expression of the Hes King of Coins, especially his moustache:).

Their hats and hands are different.

The ground is depicted rather plainly in comparison to the Conver deck.

The title is with I again.

 

King of Coins - CBD Tarot (left) and the Hes Tarot (right)
King of Coins – CBD Tarot (left) and the Hes Tarot (right)

Somehow I have the feeling that the creator of the Hes cards just tried to interpret the blurred parts of an earlier Marseille deck… this is an attempt of translation. This gave him a certain freedom that maybe suited very well to his temperament:). All translations are interpretations at the same time … and I think this one is a most interesting addition to the Marseille language, a practical and down-to-earth dialect.

Have a nice day.

 

The Lovers card in the Hes Tarot

The Lovers Card - Hes - Derua Tarot
The Lovers Card – Hes – Derua Tarot

Unfortunately my new pen has not arrived yet, so in the meantime I am patiently copying the suit of Batons. They have a plant ornamentation similar to a certain type of folk embroidery, I enjoy doing them – it is a more relaxing task, then working concentrated on faces in the court cards or Major Arcana:).

Above you can see my actual Lovers card, although  I am pondering to re-make it…. It is about choice. Many have written about the controversial topic to whom actually belongs the hand on the left of the card. In the Hes Tarot you can determine it because of the position of  the thumb: it is the man’s hand. Hand and eyes seem to  make a different choice, which one is lying? If we look at closer we can see though , that the man’s right foot is under the dress of the woman on the left side of the card. So maybe his preference is clear…

The faces…. none of the women looks like Botticelli’s angels:). Even the younger woman is depicted in a  german-medieval-pheasant-like style. It is I think a deliberate choice of the Master of the Hes Tarot, because in the Hes Tarot you can see “really beautiful” faces as well. But in my opinion depicting beautiful human beings, and faces is a less demanding task. Expressing a certain character or mood is much more complicated….. The faces in the Hes Tarot are almost always smiling , even Death, or the face on the Devils’s belly, but it does not mean that this world is a superficial  one.  It has depth….   That’s all for today.

Have a nice day.

The Queens

Here are my queens…. there are some subtle differences worth looking at. A generally found difference is in the spelling: the German card-maker used I instead of Y in all the queen-cards. But there are others as well. In contrast to the Conver image, where the Queen of Swords actually places her hand under  her heart, as if she was pregnant, the Hes Queen of Swords points  to the Sword itself.

Queen of Swords, CBD and the Hes Tarot (my printed version) on the sides
Queens of Swords, CBD and the Hes Tarot (my printed version) on the sides

The Queen of Batons in the Hes deck makes up for this, actually:). She places her left hand on her belly and not on her clothes as in the Conver image. The tree-image on the Conver card is missing in our card. If you want to be very symbolic, you could say that it is not a big difference, since the tree was replaced with the snake:).

Queens of batons, CBD and the Hes Tarot (my printed version) on the sides
Queens of batons, CBD and the Hes Tarot (my printed version) on the sides

On the Hes Queen of Cups we have a window instead of the funny looking textile over the Queen’s head…. I leave to you the interpretation of this detail…

Queens of Cups, CBD and the Hes Tarot (my printed version) on the sides
Queens of Cups, CBD and the Hes Tarot (my printed version) on the sides

The main difference for me in the Queens of Coins is the lower brow of the  Hes-Queen, and you cannot see her crown  entirely. Another thing is the strange part of clothing on the right leg.

Queens of coins, CBD and the Hes Tarot (my printed version) on the sides
Queens of coins, CBD and the Hes Tarot (my printed version) on the sides

Well I am sure you are able to detect much more interesting differences…. It is always a good exercise to compare the  images in different Marseille decks, it teaches us to notice seemingly unimportant details – not only in  cards, but  in our life as well,  – and improves our interpretation skills too.

Have a nice day!

About the colour palette of the Hes Tarot

First of all I have to state , that I do not have high resolution photos. I use the publicly available photos of the British Museum Online Collection.

To colour the cards we obviously have to decide which colours to use and this is not an easy task. Looking at other historical Tarots and reconstructed decks  we see actually lots of colours. In contrast to these decks the Hes Tarot features only black, green, blue, yellow, red, and…. well occasionally the skin has a light brownish-pink shade – where? I could detect only on the hand of the Ace of Batons and Ace of Swords. All the other cards show the same shade as the background, which presumably should be white…I have to do some more research on this topic though.

The first version of my Magician card, coloured with plant based paint , with some mistakes
The first version of my Magician card, coloured with plant based paint , with some mistakes

 

In the meantime here is  my partially coloured first version of the Magician.  Apart from the colours – which are not 100 percent correct here –  there are some interesting details. One of the table legs is in the same area as the title of the card. The Magician holds nothing in his right hand. The little vulva shaped plant, (present in other historical Marseilles ),  which gave plenty of opportunity for speculating in freudian manner , is missing. The young man on the Hes Tarot card is quite obese in contrast to the Conver deck for example. On the table there is a funnel, and an other “device” , I depicted – influenced by the imagery of other Marseilles ,  – not properly (two little balls connected with a string should be the correct depiction). Another mistake  I did is that the ground-line should not advance on the left of the far left table leg, just stops before it. This  you can see on the Conver card  in the same way as well.

And a technical issue, I have to change my pen I use to make the lines more visible. Since it  is water soluble it does not really match with water color paints:). Sometimes enthusiasm is not enough I should slow down a bit and do some headwork…. it could save lots of extra drawing activity:)

 

Trying to give more wood-cut feel to my drawings….

first version Magician , reinforced lines
first version Magician  with darker lines

This was my first attempt to draw Le Bateleur, so I choose this card to make a line-reinforcing -experiment.  In one of my previous posts I used my freshly prepared plant based paints on the Two of Cups…., I was quite delighted with the results, but I realized , that the wood-cut-lines just disappeared. To fix this problem I decided to make the lines  of my drawing darker so more visible. The next step will be colouring them…. we will see:)

About the plant based paint I use for colouring my Hes cards

In the last post I showed the difference between the two Aces of Cups I coloured with commercial paint and my own natural one. In this post I would like to write about this process a little bit more ..

It is only February, so there are not many plants we can use for painting. My choice for blue was  common or european privet (ligustrum vulgare), probably some late elderberries would have been better, but I could not find any…

Green was made from goldenrod (solidago canadensis),that I always dry and store for the winter as a herb. It makes a greenish yellow , a beautiful one on wool, but here  I mixed it with privet-blue to have a more greenish shade.

 

blue made with common privet
my privet-blue hand and some samples of green paint made of goldenrod

There is a very pale red here , but as you can see in the next photo madder (rubia tinctorum) root can create a much vibrant red as well.

First attempt on Ace of Swords
First attempt on Ace of Swords

To produce plant paint for using  it on paper you need some other “ingredients”, like gum arabic, or other gum from wild cherry tree or even from fruit bearing trees from your garden, although they can make your colours darker.

And I put some alum as well into the final mixture, to make the colours more shiny and it preserves them as well. Although for this reason I dry them so to get a fine powder.

As I mentioned in the previous post I have to find a way how to preserve the wood-cut look. Well , I have some ideas but about them I will write in one of the next posts:).

Have a nice day.

Painting naturally – first attempts

I have been dyeing my home spun yarn  and wool with plants for a couple of years. Here you can see some of it….

plant dyed yarn
plant dyed yarn

 

….but this is my first experiment to use plant based paint on paper. Well I re-drew the Ace of Cups from the Hes Tarot, and painted it with natural paint this time:

Two versions of the Ace of Cups, left the tempera , right the natural paint
Two versions of the Ace of Cups, left the tempera , right the natural paint

I prefer the second one with the plant paint,  – the colours are much more vibrant – but I see that it is far from perfect. First of all there are white lines around certain areas, where the two colours meet, so I have to concentrate and pay more attention while painting on the edge of the colour patches. The other consideration is that I should use lighter colours otherwise the “wood-cut-lines” will not be visible. So one layer of my plant paint is enough:)

In the next post I will share some thoughts about the natural paint….

Clouds or ruffles

….. looking at the Ace of Swords and Batons.

To compare:

Ace of Swords, CBD - Hes-Derua - Original Rider Waite
Ace of Swords, CBD – Hes-Derua – Original Rider Waite

The WS card and the Hes -Tarot depicts clouds, this is where the hand with the actual symbol emerges from.  Not so the CBD or even other Marseille decks. It is interesting to note, that there is an other difference , namely, that around the “clouds” we can see  an area that symbolizes radiating light. The colour of the clouds is blue, while the “light-area” is yellow….. Soon  I will be able to  post an image about my coloured Ace of Swords:).

Which one is the original, or rather the first step in this evolution:)? Well , on the Noblet Ace of Batons we can see a ruffle sleeve and on the Dodal as well….. So maybe the original image was that with the ruffles , a more down to earth approach….