Tarot & Ticket

Focused in on details of the O2 concert ticket, and The Lovers Tarot card. The concert ticket has a slice of planet earth with faint latitude/longitude grid lines and narrow spires (EDIT: in fact it's a view of the O2 arena itself, a tensile structure. "Most tensile structures are supported by some form of compression or bending elements, such as masts (as in The O₂, formerly the Millennium Dome), compression rings or beams." Thanks Wikipedia. ) with a round hologram moon and pinpoints of stars. There's some refining details to come here, along with the printed text and the O2 logo. Making those stratas of blues was a pleasure, and pondering what I'm going to do for the hologram is perplexing. Still thinking about it.

The Tarot card is simple; vibrant hues, mostly primary colors. I concentrated on not dragging or smearing colors into each other, yet smoothing and blending the edges between them. Not a task for the faint hearted. Once it's thoroughly dry, I'll work on outlining every object and figure in black.

After the loose volume and form of the marble bookends, doing the card's graphic design felt like painting a miniature. Even putting in the base color required my #0 and #1 brushes, but I like switching around from loose to precise. Artist's yoga.



Tech side bar: When you obsess on detail, you tend to mow through a lot of small brushes. They have a limited working life anyway - delicate to start, with fewer brush hairs, and those need to be exactly aligned. Rough use or poor handling turn them into something that looks like a squirrel's tail in no time.
After much trial and error I found Silver Ruby Satins. They hold up to the weight of oil, they load paint well and - if carefully cleaned - far outlast all others. I have 38 of them at last count, in the three smallest sizes. Mostly Filberts and Brights. I love them and treat them with respect. That's one of the reasons I have so many - they'll last longer if you switch around. The other reason is my kids figured out that they are a guaranteed hit for all those pesky gift giving occasions, like Mother's Day.