V and The Tarot
A Major Arcana Self-Portrait Project
In February, I turned 50. It feels like a big number, an exciting number! I feel priviledged to get to be this age. During the year I turned 40, I took a series of 52 portraits, one per week, to document where I was at the time. Which was preparing to come here to Beijing and how interesting that I am now preparing to move back to Canada 10 years later. That project became 52 Portraits, my very first art journaling class.
I decided to do something similar - and completely different - 10 years on. So much has changed, in the way I work, in how I want to share, where I want to share, the depth of my practice, etc. So I decided to have fun with these self-portraits and to make them magical in all the best of ways.
Tarot has been a big part of my art practice in the last decade, so I decided that for my fiftieth, I would do a series of self-portraits where I embody the cards of the Major Arcana.
I have taken all the photos already: I was so prepared! I had the most fun coming up with my ideas and shooting the photos. It all went very smoothly because I was totally ready (so Virgo Moon of me)- I had all my props, my vision, my accessories and wardrobe, the order we would shoot in, which photos I could do myself and which ones needed someone to press the button.
This was a real community project: I borrowed all sort of things from friends here in Beijing: crowns, swords, staffs, brooms, headpieces. My friend Erica helped me shoot some of the pictures that needed a button presser - very useful when you are photographing cats or jumping around. That said, I was still surprised that the photoshoot lasted maybe 7 hours over 3 days.
I did all the prep work in this notebook by Citrus Book Bindery. This one was a gift from
. It had exactly the right number of pages for me to sketch out my idea on the left and to write things out on the right.
Just because I finished shooting doesn’t mean I am done. I will edit the photos and add some hand drawn elements and I have so much to share about each one. So I am going to be doing that here, one card at a time.
There will be:
the initial raw photos
the final card
behind the scenes context
bloopers
funny stories about the photoshoot
a rundown of my process
explaining the aesthetics of the props
how I went about visualizing each card
how I edited the photos
how I adapted during the shooting process
So you will be able to see how the end result is either different or exactly as the initial sketch was.
I’m really excited to be sharing this with you. This post is free but the series will be shared only with my paid subscribers. Their subscription allows me to create this type of work and I am so thankful for it. Consider subscribing if you would like to get in on the FUN. We start with The Fool in April.