It was the art direction that drew me to this project.
I'd worked with the commissioning editor on the Manga Tarot and I hadn't really expected to work on another esoteric gift product. I wasn't seeing Manga Tarot on the shelves anywhere so I thought it was a bit of hiding to nothing. Loads of work, with an author disconnected or ambivalent to the art direction, which I – as the obviously supposedly arty one in the equation – just couldn't understand. It left me cold, to be honest.
But the art direction for these cards was just so much fun. My editor sent me the moodboard with a implicit challenge: loads of gorgeously idiosyncratic and mass-produced Victorian and Edwardian matchboxes. That fluffy ink seepage into soft paper and balsa wood! That phenomenally accidentally-offset colour; brash, garish, evoking a competitively colourful crowded tobacconists' shelf, each tiny popart-before-popart masterpiece clamouring for attention.
One thing I love when illustrating - texture. We often forget about texture when working digitally, especially if it's just line-work. But I never can. I have to think I can feel the paper the illustration is printed on – and, honestly, it's always disappointing when the final product stock is all new, hard and shiny. I want soft, tactile, ink.
For these especially, I knew from the moment I saw the moodboard that I wanted to the work to have the texture of those matchboxes. That these cards might have been found in a draw in my great grannie Hunn's parlour in the '80s and all the talk was how we never knew she read fortunes.
So, they're all about 3cm or so, these little spots. Drawn and coloured with a Wacom directly into Photoshop, using a rough inker. Here's a small selection of favourites - I'm very much in love with the 'Boundaries' card's cat-snake; the dancing hare and fox of the 'Fire' card; my alchemical porcine magician surrounded by the tarot; and the purple crystal ball below, adorned with two cockatrices. Truth is, I really like all of these cards, and for those that know me that's like hen's teeth. I really hope they appeal to you too.
