This illustration comes from a previous test for a personal project I’m currently working on: drawing a tarot deck with my own imagination and style. This image corresponds to the XI arcana “Strength”.
Personally I found my inspiration in myths, tales and legends. I think that all humanity shares a common intellect that is full of symbols and stories that are connected one to each other and that we learn from art, religion and fables. Those symbols are incredibly powerful and can trigger our imagination because we have the feeling that we already know them, but they are ambiguous enough for us to read them in our own way.
That’s why I decided to start this project; the Tarot is full of strong symbolism that I love to reinterpret with my own style. I like to keep the plain, hieratic aesthetic of ancient representations but with bright colors and contemporary elements to create contrast.
I do all my works with acrylic paint; I love the textures you can create with a real brush. But after that I keep on working digitally on the illustration, mostly to try different color palettes or to change small details that are easier to do on a computer.
This illustration started as a sketch for this bigger project, but I fell in love with it and decided to finish it and it became the illustration you are seeing now.
