Facebook

Hi all, I wanted to mention that I have a Facebook page. I will be uploading pictures of the creation process there and talking a bit more about this deck and other stuff of interest. All followers are welcome, friend, artist, or simply the curious.

My Facebook can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/espearitesreadings

More updates to come soon!

Happy Friday!

As I mentioned this week, there would be some finalized images of the deck going up, and so here they are. Yes, they have borders! This was a no-brainer for me. I personally thought they added a nice touch.

In any case, it has been a long road getting to this point with this deck, which is still not over. I have yet to finalize four and half more sets. The good news is that the cards in the last two sets will not need very much work. I have also been creating a table of contents for the manual, re-writing, and organizing information. I want to try to get this out at the same time the deck is published (if and when... *crosses fingers*).

I do not think having a meanings sheet is going to cut it, as images of this deck need to be seen and there wouldn't be room to give them good visibility.  In any case, I'll be hard at work trying to complete everything by the end of December or first week of January!

Distance (left) and Longing (right) Cards

Man (left) and Healer 3 (right) Cards

Gathering (left) and Locked II (right) Cards

Past Person (left) and Psychic Link (right) Cards

 I hope you have enjoyed seeing some of the cards from the deck. Please feel free to leave any comments or questions about the images.

Update

Hello folks. Updates to the timeline have been made with ongoing weekly ones at this point. Some final pictures of the deck to come soon!

Synchronicity

I'm checking in this week to let you know I have a lot of hard work behind me! About 98% of the artwork has become digital. I have finished the "Main Suit," or main cards of the deck, and have started re-drawing the "Healer Suit" in digital format.

I am going to say the artwork is looking better, but there still needs to be some re-formatting to earlier improvements, including some minor enhancements to most cards. This deck is screaming to be seen and isn't going to be content with being a bunch of sticks on paper.

Aside from looking at a potential publisher for the deck (www.makeplayingcards.com), I'm anxious to start updating the oracle's manual, which is currently around 40+ pages. I'm hoping this manual can cover a lot of ground, giving readers a deeper understanding of the cards in many dimensions, as well as offer different ways to read with them. Hopefully, it will get a basic message across without overwhelming the reader. I am still thinking to myself at times - really? Come on, there are already three indices... I would like to keep the manual updated on a yearly basis online but I am not sure if this is practical. In any case, a little white fold-out sheet will be included with the deck.

This oracle appears to be deceptively simple: I want to aim for simplicity, yet it can be a deck for those readers who want complexity, too.

The manual will contain pictures of all the cards once they have gone through the final enhancement phase. This is probably going to take another 3-4 weeks, and I'm running at least 2-3 days behind. I'm going to try to work on the manual as well as the deck concurrently from this point on, but I feel like I shouldn't rush things, either. Good things take time to grow.

I think experimenting more with the career/guidance dimension of this deck will help flesh it out, and so I'll probably be asking for more guinea sitters this week at the forums.

As for pictures, I am not going to post the whole deck online, but I will make some finalized images available this month, so please check back for these. :)

Thank you for staying updated and stay tuned!

P.S. - Two new cards have been added to the mix, one of which is an extra Locked card. So I think this brings the deck up to 53 cards.

Transition

Hello all,

I've been spending lots of time on this project in the last two weeks and I'm happy to say I've made lots of progress. :)

 The Good News: I now have 17 out of 51 cards that need to be re-drawn digitally, but it definitely inches me closer to a final completion date (see below). The artwork has taken on a "life" of its own and has gone beyond my expectations. They are certainly becoming stylish pieces of artwork!

The Bad News: I'm going to re-do some pieces that do not quite match the new style. However, there aren't very many to fix and hopefully not time consuming! This is going to set me back to January/February provided things go smoothly.

I will not show any images this time, but perhaps in future entries.

I will also be hosting a new reading thread this week by popular demand! Stay tuned. :)

Eva4

Mutual Attraction

I'm back! I have had one heck of a month. By some miracle, I've managed to devote some time to the deck, and it's been coming along nicely. =)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've made improvements to several cards and have found some ways around ongoing problems. Mainly resizing has been an issue, as it can affect image quality. Using Illustrator helped to some degree, but once I needed to get smaller images for the glyphs in this deck, I had issues. That solved for the most part, I was able to go back to a few cards and replace larger, intruding glyphs with smaller ones (both center and corner symbols and glyphs).

While I have some dislikes about the way the art work has come out, I'm mostly satisfied with the progress made.

Below is a comparison of the former version of this deck (right) with the new version (left). You may click the image to enlarge it. The only qualms I have right now are with the new Jealousy card (bottom right). Trying to create a traditional 'J' shape digitally and putting a spin on it has been pain-staking. At times, some symbols appear thicker than others. But because curvy symbols are hard to re-do, I'm not about to mess with the Retrograde card any further (top right). However, I think it's true what they say, you can't rush art.

In other news, I've been doing daily draws with the oracle for 3 weeks now, and as I get to know the deck better this way, some of the cards are not what they seem.

Thank you for staying updated. If you have any questions, comments, etc., please leave it below or you can email me. Thank you!!

Eva4

So...

Hi again! I apologize for the long gap between updates. I realize some of you are coming daily to see what's going on. I've had lot on my plate during the last couple of weeks of September where I wasn't able to think about my deck at all. However, this week it looks like things are settling down, and yes, I have a real update on progress.

I felt I needed to go back to cards I thought didn't need any improvements. Instead of 20 cards that needed refining, it was more like 30. Overwhelming!

I want to say the changes are very positive. I had about 2-3 days of great work back in September, then after that I started to have difficulties again. I guess that's art. As you can see, the improved images (on the left) are thinner and more crisp. The originals were also highly contrasted and some of this was lost with a recent improved version. I also added a stenciled style to some of the glyphs, as you can see with the Transition card (bottom left). Yes, these are all "drawn" in bitmap! I do not use Illustrator or Photoshop (again, to draw them!).

I'm hoping this deck is really going to come together in a decent amount of time. As mentioned, I would like to keep some of my original hand-drawn designs and smooth these out (most of these are hearts). I had a great start with Desiring to Communicate. I'm hoping to get back to my deck this week. Thank you for reading and staying up to date!