Marking the passage of time this year by these card releases has been exceedingly weird, and I can’t believe we’re already at 10. The Libra/Plains card dropped this tuesday which makes it the 3rd and final air sign. Like I mentioned with Aquarius and Gemini the unifying element for all three of these is the stylized sky, and this one is probably the fussiest of the three.
Libra was a bit confusing for me. As far as the classic symbology goes, the scales being an object rather than a creature or human form was always a little underwhelming, and when I puzzled over how to hint at it while also incorporating some aspect of the element air I wasn’t sure what the right approach was at first. Talking to Maya was really helpful here, because when I was thinking of the scales I was imagining something placid, unmoving and suspended in perfect balance. But as they explained it Libra, the scales, and the symbology around justice has more to do with turmoil. Something more akin to a perpetual struggle and conflict to find equilibrium. This is what gave me the idea of incorporating the element of air as a tornado, which was also appropriate to the land type of plains, the scales being represented by toppled, re-formed and eroded stones.
I mentioned him before but in doing my research for this project I found an artist I now love, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis who had his own series of paintings of the signs of the zodiac as symbolist landscapes. After talking to Maya I looked back over his piece and realized his representation of Libra played exactly on the aspects and feeling they described to me, better than mine could really! He represented the cups of the scales continually tilting in a turbulent sea
Libra was actually the first card I painted, because it was the first fully approved sketch and I needed to paint as quickly as possible for this project. My sketch is funny for this one because I have a note to “use color scheme from that screensaver” and from my memory this was a photo that came up on the preloaded carousel of images that plays on my tv while it’s idle. I have a habit of grabbing color ideas from absolutely everywhere, and the images usually have nothing to do with what I’m painting, they’re usually just some random landscape, textile print, animated gif etc that happens to feature some colors I find pleasing together that I will file away to use as a jumping off point for something.
For example the color scheme in this painting comes from a sticker gif a brain on instagram. I don’t know if this is an embarrassing process but it’s apparently my process.
In other news I now have almost all of my proofs, foil and regular (Cancer and Taurus are on their way to me) up through Libra and I’ll probably start taking custom proof commissions soon. I did my first test one as a gift for my friend Alice just to get a feel for what it will be like to paint on these and I think it’s going to be a very fun for me to do these tiny pieces. In addition to the single cards I plan on offering a sun, moon, rising set which I should have a sample of soon, but obviously you could do any combination, grouped by elements etc.
And just a random recommendation from someone whose day job and art practice involve sitting very still and intently working for long stretches of time but the Morbid Anatomy patreon gives you access to almost 200 recorded lectures on a variety of historical and esoteric topics. I listened to the newest one about bog bodies while I designed the Libra logo yesterday and learned about this excellent Seamus Heaney poem I hadn’t heard before.