With my design for the fool mostly nailed down, it is time to move behind the altar of a magician (or magician-ess?) for my series of images based on the tarot card series of characters or otherwise notable individuals.
There was a grand total of 128 different images generated for this, and some were great. Some were good, and some were just outright terrible, that could only probably be fixed using ordinary art skills, or some sort of out-painting techniques, which is not yet something that I've learned how to do reliably. Perhaps this will be the time to do that, who knows?
The Magician tarot card traditionally displays a figure standing behind a table or an altar, with an infinity simple above their head. They're holding a wand (or a stick) in one hand, and raising it above their head. The other hand is pointing at the ground. There's assorted things on the table or altar, and these include a sword, a chalice, a pentagram, and what looks to be a staff. Flowers surround the borders of the card, and they look to be a combination of red flowers, with a few white one too.
With that in mind, I started off prompting pretty conservatively, but knowing that where possible, I wanted the figures to be represented as females throughout the series, so let's see what we came up with, in terms of looking at thumbnails.
Even with this first batch of images, it is a completely overwhelming task to try and get these to be short listed. They've all got good features in their own right, even if they were not intended to depict the tarot figure of the magician.
The four image is a pretty nice rendering, but would need to be fixed through many of the restorative scripts available.
It is a nice image because it is coherent, has an interesting composition, but there's nothing that screams "magician" about this one. No smoke, or mirrors, or other such things. There's also no altar, so it doens't really fit in with the theme at all. Not one bit!
This one I like because of the fact that there are no pupils present. The altar is rendered pretty well, but some of the features are missing. Perhaps in painting could help to restore them, but that seems like a bit of an effort at this stage.
I'm so far pretty happy with my ruthless culling, and will continue going through these images, short listing these two images so far. So what about any others of interest?
This image I like due to the fact that it looks like an illusion. The candles appear to be floating in the air until you examine the scene more closely, and the outcome of this is that I also notice the wilted images on the right hand side of the image. It adds to the symbology that the magic is just an illusion, there to fool you. (Ha, that was the last card!)
This image also caught my eye due to the dynamic pose, and the nice altar present in the foreground. The facial features are pretty vague and not all that coherent; but it is a good starting point for something like this; and the outline of the face appears to be of the archetypical witch / crone etc.
I really, really like this image. It is dramatic, full of mystery, and it almost looks as though there is a ritual in-flight. This is certainly a strong contender for an image that might grace the final card.
So that is my short list from the first batch of images. I have many more to go through, and would appreciate your patience as I work through all of these!
In the next post, I will be going over the following images, and figuring out if any of them make the cut, or if there is an image I happen upon that stops the search for the "one".
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