Fate or Fortune Challenge Part 1

For this NinaJaneArt challenge the prompt list below was chosen randomly by her stream viewers.

While she is using it to create individual tarot cards for each of the 6 prompts as part of a larger project to create her own deck, I went a different route. I chose to create a tableau using all the prompts. Much like Nina however, this will be part of a larger project.

I chose to do this project as a woodburning and painting project. My husband has some storage boxes we bought that he wanted me to decorate so this was the perfect project for that. Using clip art and Canva I created the scene I wanted. After I printed it it was transferred on to the wooden lid of the box using graphite transfer paper. This requires me to tape the transfer paper and the image down to the box and trace all the parts I want to burn.

In this you can see The Empress and The Devil as The Lovers in The Chariot pulled by Strength (represented by the lion) which has Death riding on his back. I absolutely love how this came out as a scene. The burning came out really well too, as seen below.

The next step was painting. This is where I was going to do something new and a bit scary with this challenge. I painted this with my fountain pen inks. I didn’t know how the wood would take the inks. I was terrified of it bleeding everywhere. It actually worked better than I hoped. There are definitely areas that it bled into the grain but overall it behaved well. Some of the inks were more saturated than I had anticipated but overall I’m happy with the image. As you’ll see below some details on the burning were lost because of the darker colors but that’s part of the learning process.

I don’t know if I would do this type of painting again because when I look at the burning before and after I do feel a bit of regret at losing those details but we will see how this progresses over the future challenges. I am still happy with the fact the I tried something new and I can always find ways to bring those details back but am going to wait until the box is completely done. I will be adding to it as these challenges progress.

-Flower