Tarot Tuesday (Wednesday): Knight of Swords

Maybe I should start calling these Tarot Wednesday since I've been good about forgetting to post on actual tuesdays.... Oh well! 

Today, I present to you the Knight of Swords:

10.5" x 17.25" - Oil on watercolor paper

 I really like all of the knights cards from this deck because they are all riding interesting animals. As you can see with my previous post with the Knight of Cups here. I love horses, but who doesn't want to paint a guy riding on a charging bull? 

For this one, I did a couple thumbnails to try to determine which route to go with the illustration: 

 

The first thumbnail was a bit pulled back with a more heroic pose, and the second option is based on the original Rider-Waite design seen above with the knight charging across the image. The writer and I decided to go with the second image and I was off to sketch. Due to time constraints I decided to do the sketch digitally: 

  I like to do most of the sketching and final work with the card template visible so that I can keep in mind the final crop and text placement for the printed version of the cards.

Well that's all for today. Until next week!