Another recent piece of mine based on a photograph taken earlier this spring. I love the way dead-nettle flowers seem to peek out from its crown. (No A.I., as always.)
Red Dead-Nettle
Category Archives: Art
A Queen in the Green
A horned queen in green, styled after the woodcut traditions of early modern playing cards. The beginnings of a future card deck? Possibly. (It’s sad to have to state this, but I never use A.I. in my work.)
Three Omens
Three pieces currently in development, for use in a forthcoming work…
Horse Nettle
Here is a thorn among the green,
Sharp and tender as a tooth.
Here are five songs for the dead,
Five movements, five gestures,
Five dances for that dark company
In five ballrooms, every one as lush
As these woods in the long exhale
At the end of summer. The grasses
Yellow, and the flower in the throng
Of barbed horse nettle sharpens
Its bone-white blades, pale as haunting,
Against the grit of forest floor. What
Does the ghost of the poison flower
Dream as she withers around her globe
Of fruit, clutching her green pearl,
Her waxing prize, even as her petals
Dry to husk? Not even the blackbirds
Can conjure the music she hears,
The sixth song, the one no creature
Of flesh can sing, fragile as we are.
Black Nightshade
“Black nightshade is sometimes confusingly referred to as ‘deadly nightshade’ in older herbals due to its fruit, which does somewhat resemble the berries of the belladonna plant. Its flowers are quite distinct, though, being small and very delicate blooms of white and yellow. The American variety (solanum ptychanthum) has glossy berries, while the berries of the solanum nigrum are typically more matte in appearance. Most varieties of black nightshade contain levels of the toxin solanine that are quite dangerous to the body…”
-from The Charmer’s Root: Witching Ways with Common Flora
Original illustration based on a plant found in the wild.
Green Weaver
“If you wish to live and thrive, let a spider run alive.”
Hillside Graves
Woodcut-style illustration on an aged paper background. Available on prints, greeting cards, and more at https://rjstudio.threadless.com/designs/hillside-graves.
Starry Toad
Woodcut-style illustration on an aged paper background. Available on prints, greeting cards, t-shirts, and more at https://rjstudio.threadless.com/designs/starry-toad/prints.
New Occult Art Prints Available
As many of you know, I’ve been in love with woodcuts for the longest time, which prompted me to take a printmaking class years ago. After developing my own process of woodcut-style illustration for the Age of Witchery Tarot, I’ve decided to take another leap and reinstate my old Threadless-powered art shop with some new work. These pieces are now available for purchase in the form of fine art prints, greeting cards, tees, and pins. Visit the shop here.
Announcing the Age of Witchery Playing Card Deck
When I set out to create the Age of Witchery Tarot Deck, I of course knew that there would also be a playing card iteration of this project. Playing cards are, for many, a more earthy, flexible tool for divination. Playing cards offer simple patterns of suit and number and dual coloration of red and white instead of the complex imagery of the trump sequence. Like tarot, readers rely on the oscillations of symbols in order to form meanings, but unlike tarot, the playing card deck feels somehow humble, down to earth, and deeply practical as opposed to lofty and philosophical.
Like the Age of Witchery Tarot, the Age of Witchery Playing Card Deck draws on adapted woodcuts from the 1700s alongside my own illustration work. I ultimately decided to create a bridge sized deck (2.25 inches by 3.5 inches), which is slightly narrower than poker sized cards (2.5 inches by 3.5 inches). I like this size simply because you can fit more cards comfortably on a smaller surface. I chose to maintain the black and red coloration, but with the addition of green in the black court cards or face cards, creating more visual contrast for the sake of the reader, who is often scouring a spread for patterns and reflections between cards. While I wanted to maintain the weathered, antiqued background of the Age of Witchery Tarot, this needed to be lighter and brighter on such small cards for ease of readability, resulting in an amber color that is similar, but different from the rust or leather color on its sister deck. Like its sister, this deck of cards comes with a link to a digital guide, including a bit of history, interpretations, and spreads.
The two distinct features of this deck that will stand out most to cartomancers are its reversibility and the inclusion of numeric glyphs. Each card is designed so that it is truly asymmetrical, meaning that one can tell if the card is upright or reversed. Many of us, of course, choose not to read reversals, but I wanted this deck to at least offer the choice rather than ignore the question entirely. The numeric glyphs that appear on the number cards are unobtrusive, but clear visual cues derived from both the number of the card (usually translated into a number of lines) as well as the subtle symbolism of basic geometric configurations and their relation to witchcraft. The benefit here is that one can, of course, simply read the number on the card, but with such small cards, one might also rely on quickly recognizing these geometric forms by candlelight, a cross signaling four, a line signaling two, a tree signaling ten, and so on.
This may sound like a simple thing, but I’m particularly proud of the suit symbols as they appear on the minor cards. This was one of the most difficult choices because I did not want to substantially change them, but I wanted to breathe into them the same aesthetic and flavor of the Age of Witchery Tarot. They are each designed in the style of woodcuts, featuring delicate cut-outs of vines and moons. The cards are printed, of course, and not pressed with wooden blocks coated with ink as they would have been hundreds of years ago, but designing in this style gives the cards a feel of something older than themselves, connecting the deck, which is admittedly modern, to older designs and methods that came before, like part of a living tradition.
For now, the Age of Witchery Playing Card Deck, like its sister tarot deck, is available via PrinterStudio, which also offers bulk order discounts so that retailers may profit from sales.
May your cards be ever sharp. Order your deck here.
