Wanted to share some pieces I have thus far for a Hades themed tarot deck I’m working on!
Super excited to be working on this c:
Haven’t been working on the tarot deck as much as I’ve wanted to, sort of stuck on some designs, so decided to share the cards I did get done to get my motivation back a bit ^^
Really proud of how Cerberus came out~
9/22 fully done this far, 9/78 as a whole done
Reblogging this again to get more motivation to truck along with this project again ^^’ I am determined to actually complete this project! So hopefully you guys like what you see and want to see this project completed too~
Do you have any tips on drawing body horror and character design? When I've tried to design some characters with body horror they all end up looking rather friendly 😅
(Disclaimer; this is my advice, not rules. Break them as you wish)
Despite not doing it on purpose, a lot of my art is tagged as body-horror. I’ve embraced it. Here are my 3 pillars for frightening art. I don’t have to follow them all at once, at least one is enough.
Nature
Get inspired by nature. Not necessarily by gore and wounds, but by things that look normal in one context but might appear unsettling in another. A great example is my pumpkin creature; everyone has seen the insides of a pumpkin but adding that texture to a living body made everyone react more strongly to it. I highly recommend natural things with strange textures and patterns (especially seeds)
Book Recommendation; The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel
I recently bought this for all the gorgeous pattern and creature drawings. It’s a beautiful book for those who want to draw horror based on nature. Careful if you have tyrophobia, this has some INTENSE patterns.
Subtlety
In either execution or concept.
In execution; give the drawing other recognizable characteristics. The gore is NOT them, it’s just part of them. An example would be my cowboy creature. They have the coat, the hat, the boots, the smile…and then you notice the heads. Give your character more than their frightening parts.
In concept; If you want the bright reds and obvious gore, follow one simple concept. In the example below, the concept was a wound surrounded by mushrooms. That is all. If I were to add ‘but also mushrooms leave their eyes, and bloody tears fall from them, and they have gashes in their skin, and’’ it would have made the impact of all of those concepts collapse. Like a bed of nails. The more nails you add, the less a single individual nail will hurt.
Feeling
It follows the theme above. I noticed horror works better when it’s not an abudance but also when it’s relatable. I’ve seen people react more intensely to an animated character brushing a line of yarn against their eyeball than an animated character having their head explode in blood, brains, and bone. You can draw from emotional feelings as well, turning your mental pain into a physical manifestation of it.
This is not a must follow because I do plenty horror art without being vulnerable nor making myself uncomfortable, I just notice people react when they can relate and feel it too.
Monster fucker this, monster fucker that. What if I want a monster RELATIONSHIP huh?! Monster HAND HOLDING, monster INTIMATE CONVERSATIONS, monster COMFORTABLE SILENCE??
What are you thinking about for the design of the fool or have you already done it?
Hey there, thanks for the ask!
I honestly had to think for a second about what you were referring to ^^’ but I plan to have the fool card be Zag
It’s just the composition of design I’m fighting with > < I want it to be Zag overlooking the first layer of the underworld, kinda like how we see in the game when we first start out, but also want a good bit of focus be on Zag himself
Gonna play around with concept thumbnails so hopefully will figure it out soon ^^
