Well now. This may be my favorite card in the deck, and until a couple of hours ago I had no idea what in heck I was going to do with it.
A couple of years ago I took a photo to go into the book Melies' Notebook and Other Stories, as an illustration for my short story called, you guessed it, "Punch & Judy." Mr. P. and I go a little way back. Well, I wanted to use that photo in this deck... somehow. It had never been printed in full color and I was kind of proud of it. FYI, the photo shows almost the entirety of my modest collection of Punch stuff.
I was working on the suit of wands this afternoon, going through the art that I have on hand, and I looked at the photo again, kind of wistfully, wishing that I knew how in heck I could work it into the deck. Then I focussed on the little teacup. and the coin dropped. Of course! It was the King of Cups.
I dropped what I was doing and set about making the new card. Immediately I ran into a problem: in making the original photo, I'd artified it up and scratched the hell out of it and antiqued it to within an inch of its life: and it just didn't WORK within the framework of the deck design. ARRRGH!!!!
I had no choice but to go back, pull down my Punch stuff, and re-shoot the photo from scratch. Of course I did artify it after the fact, but in a milder way and one that better matches the style of the deck. The last and most fun thing that I did was tip in another layer so that I could have Punch's little foot dangling over the edge of the stage.
An easy card to make, a FUN card to make, and one that I have an emotional connection to, because it makes use of things I feel connected to.
And just for yucks, here's the original photo, the one I couldn't use in the deck. You can click on it to enlarge:
Thanks for taking this journey with me!
-- Frede.
