I know, I said I was going to do this in December. Lately I'm a lying liar who lies, have you noticed? I think I need to make a new rule that states I will never ever specify *when* anything will be completed. Ever.

But the aces, having sat on my table waiting patiently to be re-detailed for weeks now, are all shiny and polished up.

Here are the all smooshed together versions, old:



(Damn, my worktable was clean back then. It took me a minute to figure out that photo was indeed taken on the table and not on the floor.)

And new:



The tarot minors gallery has been updated with the new versions.

Mostly I just wanted them to pop a bit more, for some reason I can't recall they were all fuzzy-edged and not particularly sharp. And I never liked the cup for the ace of cups, so that got a big old stripey makeover.

Much more pleased with these now. Will be pursuing full deck publishing options as soon as possible, but I am currently stuck in the Revisionland Hotel trying to fix my poor broken apart novel and that has to take priority right now. Rest assured that any & all tarot news will be posted here as soon as I have it.

Valentine Sale


<3 <3 <3




rainy day lovebirds print normally $25, on sale for $20
the phantomwise tarot lovers print normally $33, on sale for $28
love letters from the queen of hearts to the king of hearts and vice versa - a set of two moody mixed media paintings, was originally $265 for the set, was on sale for $165, now on ubersale for $115


All sale prices valid through February 14th

I knew from the beginning of the Phantomwise Tarot that I wanted to do a Happy Squirrel. I mean, it's a tarot card invented by The Simpsons, so how could I not?

Seems an appropriate day to have finished it, too, what with the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons tonight.

The Happy Squirrel originated in the "Lisa's Wedding" episode, when she encounters a fortune teller. Exchange as follows:

Woman: I've been waiting for you, Lisa.
Lisa: (gasps) How did you know my name?
Woman: Your nametag. Would you like to know your future?
Lisa: Heh, sorry, I don't believe in fortune telling. I should go.
Woman: What's your hurry? Bart and Maggie and Marge are at the joust, and Homer is heckling the puppet show.
Lisa: (gasps) Wow, you can see into the...present.
Woman: Now we'll see what the future holds.
[turns over a card from what looks like a Tarot deck]
Lisa: (gulps) The "Death" card?
Woman: No, that's good: it means transition, change.
Lisa: (relieved) Oh.
[turns over another card]
Lisa: Oh, that's cute.
Woman: (gasps) "The Happy Squirrel"!
Lisa: (timid) That's bad?
Woman: Possibly. The cards are vague and mysterious.

And since then a number of tarot decks have added a Happy Squirrel to their ranks. What does it mean? Well, I don't really know. The cards are vague and mysterious. But personally, I think this squirrel is up to something.

the happy squirrel


He's more of a red squirrel than a grey, because the red ones have those fabulously evil-looking tufty ears. And he has an acorn, but it's difficult to discern. So perhaps he only thinks he has an acorn. Or wants you to think he has an acorn.

Did I say in that post about the tarot kings that I was going to finish the Happy Squirrel and re-detailing before the end of the year?

That was lies.

The squirrel is started but not yet Happy. I haven't even pulled out the aces. It will be a January project, covered in the snow that is currently obscuring 2009 outside my window.

I had to re-create a storybird that flew away from its proper destination, birdnapped by mail thieves. And then there were holidays and sangria and now there are only a few hours left in 2009. Another year gets away from me. Sneaky year.

Anyway, the polishing up of the tarot deck is on the agenda for early 2010, as well as figuring out publishing options and all of that fun stuff.

I'll also be doing more postcards from the gods & some limited edition individually detailed prints.

But in general, 2010 is not going to be a big art year. It needs to be a big writing year, starting with going back to revisionland on the novel per agent requests and then working on draft number two of one of the two other rough drafts that have been really patient during this whole process.

This journal will likely not be updated all that frequently, not that it ever was, but it's likely to be even quieter around here. Any and all art-related news will be mentioned, of course, but mostly I will be over on erinmorgenstern.com and twitter.

Happy & Bright New Year Wishes for all of you.

Love & kisses,
e.

These took far too long, I know.

I had sketches for weeks that turned into months and then one day a couple weeks ago I decided I hated all of them and started over.

But now they're done. Really.


king of pentacles


( rest of the kings under the cut )

Each is, as always, 5"x7" acrylic on board.

Card meanings:

King of Wands
King of Cups
King of Swords
King of Pentacles

And now the Phantomwise Tarot is only some minor re-detailing and a Happy Squirrel away from completion. I'll be doing both of those things before the end of the year and working out publication details is on the top of my to-do list for 2010.

The ENTIRE deck can now be viewed at http://phantomwise.com/gallery/

All 78 paintings, done from October 2006 - December 2009.

Should have figured I'd eventually make a tarot deck, since I was born on 7/8/78.

Thank you all for your comments & support through this long strange endeavor.

I started working on these a few weeks ago. First it was just one piece. Then there was another one. Then I thought hey, maybe I'll do three.

Something tells me this is going to be an ongoing series.

But for now, the first three storybirds:

storybirds #1: which way do you want to go?


( More birds behind the cut. )

Each one is 4"x4" on 1.5" deep board. Available on Etsy for $55 each.


I am working on the kings. Seriously. I started them over though, because I was extremely unhappy with the sketches I had. So far two of them are shaping up nicely in their new drafts. I think they all wanted sharper-looking ensembles. Figures.

It is pouring rain here today, earlier I watched a squirrel taking a shower by my back porch.

Times like these I'm glad I do most of my shopping online.



A simple sale, for today only. Ends midnight eastern time.


All prints buy one get one (of equal or lesser value) free.


Simply buy any print on Etsy and note in the comments section at checkout which additional print you would like. No codes or anything, just the title of additional print. And you could tell me something nice if you would like.

All prints will ship on Monday.


Also, over at Wyrding Studios they're having a huge Black Friday sale, including $20 off the Phantomwise Tarot pendants. Some designs are sold out and many are almost gone, plus they're being taken down from the site after today, so this may be your last chance to grab one at an excellent price.




Happy shopping!

As expected, NaNoWriMo is eating my life for the month of November. Current total: 47,032. It's going kind of insanely well this year, and am likely going to aim for 75 or 80k by the end of the month, because I'm likely going to hit 50k tomorrow and I'm nowhere near finished plot-wise.

I am working on the tarot kings but they are being problematic. I have solid sketches for two of them but the other two aren't coming together as well. Trying to take my time and get them right, since they are the last of the deck.

But I do have something new to show off!

On Friday I randomly decided I wanted to finger paint. So I took out these little 3"x3" boards and finger painted. And then I added bits of old sheet music that was once wrapping paper from one of my very favorite Etsy stores, SavageSalvage.

The result is a set of three weird little pieces entitled music for the apocalypse.

music for the apocalypse #1


( #2 & #3 under the cut... )

They are each acrylic, torn sheet music, metallic gold powder & india ink on 3"x3" 3/4" cradled board. Some of the music wraps around the edges.

They are available on Etsy for $45 each. If anyone wants the whole set, e-mail me (phantomwise at gmail) or convo me on Etsy and I'll reserve them for you at a discount. Offer void if any are sold already, of course.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Today is the last day for the autumnal tarot giveaway! Will be pulling a winner at midnight, all Etsy purchases between now & then still qualify!

Tomorrow is the last day of the phantomwise anniversary sale!

Hope everyone is having a splendid Hallowe'en, a blessed Samhain and a lovely NaNoWriMo eve!

I had to go back and check my dates when I realized phantomwise is five years old, because that just seems wrong.

But all records seem to agree that the artistic excursion that eventually morphed into an almost-done tarot deck along with various other artsy diversions was launched on October 31st, 2004. So it is, indeed, five years old.

It's been through a lot of changes lately, but I think it deserves a candle in a Hallowe'en cupcake (which I shall be baking on Saturday, the frosting came with bat & pumpkin sprinkles!) and a sale.

So, this is the phantomwise 5th anniversary 5-day sale

I will go into longer detail in a moment, but essentially I have reduced prices on all the original art currently for sale on Etsy rather drastically, and with a lot of 5s.

Sale prices are valid through midnight on Sunday, November 1st.

All purchases made before midnight on Saturday, October 31st are eligible for the phantomwise autumnal tarot giveaway.

All sale purchases will be shipped on Monday, November 2nd. Mostly so if one of them wins the giveaway I can include the LE deck in the package. Also, boxing things gets time consuming because it often involves getting kittens out of boxes.


So here is the sale breakdown:

Remember the seasonal panoramic photos? They're finally up on Etsy, and they're on sale.

spring
summer SOLD
autumn
winter SOLD

They will normally be $155 but for the duration of the sale they are $105 each.

athena, the only currently available postcard from the gods is normally $100 and on sale for $55

rapunzel is normally $200 and is on sale for $155

The two remaining portraits of children with forgotten names and button eyes (one and three) originally $200 each are $55 each.

love letters from the queen of hearts to the king of hearts and vice versa - a set of two moody mixed media paintings originally $265 for the set of two is now $105 for the set.

hidden things, vintage & beach secrets were originally $140 each, on sale for $55 each.


All sale items can be found in the SALE section of my Etsy store.


If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or just want to say that you can't believe it's been five years either, please feel free to comment here or drop me an e-mail.

Five years! Sheesh. And yes, the tarot kings are in progress. I've been extremely busy with writing things lately so art stuff has fallen by the wayside a bit (and now it's almost NaNoWriMo time, which likely won't help) but things will get finished, slowly but surely.

This is just a quick reminder about the phantomwise autumnal tarot giveaway.

Any purchase on Etsy qualifies you to win a copy of the Limited Edition Phantomwise Tarot!

Contest runs through the end of the month & I only have a couple of entries so far.

Happy October!

Hey, let's have a raffle! If for no other reason than it's finally autumnal around here, and raffle sounds like ruffle which is irrelevant but still fun.



This is the Phantomwise Tarot Autumnal Giveaway.


The prize: A copy of the 22-card Limited Edition Phantomwise Tarot. One of only 100 in existence!

The rules: Make any purchase from phantomwise on Etsy from September 1st to October 31st and be entered to win. One entry per item purchased. Buy two prints, get two entries. Winner will be drawn randomly from all qualifying entries on November 1st.

The fine print: It's really pretty simple. You buy stuff, I put your name in a bowler hat. You buy more stuff, your name is in there more times and increases your chances. It's like The Hunger Games* only less violent. If you have questions or concerns or comments you can voice them here or convo me on Etsy.


That's it! Have fun! Tell your friends! I'll be adding more stuff to Etsy over the next few weeks as well.



*If you have not read this book yet do so immediately. And then read the sequel, Catching Fire, which just came out today and is sitting on my coffee table and I can hardly wait to spend all day tomorrow reading it.

Hey, remember this series?

I know, it's been awhile. I've been waiting for a deity to say "Hey, me next!" for ages. I even attempted a few that didn't really work. And then I figured something would show up when the time was right.

And then this morning I thought, well, one can never really have enough pictures of kittens.

And I thought perhaps Bastet would like a postcard.

And I found a photo of Tessa peering through the curtains in the studio.

And that was that.


postcards from the gods: bastet


( reverse behind the cut )

Photograph was adjusted in PhotoShop. Lots of fun with contrast and warming filters. I rather love the way her whiskers turned out. Photograph was mounted on postcard board, distressed with sandpaper, splattered with various tones of metallic gold paint and varnished for durability. It is titled, signed & dated on the back.

It is available on Etsy for $100.


I hope Bucket isn't too terribly jealous.

Hallowe'en seems to be sneaking up early this year, which is fine by me. I already found patchouli-scented black "Beware!" candles at Yankee Candle. (With skeleton bride & groom candle holder!)

Thus, the slightly early return of a seasonal print.



The Secrets of Witches is back up on Etsy.


Available now through the end of October.




Hopefully they will bring the crisp leaves and cool breezes and pumpkin spice lattes with them.



I am mostly a busy writing bee lately, working on literary agent requested revisions of the novel. I am planning on adding more originals to Etsy in the near future, though. Will update when things are listed.

Finished these earlier than I had expected to. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them and in the end I opted for simplicity and that seemed to be the best way to go.

They didn't want thrones. They were quite adamant about it.



queen of wands


( rest of the queens under the cut )

Card meanings here:

Queen of Wands
Queen of Cups
Queen of Swords
Queen of Pentacles

I'm not sure how long the kings will take. They'll probably be picky and want thrones and then I'll have to design them each fancypants ones and that could take awhile. But whatever they end up wanting they should be finished in September, and after that it's just a matter of some extra detailing and a Happy Squirrel and then the deck is finished. Not quite three whole years, but close.

I'd wanted to be finished with these on Friday but I got distracted by The Hunger Games. Couldn't bring myself to put it down and detailing was getting tedious anyway. I am a sucker for the siren song of a tremendously good book.

And I had good intentions of working on them over the weekend, too, but my weekend turned into adventures in Harry Potter and bank fraud, so I ended up finishing the knights this morning.

When I started these I didn't really know what I wanted to do with them, other than I was pretty sure I didn't want to paint a lot of ponies.

So, no ponies.

(No offense to the ponies. I do love ponies, I'm just not keen on painting them.)

knight of wands



( Rest of the knights (but no ponies!) under the cut. )

All, as usual, 5"x7" black & white acrylic on art board.

Card meanings over here:

Knight of Wands
Knight of Cups
Knight of Swords
Knight of Pentacles


I don't have sketches for the queens or kings yet, and I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with them. I might have to mull them over for awhile, but I'm still pretty optimistic that the entire deck should be complete by September or so.

This might be long. And possibly wordy. But there's a sale in the middle of it!

Firstly, the Phantomwise Tarot knights are sitting on my table looking kind of blurry, but they are in progress. They need a few more layers & detailing. Ideally they'll be done by Friday, but if they decide to be uncooperative they should still be finished by early next week.

Speaking of the Phantomwise Tarot, if you have visited phantomwise.com in the last few days you may have noticed that it's changed a bit. I've decided, after a great deal of pondering, to make it a site exclusively for the tarot deck. The name was already appropriate and the galleries needed some streamlining anyway. I'm still working on adjusting the gallery section but there will eventually be separate albums for each suit and such.

I am still going to be doing non-tarot art. It will be posted here and some of it will end up on Etsy. Mostly all that's disappeared into the ether are galleries of previous work. I might set up a portfolio-type gallery at some point, I haven't decided.

A lot of what was available, non-tarot art on phantomwise.com was already up on Etsy, and I'll be adding the rest of the currently available stuff to Etsy over the next couple of months. If there was a piece you had your heart set on please drop me an e-mail (phantomwise at gmail) and I can custom list it for you.

In the meantime, the original art that was already on Etsy (with some minor exceptions) is now on uber sale:

**************

Originals on Etsy SALE

All of these are original art, all prices are crazy low.

old stories & old ghosts #1 was $60, now $30
old stories & old ghosts #2 was $60, now $30
beach secrets was $140, now $85
love letters from the queen of hearts to the king of hearts and vice versa , set of two, were $265, now $150
vintage was $140, now $80
hidden things was $140, now $80
lost things: paths & time was $125, now $65 sold!
hauntings caught on film was $60, now $30 sold!

portraits of children with forgotten names and button eyes one, two & three originally $200 each, now $100 each.


Priority shipping within the US is included! May take 2-3 days to pack & send off depending on the size of the piece and how many boxes I have laying around. Sale prices valid until the end of the summer, but these might just be coming down rather than returning to previous prices, so buy them while you can. Please.

*************

In other news, I am working on a project on my other blog that you may have heard about elsewhere, but I never get sick of posting this image so I will post it here as well:



I am writing ten-sentence short stories to accompany my friend Carey's lovely photographs. New tales will be posted each Friday over on erinmorgenstern.com and cross-posted to the flax-golden community on dreamwidth. There is an LJ syndication feed over here.

The first story, simple as kisses, is over here.

And now you know why my pen name is slowly taking over my internet identity. Apologies for being confusing. All art is still signed as previous, until I can figure out how to make my signature illegible.

I think that's all the news for now. Still looking for a literary agent, still getting decent amounts of interest but nothing concrete. Knights forthcoming, on panthers and gyphons and wolves and bunnies, oh my.

These seemed like they took far too long, but part of that was because I had intended to sketch all the courts before starting any of the paintings.

That didn't really work. So since I had the pages and the knights sketched and the queens & kings were being problematic, I decided to go ahead and paint the pages and knights now and worry about the rest when they're done.

Pages are finished. Knights should be finished in a couple of weeks.

Considering I first sketched the Page of Swords (accidentally) in 2007 while working on sketches for Justice, maybe it just seems like these took a long time.

page of wands


( rest of the pages under the cut )

I was always going for a ballerina idea, but they ended up wanting to be circus ballerinas. All of them sort of echo the 2s a bit, as well.

Card meanings here:
Page of Wands
Page of Cups
Page of Swords
Page of Pentacles

Hi! I have been missing in action because June has been insane. And rainy. Really rainy. And dark. And did I mention the rain? There's light shining through my windows from some strange glowing orb in the sky, though, so that's something.

So now, here is a state of the phantomwise nation in bullet points, possibly with photos at the end:

• At the beginning of the month I started querying literary agents about my novel. The last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster of requests and rejections and being in mortal terror every time Inbox(1) shows up on my Gmail browser tab. I've had a pretty positive response so far but this process is slower than the slowest slow thing so it's going to be awhile before I can relax about my inbox. And yes, this is consuming my life right now. I'm trying to work on another novel and paint and distract myself. Trying.



• Partially related to the above but also due to various uncontrollable circumstances, I'm not doing the Concord Arts Market with Wyrding Studios as planned. I'm not pleased, because I was looking forward to it, but between ink issues and mental health and whatnot I wasn't going to be able to properly prepare for it, so it's for the best. I'm sad I don't get to meet Kyth's crazy new puppy yet, though.



• The pages for the Phantomwise Tarot are on my workbench as I type. Swords & Pents are done save for final detailing, Wands & Cups still need a few more layers. I was hoping to be finished with them this week but early next week is looking more likely. The knights are also sketched, and I'll be starting those in the next week or two. I don't have sketches for the queens & kings yet, but I decided to go ahead and do the pages & knights in the meantime.



• Sometime over the summer I am going to be revamping the Ety Store to include more originals. I'm also going to be drastically reducing prices on all available originals (basically everything here or here plus all the Wonderland at Night originals except for the Cheshire cat, and any recently posted originals), so if there's something you've had your eye on and you'd like to get a jump on that feel free to e-mail me (phantomwise at gmail) for personal pre-sales.



• Someday I will have more postcards from the gods. Today is not that day. Deity suggestions welcome, since all the deities that talk to me have postcards already except for Hades, who insists on being saved for last.

And now, in lieu of new art, photos of stuff that is not kittens:


Top of a rain-soaked tomb during a post-rain cemetery walk a couple weeks ago.


Door knocker that I adore on Essex Street.

I had more 6"x12" boards so I thought it might be fun to do something vertical. You know, eventually.

But then I had this idea on, um, Monday, and sketched it that night. Painted most of it yesterday and finished the detailing today.

She ended up being something of a fairy tale-inspired cousin to the phantomwise tarot, with just a teensy bit of color.

rapunzel

6"x12" acrylic on board

She'll probably end up on Etsy eventually. I'll be overhauling the Etsy store later this summer to include more originals.

I keep fluttering back and forth between painting projects and writing projects and I'm just generally busy lately. Knight sketches are almost done, still contemplating the next postcard from the gods. Watch this space.