Success, it is satisfying. The Six of Disks turned out way better than I thought it would. Color made so much difference! Once again too, the color scales were perfect for the card. The Six of Disks is the only decanic Disk that does not have a flecked color for the sephira, as that color is Golden Amber, for solar Tiphareth. It combines with the fertile colors of Taurus – mainly olive and brown and red-orange; as well as the lunar blues and silvers of the Moon.

Success also was very uplifting to paint.

Then comes Failure. It was not that the artwork faltered, in fact it was not a bad card to paint. But the thoughts in mind occasionally reflected themes of the type of failure that the Seven of Disks can represent. That is, thoughts of abandoning the Great Work. I don’t mean stopping the project, but perhaps stopping thinking creation was going anywhere. Nihilism. None of these thoughts were serious as I am too far in to go back. But they fleeted by.

But hey, the card came out good and the colors once again were perfect for the subject matter I took a few “in progress” pictures that show how and where I placed the colors according to the Golden Dawn color scale.

I started with the color for Netzach of Assiah, which is Olive, flecked gold. This is an early stage, where a transparent olive color was laid over the scales a couple of times, and then, each scale was touched with a highlight of opaque golden color.

Next I decided to add some colors of Taurus in the form of Red-Orange and Rich Brown. These colors paint the four Kerubic heads of the beasts of YHVH and the fixed signs.

Ugly stage – an under painting for the Supernals and for the waters issuing out of Daath which ultimately will be Black, rayed Blue. The ten horns of the beast are in Red-Orange.

Some more in-between stages. You can see the first layer of rich brown on the vertical arm of the cross is splotchy. That is just how these inks behave on top of plastic; some colors worse than others. To get it like the final artwork I probably painted over it six times. Maybe more; I did not count but it was a lot.

This is what I call an “almost done” shot. But I had to work on it a lot even after it was this stage, adding highlights and low lights and touch ups and fixing colors and brushstrokes…this was probably a day or a couple of days before it was finished. But at least here most of the surface is covered.

 

The finished card. Good enough (almost typed God enough, ha); not a Failure. And the Work continues. I’m glad to have Failure behind me. I really want to keep going, in spite of the toil.