At the beginning of the month, I decided to take my hulking new Epson printer (AKA Bernard) for a test drive. Once we worked out how to stop him biting chunks out of the paper, he started spitting out the most gorgeous prints. The beautiful pigment ink combined with some Canson velvet fine art paper (of a weight and texture similar to that of watercolour paper, only a little more subtle) made it hard to tell apart my hand drawn ink pieces from the prints. Now, you have to remember that, for many of these images, I have only ever seen them on a cold computer screen, so printing them out has suddenly given them a whole new life. It has also given me the confidence to finally start up my Inklining Etsy shop.
I have wanted to write this for some time now. Picture me as the classic writer scrawling across reams of paper only to scrunch them up and throw them onto a colossus mountain of discarded words. I don’t know why I can’t get such a simple story written down. Perhaps it is because there is no way to tie it up into a happily-ever-after. In fact, there is no neat way to tie it up at all, no revelation, no satisfaction, no ending.
But I have to find a way to write it down because the deck has a name, and it is an important name to me. I am uncomfortable with people assuming I have chosen its name because it sounds mystical and arcane. I am worried that people will think I am being flippant about the low vision community. So, here it is in all of its messy, incomplete glory: the story of how the Blind Tarot deck found its name.
I have been putting it off, but the time has finally come. I am pinching my nose and plunging head first into a towering wave of cards. That’s right, it’s time to do some editing.
If you have been following me on Instagram, there’s a chance you had to endure months of the awkward, grainy illustrations that marked the beginning of my tarot card project. The graininess can be credited to my dedication to drawing each card in ink. Sure, they looked great in person, but their charmingly rough edges translated into sloppiness on screen and in print. And so, I have started the laborious process of tracing these old cards digitally to bring them up to spec with the rest of the deck.
