Creating the Three of Swords
- paintponystudios
- Sep 30
- 6 min read
Anyone who knows me well is intimately familiar with the fact that I love Halloween-- and if we're getting stupidly specific, I have a fascination with the undead, witches, and the occult. Even though I sprinkle these things in throughout the year as they come to mind, I try not to unleash the "spooky-scariest" stuff until Halloween time, and even then, it's always a toss-up as to whether or not an idea that I have will make it from the drawing board to your sticker books.
In preparation for 'Ween Season, I always start off by putting out feelers to see what my followers are looking for. It's one thing to follow trends (Which I also do! For color palettes and general "themes," I often look to the Michaels' Halloween section to see what decor they're selling for the year.) but I also love getting real-time feedback from all of you and THEN seeing what I can come up with. This year, I had the following suggestions:
Werewolves
Nightmares
Demons
Frankenstein's Monster
Vampires
and witches!! Lots and lots of witchy requests!
For this particular project, I saw "demon" and "witch" and took off SPRINTING. I had something in mind that would fit both of those prompts-- a tarot card featuring my Best Girl, Lava.
You guys have seen Lava before-- she has popped up as a Sticker Club release, a regular run sticker, and on the cover of my coloring books! Lava is a character that has had about 15 years of lore and 3-4 designs over the years (also something I want to eventually share with everyone in-depth,) and she really means a lot to me on a personal level.
(If I can somehow scrounge up some ANCIENT Lava artwork to share with you all, I will. It's gonna require digging around in my pre-teen sketchbooks, and I don't know if I have the strength to do that right now lol)
Lava's background is one that's rooted in magic-- the stripes on her body are a cartoonishly simple way of depicting veins and blood vessels, her body itself is actually rock haphazardly mixed with skin, and her hooves are metal. A statue brought to life, Lava is, to put it bluntly... a horse-shaped object. Part of her story revolves around grief and loss and how that effects both her and her person (Lee,) so once I decided I wanted to delve into Tarot Territory, that helped me choose a card.
The Three of Swords card symbolizes heartbreak, trauma, and emotional turmoil. When the Three of Swords is drawn, it can mean the querent either is (or is soon to be experiencing) a period of grief, loss, or sadness or will soon be facing emotional challenges. This felt like a perfect card for Lava, given that her background carries with it that sense of loss and loneliness, but also, a time of processing those emotions and giving oneself the time and space needed to heal.
For those who aren't aware, Lava has a somewhat "demonic" form that accompanies her regular horse-like self.
When provoked, Lava's jaw cracks open all the way to her ears! It's such a fun thing to draw and write, as I'm a huge fan of body horror, but I haven't had a chance to do anything with that idea in YEARS. (Also a MASSIVE thanks to one of my lovely friends for drawing such banger art of my girl-- the above drawing lives in my head rent-free.)
Alrighty-- so we've now got the concept of a tarot card featuring Lava's "demon" form, representing the Three of Swords. Perfect! Now I could start sketching--
Lava has a very Teke-like body shape, so I found some of the weirdest Akhal-Teke head and neck references for her overall look. Then, I began looking at various media depictions of "zombie horses" to see how I could play with the look of her jaw coming apart. (I also remembered what I did with A-Muk for the Superhero Club! That was a fun piece.) When it came time to add the teeth, I wanted them distinctly un-horse-like, so I played around with something similar to a dog.
(The teeth part took AGES to get right, but I'm super happy with the result!)
Tarot cards have a special size, which is about 2.75" by 4.75", so I knew I needed to work in the same ratio in order to make it look authentic. Next came the swords, the frame, and the possibility of a background element. Combined, they look a little like this--
Okay, base is accomplished! (And it looks AMAZING!) ................now what?
You're probably thinking color; I was also thinking color. My only issue is that sometimes I like to play with local color vs. arbitrary color. If you're not an art nerd, hang on a sec, 'cause I'll explain.
Local color is the color an object really actually is in real life as it appears in natural lighting, without any interference from shadows or reflections. For example, under natural lighting conditions, a red apple is, well... red.
Arbitrary color is color chosen by the artist to convey emotions or meaning, regardless of what the object's true color actually is. Think of the Blue Horses by Franz Marc-- no horse is actually blue in real life, but choosing that color helps with the emotion and aesthetic of the piece.
Lava's local colors are black, pink, and purple, and they look wonderful on her, but was it right for the piece? I wasn't sure, and I didn't want to drive myself insane by starting the coloring process from scratch every time I had a new idea... so I whipped out a technique from my college illustration days and made a gradient map!
So, what's a gradient map? (If you guys have read this far, you're learning so much today, and I'm proud of you lol)
A gradient map is a technique used in digital drawing that applies colors to an image based on its grayscale values. Using the above grayscale on the left, I was able to take a gradient of my choosing and apply those colors to the grayscale, matching up my darks and lights. (For example, in the middle image, white was translated to yellow, black became a dark purple, midtone grays became a peachy-pink, etc.)
By creating the gradient map, I was able to try out a buuunch of different colors with just a few clicks (saving me a lot of time and lot of headaches!) Here a few more looks at what we could've had--
So many cool options! For the longest time, I was going back and forth between something very neon and something very "old-timey photo"-esque. But I also wanted it to pay homage to Lava's character background and her person's magic-- when Lee uses magic, it's on a color scale from blue to pink; plus, Lee herself has gold hair, so I wanted to see if I could work that in!
Once I felt like I had exhausted the possibilities of my gradient map, it was time to line my sketch and start the real thing.
As you can see in the above image, I settled on blue/pink/peach/purple and ran with it! I decided to add a light scattering of stars to the background as well as the magic circle behind Lava's head. And while this was great, a few things needed to be tweaked once the frame was added.
What changed?
The frame was finalized! Using a text tool in a separate art program, I added the "Three of Swords" text and warped it, then made sure that the color gold I used for the frame fit nicely with the contained artwork.
The magic circle in the background had its opacity lowered so as not to distract from Lava's head.
The pink in the background was toned down for this same reason.
Contrast was pushed a bit further and the artwork itself was brightened for the printing process.
Lava's veining was outlined in order to create a better contrast from her body.
And there you have it! This is about 3-4 weeks' worth of work combined into one blog post! I hope you guys found this fun and insightful, and I'm super sorry I haven't done MORE blog posts like I said I was going to. I've been so busy that I sometimes feel like it's a miracle I even manage to get artwork out!
You can snag this sticker (and possibly its' actual, physical tarot card version!!) during my Potions & Ponies Halloween drop on October 24th! The first 30 people to purchase all three of this year's Halloween stickers will receive a FREE promotional tarot card, so make sure you have your alarm set and your WiFi nice and warmed up-- you won't wanna miss out on this year's event!
I would also like to offer this design as prints and potentially t-shirts and hoodies, so stay tuned ^^
-Emma
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