Page of Pentacles. The sensualist.

   The character of the Page of Pentacles is an earthy one.  The figure in this card has a masculine look even though the Page's are often regarded as the "Princess" cards, representing either young or female characters.
   He gazes raptly upon the pentacle in his hands, similar to all the court cards with the suit of pentacles. This suit has a very absorbing quality which causes many people to get caught up in the material aspects of their lives. The pentacle itself looks almost weightless in his hands, as if it were ready to float away.
    The card itself is very green and verdant and the colours particularly stand out with a lot of contrasts between the greens and reds and the oranges and blues. There are flowers beneath his feet and a copse of trees behind him, while to the right one can make out a field which appears in the Knight of Pentacles.
    There isn't a great many clues as to the nature of this individual other than he represents the earthy aspect of earth. In such, he is enraptured by the very element of earth. He is likely to prize the sensory nature of his being as being paramount. Taste, touch, smell, sight and sound are all important to him. He is a sensualist in the purest sense of the word. He is the child of the earthy court cards and as such is still very much like a child learning to experience the world through their body.
     This character has not learned enough yet to be pragmatic or set in his ways, he simply is too absorbed within his own experience to give it much thought. His lack of all the other elements can have him come across as emotionless or lacking in the finer aspects of being, but he is simply uninterested in them.
   The pentacles themselves are related to money and this is important to him, it is gateway that allows him to pursue greater sensory indulgences. Touch is also a primary sense for him and any career or occupation that allows him to be tactile works well with this character, he likes to be physical and to work directly with his hands. The predominance of green suggests he could be a gardener or be somehow connected to the vegetative world.
   This card is not an aspect I have a great connection with and is an element I find difficulty embodying. My astrological chart has no earth in it and until recently green has held little or no interest to me as a colour. The appearance of this card does relate to an aspect of my life that I am attempting to bring into fruition though. I have recently been in touch with a massage school here in the hopes of being able to add this modality to my skills. I have done energy work for almost 10 years now and have been happy to continue to build and grow my skills there. But, recently I have found the need to expand and add an earthy element to my practice. There are simply some difficulties within the energy system and body that are much easier to deal with physically. Most problems have a physical element at least somewhere in the process and that has been an element that I have been unable to work with.
    The sticking point has been money. My business has picked up a little, certainly enough to feel a little more comfortable with how things are progressing and there is certainly hope for the future. But it is not quite at the level where I am comfortable also paying for a course in massage along side it. This is a shame as I have the time, but not the resources to make it work at the moment. Since I am a relatively new resident in the US I am unable to get any kind of loan as my credit score has to start from scratch.
   I have definitely been feeling the need to add an earthy component and this card is another nudge in that direction. The page however is never likely to take financial risks, he is too practical for that and I feel in this he is right. I have certainly undertaken more than my fair share of risky ventures and been burned just as many times.
  However there is also the part of me that understands that I may well be trying to make this choice because it is the seemingly best of available options. Settling for a choice that doesn't fully fulfill simply because it is available is a difficulty I have faced before and I often have trouble with this especially when it comes to material choices. There are often better ways to be fulfilled and leaping for a boat that is passing close by, but not stopping for you can be a risky proposition. Unless you are certain of course and I don't feel certain about this.
   I believe in the end the card is showing me a possibility, certainly one that could become a reality. But is also a chance for me to see how strongly I want it and right now I am wavering, so I don't feel I will be leaping for this anytime soon.

Creative block

There has been a significant block in my creative life that I have (hopefully) banished within the last few weeks. I am still going through the debris that is left behind after you shatter a block and keeping my eyes open to make sure it doesn't re-establish itself if my attention wanes.

An old friend recently commented on my most recent artwork and I began to relay why it had been such an ordeal for me to create. As I was doing so I realised that I had kept this particularly ugly incident in my life under wraps all those years ago and those closest to me at the time had no idea what I had been going through. This was pretty much par for the course all those years ago, I had no idea that I could share my burdens and have the support of my friends and maybe they could have helped the skewed perspective that I left within.

I have always had a great love of fantasy, I recall reading the Greek myths when I was only 6 or 7 years old (in a children's format of course!) and imagining what it was like to ride a Pegasus to battle and defeat the Chimera. My love of drawing was something that I also developed, although I remember most of my school projects revolving around shoes and actual still life objects. When I got to my teens I do recall drawing dragons and knights along with the typical space ships and ninjas. Although I think that my life drawing was better and I preferred the attention those got rather than my imaginative drawings.

My experiences at high school and college were less than thrilling with regards to my art. With the exception of a few talented life drawing teachers my artistic aspirations were struggling through a barren wilderness. Most of the art teachers felt it was perfectly acceptable to leave the class room and often not re-appear till the end of the class. I was a child that needed constant direction and I often felt lost in those times and my artwork would suffer. College was worse and it could often number in the weeks before I could spot a teacher lazily drifting down the hall with a mug of tea in their hands and the projects often consisted of little more direction than "do whatever you want". This was great for the driven artists (of course there are always a few) who decided to create exhibits of rotting meat, curtains of used nappies (diapers) and images of women attached to milking machines. I yearned for the days of the simple project...just draw your shoe. But alas those simpler days had gone.

University dawned brightly for me and for the first few years I got back into my stride. Many of the projects I was given as an Illustration major were a challenge to me. We learned to master the different mediums and unusual techniques in watercolours, acrylics, chalk, charcoal, etching....you name it, we learned it. Then the second year dawned and we moved onto individual projects and "briefs".  I recall doing a project in which we combined parts of an animal together from various reference to make a "chimera" in the most technical sense. I loved the project and it must have awoken something in me because I realised that if I could draw anything I wanted then surely I could begin to draw fantasy pictures once more.

The next project I decided to paint a wizard casting a spell surrounded by a celtic knot-work border. It took me a while to master how to draw the intricacies of the knot-work, but eventually I finished my piece. When it came time to show our tutor our work I happily showed my work to her, hoping for some encouragement. Unfortunately she seemed to consider the piece and then said to me " You aren't good enough to do this kind of work, you never will be. It would be better if you tried to do something that uses what skills you have. Fantasy art is so competitive and you need superb references. Better to do something that will sell."

I guess I should have just disregarded what she said, but to me, a person who needed that firm direction it seemed like good advice. I could see how I might not be good enough. She was the tutor, what did I know about fantasy artwork? I didn't want to be poor did I? So I put away my ideas of pure fantasy and concentrated on what I was good at.

Unfortunately things didn't get any better. The three female teachers who ran the course had been in a review with one of the female students and had remarked that they believed men had it easy in life compared to women and that to rectify that they lowered the grades of all the male students. The female student decided that it was not really her place to do anything or say anything (other than to let some of the guys know). This meant there was no ground to lodge a complaint.

In the third year I decided that I would try my hand at computer artwork..maybe get a job in the games industry, another of my passions. So I spent my time learning the software by myself to produce some artwork. They didn't respond to well to that either. They said that computer art was cheating and there was no future in it and that I had better stop trying. At this point my stubbornness kicked in and I kept on with my projects. This was stopped when they said if I kept trying they would simply fail me regardless of how good my work was.

At this point exhaustion took over and I decided that I would at at least like to come away with a passing grade. As you can imagine, I stepped away from artwork as soon as I finished my schooling and didn't touch pencil to paper for almost 8 years. What caused me to pick it up is another story, but the block remained.

I realised this year that I could no longer abide having listened to their "advice" and would not be free until I had produced a piece of fantasy work in 3D. The picture below is the result of that thought. I used no reference and it came wholly from my imagination.