I started this deck at about the time I began making mini decks and giving them away as freebies to go along with my limited edition majors-only decks. There used to be big areas in the cards' uncut sheets, and instead of throwing these away, I placed mini deck designs on them to both not let these areas go to waste and also to give more to those who buy my stuff. It also meant a lot more work for me since these tiny decks were hell to cut haha But at least my buyers end up happy. J Anyway, this was supposed to be one of those freebie mini decks, but I never got around to finishing it. It was one of many decks I was working on when that big flood hit back in '09. I was able to recover much of my drawn line art (thankfully, I was already using waterproof/resist ink back then), but I had to put these decks aside for the meantime (to be picked up and continued later on) as they reminded me of the losses from the flood, so I began to work on other new decks. Having seen the samples above again after all these years has made me want to finish this deck. While I like their original dimensions and size, I may have to redraw them and change their dimensions so they could fit in the dimensions of one of The Game Crafter's mini card sizes.

I was playing around with the images of the Tarot de Maria Celia, testing for a couple of final looks for the image, when one of the results ended up as something which could work for a new deck: something faux engraved, something which I call a fauxsimile (I swear my humour will one day kill me). The goal is to make images which look like old rustic woodcuts, rough engravings, and even grave rubbings printed on aged parchment. Inciso is engraved in Italian. It also sounds a bit like my surname.

The deck is available via The Game Crafteroxed Edition (link).

The deck is also available in digital form via Phuture (link).

Deck Details

2014. Majors-only. Full 78-card deck. Non-scenic pips. Available via The Game Crafter.

This deck is the Maria Celia Tarot’s wayward sister. When I was creating the Maria Celia, I would post samples of the line art and coloured images in Aeclectic’s Tarot Forums. I was focused on finishing drawing the line art of the images of the entire deck and have these coloured, so I hadn’t researched on the old French titles of the cards. I instead posted the samples with made up titles – puns on the cards themselves, and, with the minors, badages (wich I basically made up haha, they’re bad adages) which relate to the meanings of the cards. I’m still thinking up puns for the entire deck, plus I’m also considering redrawing the entire deck, so it won’t use the Maria Celia’s images. Pardon the watermarked sample images; they were the samples I mentioned I posted back in 2014.

The deck follows the standard Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) imagery. This began as an art experiment of sorts. I wanted to try colouring using a dark-to-light method. Most people generally start off with a white ground/canvas/paper and then add colour and shading to it. Working dark-to-light reverses this process with me starting with a black ground, adding colours and adding “light” to it, with the parts of the ground left exposed representing the shading of the image. I’ve seen works done in this method, and they had this incredibly luminous feel to them, and I want to achieve a similar look for this series. It’s also an exercise for my chiaroscuro and tenebrism.

The cards are extremely small, perhaps the smallest produced by the artist. I made the art style cartoony.  They however, still follow the tarot’s Marseilles tradition. This is my second Marseilles-inspired deck (the first being el Tarot de Marcelino) The cards do not have titles or numerals on them, and instead rely on their visual composition to indicate which of the tarot’s archetypes they represent.

The deck originally came as a freebie to the Tarot Rikit.

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommend that you check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.

Deck Details

2010. Majors-only. Limited edition (50 copies, signed and numbered). Mini deck. Comes in a handmade mini paper envelope.

UPDATE: TAROT DE MARIA CELIA WILL BE PRINTED BY US GAMES SYSTEMS INC SOON. I WAS ALLOWED TO SELL A COUPLE MORE OF THE GAME CRAFTER EDITIONS (SEE LINKS BELOW), BUT I WILL BE PULLING THOSE OUT OF THE GAME CRAFTER SOON TO MAKE WAY FOR THE MASS MARKET EDITION PRINTED BY US GAMES.

 The deck’s art draws inspiration from the tarot’s Marseilles tradition, and closely follow the visual organization of each card. The art style is my own take on the said tradition, with deliberately non-realistic figures and poses. I made the visuals heavily textured and are meant them to evoke an aged, worn, and sometimes dirtied feel.

The original edition of the deck was self-published in 2014, and was available via The Game Crafter. Production of the original edition has been discontinued to make way for the US Games version of the deck.

The deck is also available in digital form via Phuture (link).

Deck Details

2014 (self-published). Majors-only. Full 78-card deck. Non-scenic pips. Available via The Game Crafter in “boxed” and “box-less” “(no tuck-box, just the cards) sets.

The deck is inspired by the Marseilles tradition of tarot, an old historical tradition with austere figures and non-illustrated pips. I drew the figures in a “cutesy” manner, with mismatching eyes, and with heavy hatching intended to be an homage to medieval woodcuts. The title is a pun on both the name “Marseilles”, and the title “Marcelino, Pan y Vino”. The cards were printed using a burgundy tinted ink, in heavy craft board – my intent was for the cards to have a rustic look and feel.

Given its very limited edition release, the deck is now out-of-print.  For interested parties, I recommend that you check with online auction sites such as Ebay or inquire with specialist tarot stores such as Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.

Deck Details

2009. Full 78-card deck. Non-scenic pips. Limited edition (70 copies, signed and numbered). With Happy Squirrel card. Comes in a handmade hardcover clamshell box.

The cards are small, around half the size of normal tarot cards. In terms of imagery, the cards’ draw theirs from the standard Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck, but with certain artistic, if idiosyncratic, liberties taken. I decided to make the figures are featureless, with human forms having black skin while angelic beings have white (and the devil having red). I wanted it to look a bit like Matisse paper cut-outs glued together to make collages which represent scenes from the RWS deck. As for the deck’s colours, I chose ones which suggest a retro-vintage feel, since I thought more muted colours would go well with the “muted” figures in the cards.

They were originally sold via Tarot Garden, but are now out-of-print. For interested parties, I recommended that you inquire with Tarot Garden (link) for possible available copies.

Deck Details

2010. Majors-only. Limited edition (50 copies, signed and numbered). Mini deck. Comes in a handmade mini paper envelope.