Last week I started designing a fortune telling playing card deck based on the 36 Mlle. Lenormand card deck of recent antiquity.  The final copies of these cards will be fully inked with pen and brush with a few areas painted red -- meaning I will be working with only three colors: red, black, and white which are the colors of the stages of a woman's life.  Red is a color symbolizing the period of a woman's life when she is most fertile.  Black is old age and white represents girlhood.  So, no surprise, my Lenormand deck is more feminist in nature.  The following are pencil drawings of the Spades court cards.  The first thumbnail is a sketch placed on tracing paper.  The second is the final pencilled drawing transferred onto bristol board.  Over next week I will ink the cards and add color.  More to come later...  And all your comments are welcomed.

The Queen of Spades (card no. 9: the Flowers)

The Queen of Spades in the Mlle. Lenormand fortune telling cards is known as the "flower" card, indicating contentment, abundance, and good fortune.  Whenever she shows up in a reading, she lessens the blow of negative cards.  My Spades Queen looks like a goddess crowned by moons and her neck is ringed by roses. 

The King of Spades (card no. 30: the Lilies) 

The King of Spades is ringed by lilies and he usually represents moral support, good business, and work.  His face is half in shadow and half smiling (the other half frowning) and his attitude/influence depends upon which side is facing the significator (a card representing the man or woman recieveing the reading).  I'm not entirely satisified with this design.  I see the King of Spades as an old French aristocrat with the lilies (the fleur-de-lis) as symbols of the old regime (pre-Revolutionary France, 1648 to 1788).

The Jack of Spades (no. 13: the Child)

Lucky card no. 13 is the Jack of Spades often represented as a smiling child.  She brings trust, friendliness, playfulness, and optimism.  After looking back on these initial drawings, this card (unintentially) looks an awful lot like Tori Amos!

The Ace of Spades (no.29 the Lady)

This ace is used to represent a female querent (person asking questions of the psychic reader).  My "lady" would have been a typical woman of the late 1790's France and quite possibly what one of Mlle. Lenormand's clients might have looked like.  She no longer wears the wig and tight corset from the previous decade in fashion.  Her hair is tightly curled around her head and tied back by a band of ribbon called a bandeaux.  Around her neck is a red ribbon that some post-revolutionary french women wore to remember the victims of the gullotine.