I am super excited to announce that I am creating an oracle deck! This is something I have been wanting to do for over a decade! And finally, after much overthinking and procrastinating, I am DOING IT.
I don't have a title for the deck yet, but I do have a theme:
The deck is going to be a celebration of the magical and divine within the ordinary woman, with a Latin Caribbean flair, and spirit animals for fun!
I probably have 30 to 40 tarot and oracle decks, and while I love my decks, I've yet to come across a deck quite like the one I am creating. For as long as I can remember oracle and tarot decks have predominantly featured very fair, light skinned, slender, angelic figures, which make for lovely illustrations... but are not very relatable (at least not to me).
I want my oracle deck to be full of women who look like me, my sisters, my cousins, neighbors, friends, and have as much diversity as my Hispanic and Latino community. I want to feature REAL people, and women of color, of different ages, sizes, and skin colors. Even the images I'm creating themselves, while not hyper-realistic, do (mostly) look like real people you would see out and about.
Something else that sets my oracle deck apart is that the artwork is hand-painted! I am using acrylic paint on pieces of wood to create the artwork which has been a lot of fun.
I am particularly proud of my decision to make all the artwork by hand because it adds a human touch that digital art simply doesn't have. There are imperfections in the lines, despite my pretty steady hand, that add special type of beauty. The human touch coupled with the natural groove of the wood is a stunning combination, and in case you can't tell, I am DELIGHTED about it.
This has been a huge but thrilling undertaking for me. I'm making a point to paint every single day and to push myself to make this decade-long dream of mine a reality.
