Create Your Own Tarot Cards by Teresa Reed and Adrianne Hawthorne

 

This book is split into two halves: the first part is all about the tarot with a very brief overview of the cards and a slightly more in depth look at spreads. The second part is a walkthrough of painting a selection of the cards. It is a very quick read as there are a lot of photos along with the text.

This is a book about creating your own tarot cards and in order to do that, you need to have an understanding of what each card means so you can interpret the symbolism in your own way. This is where this book falls down. Visually, it is very appealing, with full pages of colour photographs. But there is no focus on card meanings and symbolism. Very briefly are we introduced to what the court cards mean, what each suit of the minor arcana means and that is it. Two half-pages of text covering the meanings of the cards in a book expecting you to be able to create your own deck! Admittedly, there is a little bit more information in the second part of the book when a selection of twenty tarot cards are illustrated for us, but that still leaves some readers in the dark regarding the other fifty eight cards. For this reason, this is not a book for beginners as knowledge of the cards is crucial and not provided here.

I’m not sure what I expected from the artistic part of the book when I began reading. On a personal level I did not like the artist’s style as it was too childlike and simple but this has not influenced my final star rating as it is subjective. However, instead of being shown on repeat how to paint basic plants on a card, I would have preferred a discussion on the symbolism of each card with advice on how to best interpret them artistically, perhaps with a look at brainstorming and researching and discovering possible personal interpretations. This book just did not inspire me to want to create my own cards, not did it give me the information and direction that I wanted.

With thanks to Netgalley and Walter Foster Publishing for providing an advance review copy. All opinions in this review are my own.

Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐