Last night I had some artists’ trading cards in my pocket, and I was out for a bit, resting from a paper organization day planned at home. I wasn’t looking forward to it at all, and avoiding it. So I got out my Prismacolor pens and made these seven tablets of the seven governors as a drawing exercise.

I’m not entirely happy with the Sun card in the middle — the number “6” on it is nice, but his arms are in the wrong position and it really throws off the whole beauty of the card.  It’s close, though, and a few more iterations should make it relatively easy to draw again and again.

It’s the first time I’ve drawn the Moon image this way, with a motherly woman in the middle surrounded by a cheerleader-like daughter and an elderly grandmother.  It doesn’t really quite feel right, but I’m not sure if that’s because the figures are disproportionate to one another, or the actual image is off.

Jupiter feels about right, and so does Mars.  Mercury still needs work — his hat in particular isn’t right.  I need more practice at sketching figures, particularly the nude figure of Venus.  Saturn’s head is too far forward inside his/her hood.  There’s something to hate about every single card.

But, even if they’re terrible, these are some of the images I’ll be using with my sixth grade Latin class to help them create visual keys in their notes.  Now I have a small reference card for most of the figures they’ll use this fall, which I can use in class, or in some of my other work.

Peregrin Wildoak has written an amazing book about the power of visualization for magicians, called By Names and Images.  I don’t think that I can top his achievement by any means.  In a related way, Gordon over at Rune Soup has also written a powerful bit about Sigil Magic, which is about drawing symbols for creating magical results. I don’t know that I can add anything to the field of the internal work, but maybe I should think about writing an article called Drawing for Magicians.  I’ve learned a lot in the last few years and even in the last few months… something to think about for the future.

I’ve written this this morning, but I’ve set it up so that it will publish around 10:00 am, so you all have something to read while I’m teaching.

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