Paige Rajnus Art

The Magician card is none other than a coyote! So I actually adore coyotes, I think they are so pretty and so fun to watch. They are also a very successful species, having adapted to pretty much every environment across North America and beyond. Urban coyotes even exist in many cities!

The coyote's amazing versatility is part of why I chose it to represent The Magician. This card symbolizes resourcefulness, skillfulness, and the ability to harness one's talents to achieve goals. The coyote definitely has always had a trick up its sleeve to conquer most of the continent, despite all adversity. 💪

Another bird card for you all! This is honestly one of my favorites and it feels like it fits right into the October spooky season. 👻 I was going for a bit of a dark and mysterious look, and I had a picture of a barn owl that fit that perfectly! Barn owls are incredibly beautiful, and I think the purple background helps complement it. 💜

The High Priestess tarot card symbolizes intuition, introspection, and the subconscious. Owls have often had spiritual connotations across cultures, both negative and positive: they've represented wisdom, prophecy, darkness, and the supernatural. I've always been fascinated by owls, and I think their nocturnal nature only adds to how mystical they seem to be. A perfect animal then to represent the invisible inner self and hidden mysteries! 🦉

Another card, just have a few more letters to fill in and it's complete! This is the Empress, an archetype representing fertility and the divine feminine. I picked a mule deer doe to exemplify this because, well, it just felt like a natural choice! Does are so elegant and graceful, and have often been used in art to represent gentleness and femininity. And it is so precious seeing them with their fawns every spring, bringing new generations into the world each year!

As a side note, I wanted to publish this card with its lettering half finished on purpose. I've been doing some personal work on being less perfectionistic, which is a long and hard battle! Working on these cards has been a part of that journey, as my aim is not to make them perfect. For example, I could have made the lettering extremely precise by tracing script or using a ruler to line every part out. But I've chosen instead to just loosely "wing it," and that means some of the letters might be big, or small, or slanted, or not match, and that's ok! Imperfection is a part of being human and I want to embrace that in my life and in my art!