Illustrating the Three of Cups
The meaning of the Three of Cups
The Three of Cups is all about friendship, community, and the celebrations we have together. The Three of Cups in a tarot reading may mean:
Time to get your friends together for a mini-celebration (or at least happy hour)
Our friendships give us collective strength
Share gratitude with your friends
With this in mind, let’s get into how and why I illustrated this card the way I did.
HINT: Scroll to the end of this post to see the final card design!
Examples from other tarot artists
Traditionally, this card is illustrated with three friends, raising a glass in a toast. Or, three witchy women dancing in a circle. Or both.
Here are some examples of the Two of Cups card from various tarot decks I use.
Two of Cups cards from my collection of tarot decks; see footnotes for artist credits.
Stronger together
My interpretation of the Three of Cups was this: together, we create something stronger and more beautiful than we can alone.
The image that came to my mind was three balls of yarn, knitted together to create a beautiful garment. The three primary colors - red, yellow, and blue - mixed together create other colors that make up the rainbow. I put the balls of yarn in bowl-size cups.
Here is my original sketch:
My sketch of the Two of Cups tarot card.
Colored pencil and pen on paper.
How I made this card
This illustration includes lots hand-drawn linework I created in Procreate, based on my original sketch above. I printed the linework on watercolor paper, then used liquid watercolor paints and watercolor brush pens to fill in the colors.
Note: creating the 3-D look of the balls of yarn required two additional coats of watercolor ink on the yarn that appears to be behind the strands looped around the yarn ball. This was a better idea in my head! It took a few hours to paint this one.
I then scanned it, edited in Photoshop, and added my original Roman numeral and the knitting needles to the final illustration.
See more about my tarot art illustration process here.
Line drawing I created for my illustration of the Three of Cups card. Procreate on iPad with Apple Pencil.
The final illustration
What do you think? Leave me a comment below! I love to hear from you.
The Two of Cups card illustration from my forthcoming Tarot of These Times deck, anticipated 2026.
© Registered copyright Molly Chidsey, all rights reserved.
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Footnotes
Materials and technique notes from this post
Blick Hot Press 100% cotton watercolor paper; EcoLine liquid watercolor paint and brush pens; Winsor & Newton masking fluid. I use an Epson Workforce Pro printer to print my drawings onto watercolor paper, using their water-resistant Durabrite ink.
Linework is drawn by hand with Apple Pencil on iPad Pro using Procreate app, and added as image layers on top of scanned painting using Photoshop.
Roman numerals and all calligraphy were drawn by hand using Procreate, Apple Pencil and iPad Pro.
Artists of other tarot cards featured in this post
Clockwise from top left: Rider-Waite Tarot, illustrated by Pamela Coleman Smith; Modern Witch Tarot Deck by Lisa Sterle; The Wild Unknown Tarot by Kim Krans; The Gentle Tarot by Mari in the Sky; Rainbow Heart Tarot by Rachel Rosenkoetter; and The Reclaimed Tarot, ReClaim it! PDX, collage by various local artists.
Learn about tarot
(1) Want to learn more about tarot? I highly recommend the book Modern Tarot: Connecting with Your Higher Self through the Wisdom of the Cards by Michelle Tea.
A note about Ai and this project
I do not use Ai (artificial intelligence) to write any of the content for this blog, my other blog Behind the Scenes, or this website.
