Illustrating The Hierophant
The Hierophant card has always eluded me. A hierophant is defined as “a person or priest who interprets sacred mysteries or esoteric principles” (source: Oxford Languages).
Often portrayed as a pope-like spiritual leader, does it mean I should go to church? Or that I am in some sort of trouble and should repent? Being a spiritual person who is not religious, I never really connected with this card.
So when I drew it for my daily sketch this past winter, I had to do some research.
The meaning of The Hierophant card is:
A spiritual leader
Traditional rules and conformity
Group of like-minded people
Following a traditional path
Examples from other tarot artists
First, here are some lovely examples of The Heirophant cards by various artists of tarot decks I own and use myself.
The Hierophant cards from my collection of tarot decks, 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 Lucinda Boyd.
The Queen Bee as Hierophant
The image that came to mind for me was a queen bee. I did an image search for queen bees, and were surprised to learn that they have some real superpowers. Such as:
She lays all of the eggs for her colony;
She can control the sex of the eggs she lays, based on whether her colony needs more workers (females) or males to fertilize her eggs (males);
She instructs the male drones when they can fertilize her eggs (she calls the shots in bed);
She manages the worker bees (all non-reproducing females) in building honeycomb and making honey; and
Decides when it’s time to “swarm” and branch off to form a new hive.
Basically, the queen bee is the CEO, the manager, and the leader of her community in all ways.
Here is my sketch:
My sketch of The Hierophant
A queen bee, in charge of her colony.
Ink pen and colored pencil.
Here is my line drawing of the card, created on iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and Procreate:
Linework drawing
Drawing hexagons is harder than I thought!
The final illustration
Below is my final illustration for The Hierophant card.
My final illustration of The Hierophant. The notes and color swatches will get cropped out when I create the final print layout.
Process notes
To protect the orange and yellow areas, I used Winsor & Newton masking fluid on all of the California poppies, the Queen Bee, her crown, and scepter. Then I painted the sky and green of the flowers’ leaves with EcoLine liquid watercolor using a wet-in-wet technique. The beehive is painted in Winsor & Newton walnut ink.
The rest of the detail I did with EcoLine paint brush pens, blending with a water brush as I went.
I forgot the bees’ stripes, so I had to add those in with Photoshop after scanning the painting, otherwise they would look like flies! Oops.
Next up: The Lovers 💞
The next card in the Major Arcana I am illustrating is The Lovers. Hint: This deck has bees AND birds!
What do you think of this card?
Leave me a comment below
I read every comment, and I love to hear from you!
Footnotes
Materials notes from this post
Blick Hot Press 100% cotton watercolor paper, EcoLine liquid watercolor paint and brush pens, Winsor & Newton masking fluid and walnut ink. I use an Epson Workforce Pro printer to print my drawings onto watercolor paper, using their water-resistant Durabrite ink.
Learn about tarot
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.
