Illustrating The Star
The Star card is one of the loveliest in the tarot, in my opinion. Following the sudden change and tragedy of The Tower card, The Star acts like a balm for the soul. A calm after the storm.
The Star card often represents the creative feminine, wishes, and dreams. It also is a reminder to not allow our own creative well run dry, so to speak. As dreamers, we need to feed our subconscious mind through rest and recovery, so that our dreams and creative ideas can find their way to the surface in our conscious mind.
So, I wanted to illustrate The Star both literally and figuratively.
Examples from other tarot artists
Traditionally, this card is illustrated with a divine-yet-earthly angel, with one foot on land and the other in a stream. The angel is passing water back and forth from one goblet to another.
It’s a cool card, but I never really understood it or could relate it to my own life.
The Star cards from my collection of tarot decks; see footnotes for artist credits.
My sketch of The Star card, inspired by Oregon’s many mountain lakes and waterfalls.
Colored pencils and white-out pen on paper.
Digitizing watercolor 101
My original watercolor painting for The Star, scanned, before editing in Photoshop.
When it comes to digitizing a watercolor painting, it’s tricky to get it right. This is a good example of how a great painting can look BLAH when scanned, even with a good scanner at high resolution.
I scan at 300 DPI using a PNG file. That’s pretty high resolution to enable me to create lager print files later if I want to.
Next, I use Photoshop to make changes to the scanned image to make it look more like the real painting. Usually, this includes:
Lightening white areas and removing shadows that appear on the watercolor paper during scanning (see edges of The Star here).
Check for vibrancy and color/hue saturation. Oftentimes, the scanner can turn a watercolor painting more blue or red. Mine tends toward the blue end of the spectrum. In this painting, I tweaked the color a little so that the purple areas above the treeline were more violet, like they are in the real-life painting.
I can also remove blemishes like ink splashes, paint brush hairs, or small mistakes. In this painting, I was able to extend the waterline/horizon line all the way to the edges.
After these edits are complete, I add on the other layers of my original drawing. In this case, that includes the shooting star and its reflection, waterfall and reflection, calligraphy, and roman numeral.
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The final illustration
Below is my final illustration for the Star card!
The Star card illustration from my forthcoming Tarot of These Times deck, anticipated 2026.
© Registered copyright Molly Chidsey, all rights reserved.
Next up: The Moon 🌓
The next card in the Major Arcana I am illustrating is The Moon.
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 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.
Tiny galaxies, roman numerals, and calligraphy drawn by hand with Apple Pencil on iPad Pro using Procreate app, and added as image layers on top of scanned painting using Photoshop. Waves were created using masking fluid applied with the flat end of a bamboo chop stick. I made them more wavy by using the smudge tool in Photoshop on the scanned painting.
Roman numerals 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 Austen Rogers.
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.
