Knight of Pentacles (Commission)

After I drew my Four of Pentacles for the Heraldic Tarot project, another member of the Heraldry community saw it and wanted to commission their own tarot card! The requester, EtnadRehsif, previously commissioned their coat of arms from me. Thanks again for your patronage!

For this one, we had a design round where I sketched out a few different candidate designs based off of Etnad’s coat of arms and on a few Knight of Pentacles cards from different decks. Tarot decks based on the famous Rider-Waite deck typically depict a young knight riding on a horse, so I sketched three knight-on-a-horse designs in different angles, where the knight was holding EtnadRehsif’s shield underneath a starry sky. Then I took a break to cook some spaghetti.

It was while cooking that I had this great idea: ditch the shield, make the knight ride the manta ray on the shield instead! This worked out really well; instead of relegating EtnadRehsif’s shield to a tiny bit of the card, the whole card makes use of the space-inspired design. I think it captures the wonderment of outer space that his shield represents really nicely.

Since this is the Knight of Pentacles (also known as the Knight of Coins), I have the crab in EtnadRehsif’s crest holding a coin with a star struck on it, instead of the star itself. Like my own tarot card, I have EtnadRehsif’s motto on the coin as well, “Strength through wisdom.”

Originally, I was going to do the lettering in the same style as the “IV” in my own card. I was doing this for the “EtnadRehsif” below the manta ray, and it didn’t look quite right to me. On a lark I tried writing it in cursive, and it reminded me of the names that you see painted on US Army Air Forces aircraft in WWII sometimes (like Old Glory or Executive Sweet). Since EtnadRehsif was in the US Army, I tried out an army-inspired rank and suit indicator as well: the text is based on serial numbers painted on certain military vehicles, and the suit icon is based on one of the US Army logos. Conveniently, the US Army logo is also a star, like the tarot pentacle.

Altogether, this card is probably more fitting for EtnadRehsif than my own card is for myself!

This Four of Pentacles is made available to the public under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 International license.

A color-adjusted version for CMYK printing is also available. However, if the print shop prefers the original (RGB) file and adjusts the colors in-house, use the original instead.