Or, to be more period precise, as it has been pointed out: The Kucheng

This was a fun card to paint, I got to dig out my wife's guzheng and to play with classical Chinese paintings (may those ancient masters forgive me), moreover the card per se seems to be well received by the community.

Hope you'll enjoy this larger slice of Lovecraftian Old China .

A lot of thanks again, Tiziano.

It's an effective painting. Almost too effective and detailed for the scale that the consumer will see it in.

Forexample, I did not notice the nails being chipped and the fingers dripping blood (both midair and on the instrument itself) from playing the Guzheng. The mysterious figure on the palanquin was easily dismissed as a yellow cloaked emperor until I thought to look deeper and see the yellow eyes beneath his shadowed hood implying the 'Emperor' in Yellow.

I love the double meaning in that, by the way. Making it easy to dismiss the esoteric meaning in it since yellow was a forbidden color during Qing.

I am not overly familiar with Chinese Kanji so it is difficult to make out the character on the Gusheng player's hat even at the enlarged size so I am not sure if there is yet more hidden symbolism there.

Excellent picture.

Shame it is thrown on a 2"x2" format. These deserve to be made into at least 8"x10" pictures.

What were the chances that your wife would happen to own a Guzheng!? I assume she is a musician.

Again, excellent work and thanks for sharing!

Larger, more details. Thank you for showing the full size picture

Hellfury said:

Indeed! It's a shame it had to be truncated to fit the card. Excellent work!

Abdul Alhazred , marcoa.ramirez , jhaelen Thank you very much, it's always a pleasure!

Hellfury , I enjoyed a lot playing with color and symbols here, such keen eyes in the community make it a double pleasure. The character on the musician's cap is huang , yellow (I tried to paste it but it doesn't show correctly).

Honestly I don't like to feel constrained by the idea 'it will just be seen card-size', I plan my compositions so that (if it works as it should) the image won't be confusing at card-size, but I paint big (all my card images can be printed up to 35 X 50 cms.) and this way I can indulge myself with details and small surprises, if the assignement allows.

TheProfessor , small chance indeed, we were quite surprised ourselves. My wife does love music but her field is Chinese studies, the guzheng was a gift from her Taiwanese landlady.

Has this card been spoiled somewhere and I just missed it? The art is fantastic, I hope the card lives up to its image!

You merely missed it. Not a bad card at all.

That is a pretty excellent card in the right deck I think. For 1 I get to drop the skill of your best character to 0, and if you decide to commit him anyway for his special ability or icons he is going to go insane taking him completely out of play for two rounds. And I get the card back into my deck to possibly draw again?

I'm a fan.