Veteran Explorer

This one was real simple, but allowed me to flex my art muscles in a direction I hadn't in a while. The piece is a new illustration for an existing card, "Veteran Explorer." This new art is specific to Magic's Battlebond setting and the fine folks at Wizards had everything pretty well figured out before the assignment got to me.

I was asked to depict a map maker sitting in the top of a tree above the clouds. The map maker, though human, was to be dressed similarly to how the elves in the plain of Kylem (where Battlebond is set) dress and he was to be looking toward the viewer and the uncharted lands beyond. The city of Valor's Reach should be seen piercing the clouds in the background.

Given to me for reference were images of Valor's Reach and examples of Kylem elven dress. All that was left was to process all the stuff, find a way to depict what they needed from me and draw it up. Simple right? Well, in this instance, it kind of was. I knew exactly what kind of picture I wanted to make as soon as I read the description. The art order describes and adventure picture and when it comes to adventure pictures, there's one name that rings above any other in my mind: N. C. Wyeth. So, I pulled out some N. C. Wyeth art books, opened them to choice paintings that helped inform this piece, and went to town on a sketch, trying to absorb as much of the work around me and find a way to inject it into the picture I was making.

Here's how that came out:

©Wizards of the Coast

If memory serves, there was a request that I reduce the scale of the other trees indicated in the background, right. Aside from that I was good to go to paint.

I used to print out all of my reference images before starting a painting. These images would be taped up around my working surface and were constantly present. But honestly, I found the practice to be pretty wasteful in the amount of paper and ink I was blowing through to create things that were destined for the recycling bin. Plus, its been a long time since I had a printer that I didn't have to fight with every time I turned it on. Nowadays, I print reference very rarely and even then it's only what I absolutely need. The rest of my photos are kept open on iPad or laptop screens surrounding the painting. Less waste, less fuss, and it gets the job done.

That's nice and all, but what kind of reference did I collect for this image? Well, there are the aforementioned images of the city in the clouds and the elven dress, as well as some other images that I kept looking back to from the style guide that really informed the overall mood of the world. To these image I added images of clouds and skies and trees. I also included images specifically of trees sticking up above the clouds. Additionally, I pulled out a leather case I have to help inform the map bag hanging from the tree. Essentially, if I'm unsure about any aspect of a piece, I typically collect reference for it. I'm looking to make sure that the final result is believable—maybe not completely accurate, mind you, just believable.

And then there's the reference my wife and I take.

Usually reference taking works like tike this: my wife takes the photos using my sketch for comparison and I pose for the photos. This is often true even when I am depicting a woman. The reason is that it just always goes faster that way. Sure, I'll take some back up photos of her in the same pose, but I tend to get a bit closer to the pose I want than she does. Of course sometimes I photograph people other than my wife or myself, but that isn't always feasible with deadlines and scheduling. As a result, Amy and I have take a lot of photos of one another in basements or spare rooms over the years. Digital photography has made that a lot easier, cheaper, and a lot less embarrassing. I do not miss the days of picking up my roll of reference photos from the very bemused developer.

Below is the image I mostly used in this case. There were about twenty-five more, but I picked the one that most closely matched my sketch and used it above the others.

Behold the unfinished demolition of our murder basement in all its box-filled glory!

Some folks cobble all their reference together into one, single image via Photoshop. I find that that takes time away from the easel and I'd rather spend the time there than in front of the computer. That's just personal preference, mind you, but it's worked (mostly) for me so far.

Anyway, after all the reference was in hand, I went to paint. Here are a couple photos showing it at two different stages (with absolutely no indication of how I got from point A to point B):

Yeah, a lot happened between those two but I can fill in some blanks. Generally, at the start of every piece I like to find some part of the image to sink my teeth into. Sometimes that's the figure, sometimes that's an element in the background. It depends on the piece and my mood. Here I dug right into the figure. I brought it up to a certain level of finish and then began to branch out from there. I established where the tree would be, using darker browns than it would inevitably be so that I could just go ahead and paint the background right over the branches and still see where they needed to be. Then I went and had a ridiculously fun time painting the background. Seriously. Those clouds were a blast. Eventually, I got back to the tree and the figure and started to tighten those things up. The second photo probably represents what the piece looked like on the Monday before the piece was due (which would have been just a few days later on Friday). There's still a bunch of details left unfinished on the figure and indeed the leaves of the main tree are still incomplete. Missing also are the beams of light shooting out from the city.

Here's how it eventually came out:

©Wizards of the Coast

The final painting is oil on hardboard and measures sixteen inches wide by twelve inches tall. It was art directed by Cynthia Sheppard.

If I had one complaint about the finish, it's that it falls short of the more atmospheric take indicated by the sketch. Part of that was due to the request by Wizards to shrink the background trees, part of that was just decision making done on the fly. I'm sure there was a bit of a difficulty on my part marrying the atmospherics with the puffy, well-defined clouds I settled on. Still, I like where it eventually landed. Why? Well, it mostly comes down to my influences and the rare chances to nod at them in any way. Sure, I am absolutely a product of my all of my influences and therefore every piece I do nods to them in some way, but it's rare that I get to lean on my art heroes so hard.

In this case, this is probably the closest I will ever get to painting an N. C. Wyeth-esque piece. Obviously it's lacking in a lot of ways in terms of structure and paint application (not to mention scale), but there's a lot of color choices and lighting choices that are absolutely aping his work (or attempting to). Most importantly, I was hoping to capture the spirit of his work. The feelings of adventure and discovery are woven throughout N. C. Wyeth's illustrations and I was really looking to capture those things in a similar way. In the end, I'm mostly just elated that I even got a chance to try to do any of that with a Magic assignment and I'm quite proud of the degree to which I've succeeded.

Mox Amber

Getting opportunities to do art for cards like this feels fairly rare to me. Don't get me wrong, I've gotten to do art for some pretty high profile cards in the past—not to mention some extremely playable (though lower profile) cards that have literally been in use for a decade at this point—but in general I'm not the guy Wizards calls to paint something as high profile as an angel or a planeswalker (though I'd be happy to take one on should they change their mind). That's honestly not a complaint. I've been on record as saying that painting a planeswalker would probably be one of the more boring images I could ever be assigned, given how little room there is for invention and editorializing. But, even that is its own interesting challenge.

But I digress. This isn't about what assignments I don't get, but rather about this one that I did.

Mox Amber.

This was big. For the uninitiated, the original five mox cards ("Mox Ruby," "Mox Emerald," "Mox Sapphire," "Mox Jet," and "Mox Pearl") are among what have become known as the "Power Nine"—nine of the most powerful cards in Magic's history. Wizards has subsequently added a few additional mox cards that don't rank quite as high in the lore or on the power scale, at least as I understand it (which is not particularly well considering that my own Magic playing days probably ended somewhere around 1997 or 1998, and things have changed a bit since then).

Anyway, it's been quite a while since they added a new mox card so I knew it was quite special, and for some reason they chose to assign the art to me.

As an aside, I want to address something that has been brought up many places on the internet as well as mentioned directly to me. Over the last few years another artist, Volkan Baga, has gotten to paint new art for all of the mox cards. There seem to have been a fair number of folks who expected that Wizards would give Volkan this new mox so as to keep a consistent aesthetic. I get it. I really do. I don't know why they didn't go with him, but I strongly suspect he'll get a chance to do a new version in the future. Clearly there was a specific, non-Volkan direction that Wizards wanted to take this card in and I'm not the one to ask about it. All I know is I got an assignment and then I painted something for them that they liked. I'm betting that eventually Volkan will get to make his version. Even I look very forward to seeing it.

Again, I digress.

So, there's a part of my brain that really worries about the weight of such assignments. The rest of me just goes about trying to solve the problem as I would any other.  Fortunately, the part of my brain that worries wasn't an impediment to the process. My own sensibilities? Well, that's a different story.

What Wizards asked for initially was a little confounding to me, but it subsequently was simplified a bit. To start, they wanted a silver necklace with the amber being the necklace's charm. The necklace would be cradled in someone's hands. However, there were two specific stipulations: 1) the piece should not feel like it was part of Volkan Baga's cycle of mox paintings that also include the various moxes cradled in hands; 2) there should be no recognizable things floating in the amber (I assume to avoid any reference to Jurassic Park).

I took this all in and I thought about it for a while. I knew immediately what I wanted to do with the amber and how I wanted to set it in the piece of jewelry. What I didn't understand was why they wanted hands at all. I mean, if we were trying to avoid any reference to Volkan's pieces, the hands felt like a weird move.

Pencil sketch measuring approximately thirteen and a quarter inches wide by ten inches tall on larger paper.
©Wizards of the Coast

After handing this in, it was clear to everyone that the hands really weren't necessary and thinking back to the original mox images done by Dan Frazier (which are awesomely efficient), it was decided to go with a simpler approach. So, I was just left to my own devices to find a way to depict this new mox.

Pencil sketch measuring twelve inches wide by nine inches tall on larger paper.
©Wizards of the Coast

The thing about magic items to me is that I'm not really a huge fan in general. I think this is largely due to burn out from other properties. World of Warcraft is a really good example. Seemingly everything in that game is magic and has glowing parts or an overall aura. It all is meant to feel important somehow and because it all is meant to feel important, nothing actually does. Instead, it's just flash piled on top of flash and nothing ends up feeling particularly special. At least to me.

In contrast to that is The One Ring, from The Lord of the Rings. It's a simple, gold band that is unassuming. I absolutely favor this approach. As another example, it's a lot more interesting to me that the genie's lamp could be mistaken for a piece of junk rather than the powerful item it is. And while I've painted plenty of magical items over the years that sort of fall into this category, they still tend to be depicted sitting on a pedestal, lit with god lighting, and presented with a great degree of importance. In my head, it would be more fun to see the genie's lamp just sitting among the junk not calling attention to itself. So, my approach to Mox Amber was in keeping with that idea. I depicted the mox amber sitting upon the leather wrapping in which it was kept secreted away (or so I imagined). Sure it was special, but we didn't need a shaft of light to make that clear.

But the fine folks at Wizards disagreed. To them this second version felt haphazard and not special enough. And you know what? They were absolutely right.

My take on magic items is fine and all, but it's also situational. There is room for my version in the greater scheme of things, but it's not in keeping with the moxes. In fact, it's really wrong for the moxes. While they weren't trying to guide me down the aesthetic path that previous mox illustrators had taken, they were absolutely trying to keep me on the right tonal path, and that was where I'd fallen short.

Anyway, the good news was that they liked the design of the necklace from this second sketch (though I don't recall them ever explicitly disliking the first version) and dug the leather surface as well, so I automatically had something with which to rebuild. The issue then became figuring out how to present the amber necklace in a way that made it feel special. I spent a lot of time trying to hash something out in my sketchbook, but in the end I found it easier to take a piece of my wife's jewelry and arrange it in different ways on the back of her splayed leather jacket. Eventually, I settled on the idea of winding the necklace's chain in a spiral around the amber charm. I mocked it up and asked for Wizards' input.

Pencil Sketch measuring twelve inches wide by nine inches tall on larger paper.
©Wizards of the Coast

They liked this take and I was off to the races.

In the past, I have bemoaned how much detail I feel compelled to put in a given piece. High amounts of detail can be laborious and often results in paintings outliving my enthusiasm for them. In other words, paintings tend to take so long to complete that by the end of the process I have long-since ceased enjoying myself. The thing that I love doing almost always becomes plain old work. I'd like to work more loosely, but as odd as it seems, I don't know how to. I love loose painting in the work of others, but when I sit down, it just always feels half-finished.

Anyway, this piece was a bit of an exception. The image contains a lot of detail, sure. But I enjoyed it until the very end. It was easy to get lost in the folds, cracks, seams and wrinkles of the leather and I kept discovering new ones as I went along. Unlike with The First Eruption, the detail wasn't monotonous and repetitive, instead it was something I got to repeatedly invent along the way. In short, it was fun. A lot of fun.

Here's a shot of the piece in progress:

As you can see, I've blocked in the major shapes with paint and am beginning to complete the piece from the center outward. I don't always work that way, but it was helpful in this case since I knew I'd be able to consistently avoid resting my hand in wet paint.

Anyway, a lot more work went into the piece from there (I know I'm skipping a lot but that is the only photo I took while working on it) and the final painting ended up looking like this:

©Wizards of the Coast

The finished piece is oil on hardboard and measures eighteen inches wide by fourteen inches tall. It was art directed by Mark Winters and Kelly Digges. It is also a piece I like. Seriously—I'm genuinely happy with it. I don't say that often, but its true. It turned out pretty much how I hoped it would. Sure, the necklace isn't as unassuming as I'd have liked, but it's not exactly shouting its value or power, either. It is, in many respects, the perfect example of my aesthetic philosophy (whatever that means), and it's something of which I'm rather proud.

The First Eruption

This assignment was an easy one to wrap my head around, but difficult to execute on several levels. The challenge: paint a tapestry depicting the Ghitu people's creation story of their home continent of Shiv. The Ghitu and Shiv are parts of classic Magic history and are names most Magic fans will likely recognize. If you happen to be one who is less than initiated in Magic's lore however, the short version is that the Ghitu believe that an egg of stone hatched and a yolk of flame erupted, becoming the continent of Shiv. Somehow, this tapestry needed to depict that pivotal event.

The first challenge was that this image was not going to show a tapestry in its context. In other words, the art would not show the wall upon which the tapestry was hanging, nor would it show a loom or any such clue as to what we were looking at. Having such additional elements would be useful and would likely make selling the tapestry that much easier. But for the purposes of the card, it was necessary to show the tapestry by itself. This meant trying to figure out how to make the tapestry read as a tapestry in some other way. I chose to do this through texture.

Depicting the image on a tapestry is the easy part. The hard part is making it clear that the image one is looking at is a tapestry (vs. a painting vs. a print). That means figuring out how to depict the medium itself, which is woven fabric. I did a lot of research. I looked at a LOT of images of tapestries. Most importantly, I looked at a lot of close-ups of tapestries. In doing this, it became evident to me that recreating some semblance of the weave I saw on many of those close-ups was the key. All I had to do was figure out how to articulate that weave with oil paint.

Why paint? Well, it's what I use. I confess, however, that I thought long and hard about doing this piece digitally, since I knew that superimposing a weave onto an image in Photoshop would be a piece of cake. In fact, doing that would have taken mere moments whereas my solution took several days. But as much as I knew I could save time, I rather liked the idea of the challenge in doing it all with traditional media. Plus, I thought it worth the gamble that someone would want to buy the finished product.

Anyway, after some experimentation on a piece of gessoed cardboard, I decided how I was going to go about painting the piece. This involved filling in the basic fields of color within the design, then adding very thin, parallel lines in a darker value, and finishing each strip with dabbed highlights indicating individual fabric strands. It was going to be tedious, but I thought the result was a good compromise between the appoximation of a weave and a painterly finish.  Next came the issue of figuring out how to depict the Ghitu legend itself.

Deciding on the design of the tapestry was less straightforward than I'd expected. I knew that the image needed to contain an egg (or egg shape) breaking open, a volcano erupting, and a couple of dragons. The image also needed to be somewhat graphic in order to be in keeping with a woven tapestry. All that was left was to answer three key questions:

1) How literal should the depiction of the creation story should the image be?

The solution to this was to create a bit of variety, so I did four different sketches depicting the origin story in different ways. For some, the breaking egg was very literal, for others, it was shown in other ways. In general, though, I kept the elements required to tell the story very clear and pretty literal. I didn't see a need to get too fancy or obtuse.

2) What kind of stylization (if any) would there be in depicting the image?

The art order provided for the assignment suggested that I look at the aesthetic of Persian rugs as a starting point. Instantly, however, I noticed a real problem with that. Persian rugs are typiclaly extremely elaborate and decorative. While that's cool at life-size, shrunken to card size the designs became a liability and a bit of a visual mess. I decided to go with something more simple and graphic. If that direction were deemed too simplistic, I could easily start to find ways to make the image more decorative. However, I strongly suspected that because of the many elements needed for the composition, even a graphic treatment had the potential to feel pretty busy at card-size. So, I went with a graphic treatment throughout that had a degree of simplification and stylization upon which I could add slightly more decorative elements.

3) What would the color palette be?

The color palette ended up being the simplest part. In the world guide for the set were very clear color cues for Ghitu costuming. I took those and ran with them and attempted to keep the entire tapestry limited to those colors, but in a broader range of values. It was little paint by number, but it worked.

The four sketches I drew up were done in Photoshop. My hope was that the folks at Wizards would like one of the designs as is, but I was also prepared to mix and match elements as necessary. So, I kept each element on a separate layer within each document thus giving the folks at Wizards options (after all, this was everyone's first time doing something like this). Once done, I crossed my fingers and submitted the images.

©Wizards of the Coast

To my surprise, they liked elements of all the sketches, but favored one in particular (the one above marked "A"). I ended up doing some additional tweaks and submitted a final version. Then it was time to paint.

I knew painting this piece was going to be tedious and draining. So, I made things a bit easier for myself and created a colorized sketch that I printed out and pasted down to my surface. The colors weren't exact, but it was basically like having the piece blocked in. Still, I ended up blocking everything in with oil paint in the correct color palette. Once that was done, I moved on to painting the details and instantly made a stupid mistake.

©Wizards of the Coast

As stated above, my shortcut for depicting the tapestry's weave was largely built around parallel lines. I could have included these in my printed sketch for ease, but I decided early on that imperfections were necessary to further sell the weave, and there's no better way to add imperfections in parallel lines than doing them freehand. No big deal, really.

Now, one would think that maybe I'd start painting these parallel lines along one of the edges of the piece and then slowly work my way across the entire painting. That certainly would make sense, but it's not how I chose to do it. Instead, I started in the middle. And no, I didn't start with vertical lines that went from the very top to the very bottom. I just started an isolated set of parallel lines within the yellow section of the volcano's eruption. I had no real clue whether the lines I painted were parallel to the sides of the piece, since I didn't even do tick marks or anything like that. I just went for it without a clue. It took two days of work before I realized I should make sure the work thus far was square.

Fortunately for me, the starting point was off parallel but such a small amount that it was unnoticeable and required no changes. Still, I can't really explain what I was thinking besides the fact that I simply wasn't. It was a dumb move that happened to work out. If you ever have to do one of these things yourself (or are crazy enough to want to try it for "fun"), then I highly suggest you don't do what I did.

Anyway, once I'd established that the line segments I'd painted were square (enough) I decided to paint all of the parallel lines for the entire piece. Now, these lines were quite close to one another and are about one sixteenth to three thirty-seconds of an inch away from one another. It was tedious work to say the least. Once done, I turned to filling in the areas between the lines and then finished off the areas with highlights.

Here's a shot mid-process:

Throughout, the painting was methodical and taxing. My movement was restricted and was mostly from the wrist and fingers. The result was severe hand cramps and occasional hand spasms. It was probably the least fun I've ever had painting in my entire life, and I've been painting regularly since I was nine years old. The pain ended up cutting many days short, which prolonged the process (and the discomfort). Eventually, though, I finished the piece, scanned it, retouched it, and handed it in.

©Wizards of the Coast

Above is the painting as I handed it in. The finished piece is oil on paper on hardboard and measures seven and three-quarters inches wide by eighteen inches tall. It was art directed by Mark Winters. The piece did receive one final tweak after I submitted it to Wizards in that I added my initials and the date to it. As it was, adding my signature undermined the illusion of the tapestry, but some form of it is now on the final piece.

Here are some closeups for your perusal:

Basically the only two brushes I used for the entire thing.
The small round brush in front was basically ruined in the process. 

There are some very important realities that I had to face with this painting. First is that there is a real limit to the amount of detail that would to appear at card-size. In fact, most of the work I did will not be visible at all. It's entirely possible that one will get a hint of the indicated weave at card size, but it's pretty unlikely. So why bother? Well, the image will likely be used for promotional purposes and show up in a much larger format. With those kinds of things, the detail I poured into the piece will be much more apparent, not to mention important. That alone makes the whole thing worthwhile.

The second reality is that despite the amount of effort and time the finished painting represents, the result is something that I can never use in my portfolio. Why? Well, it's stylistically a total anomaly, as is the execution. The piece simply doesn't fit in with the rest of my work and it doesn't represent a direction I wish to go. Is that a bad thing? Not at all. The challenge of the assignment was interesting and forced me to grapple with a lot of questions regarding my process. I actually had to think about a piece in an entirely different way and couldn't just paint from the hip. That was a valuable exercise. Additionally, this assignment was the first time in a long while where I really questioned whether it was worth painting in oils, and in the end it reaffirmed that aspect of my work.

Style-wise, it was an escape and a chance to play in a space I normally wouldn't have gone into. Can I see revisiting the graphic nature in some way? Sure. Much of my college work contained a mix of graphic and realistic elements, and I can see experimenting with that again. The results (provided they're worth a damn) would likely not produce imagery appropriate for Magic, mind you. But there's always my personal work (though even then I'm not so sure). But yeah, it was a valuable experience in that way as well.

Still, I would not fully paint a tapestry again if I was asked to do another one. Instead, I would paint the image in oils and do the tapestry texture in Photoshop. Mostly that decision is built around how vivid my memory is of the pain and swelling in my wrist this piece caused, but part of it is that I genuinely don't see the point of doing it again. I've done it already and didn't really enjoy it enough to dive back into it. But then, I change my mind constantly, so one never knows.

All that being said, there'd be a part of me that would be pushing to just learn how to actually weave and go that route, instead.

Black Lotus

The vast majority of the work I do has no baggage attached to it. Most of the images I create are for things that have never existed before and so there's little to nothing to live up to. On the occasions where this wasn't true and I have re-illustrated things that have had previous iterations, the stakes simply weren't that high. Being asked to paint a new image of Black Lotus is a whole other thing. Black Lotus is big. Really big. There's very little else that comes close to it in terms of notoriety in the world of Magic: the Gathering. There were only 1,100 copies of the original card ever printed and individual cards have sold for more than $27,000 a piece. This is the kind of thing that some people steal for and others use as an investment. It's a totally different level than I am used to.

To an extent, all of that is largely irrelevant to me and this assignment. This painting wasn't for a new printing of a Black Lotus card and so wasn't going to be for anything that vast playerbase could ever use. The original Black Lotus artist, Christopher Rush, will likely be the only person to ever have seen his version in physical print form. The only other artist to have painted a version, Chris Rahn, at least had his image utilized in Magic: the Gathering Online. My version was going to be a prize painting—a one-off—to be given to a tournament winner at the Eternal Weekend event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this coming October.

By "prize painting" I mean just that, a painting that is a prize. It's like a two dimensional trophy. I've painted one of these before (link), so I knew the drill upon getting the assignment. For the most part, such paintings are new illustrations of rare, out of print (and sometimes game-breaking) Magic cards. These paintings tend to be set into a large, printed card border and framed. It's like one of those giant novelty checks one sees when someone wins a golf tournament or the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, only there's an actual painting inside it and unlike its novelty counterparts is actually worth something.

But despite this being a one-off, it's still an important piece that would make for a pretty valuable prize and would make me a small part of the Black Lotus' history. Just another assignment, right? I'm not going to lie. I felt the weight of it.

Usually, I'd include my art description at this point. But now's as good a time as any to explain that I won't be doing that any longer. Instead, I'll be giving a summation of what was in the assignment, rather than quoting it directly. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, this is not due to a mandate from Wizards. I've not been silenced in any way. I'm making this choice because someone actually wrote the art descriptions and they deserve credit, but it's credit that I don't know how to give. Wizards employs writers who toil away at hundreds and hundreds of art descriptions a year. Then the written descriptions get edited and tweaked both by other writers and even the art directors before they pass them along to us. Who is responsible for what is simply something I don't know and it feels weird quoting someone else's work without giving proper credit. As it is, I edit the descriptions to varying degrees in order to summarize or remove references to things that aren't ready for public consumption, so fumbling through translations of sorts is only a small next step. I hope you all understand.

Anyway, in the art description I was asked to paint the black lotus in water. Wizards wanted the lotus to have metallic leaves and stems. I was asked to include some natural lotuses as well, so as to offset the black lotus and its unnatural state. And that's about it. What they were looking for was pretty clear.

After absorbing the description and its various parts, the first thing I did was start looking for pictures of lotuses and collecting them. The second thing I did was start reading more about lotuses only to find out that most of the images I'd collected were of waterlilies and not lotuses (the two major points of difference being: 1) that waterlily leaves float on the water's surface and lotus leaves tend to be above the water; and 2) that lotus flowers have a different structure in their center than waterlilies do that includes a seedpod). So back to looking for pictures of actual lotuses this time. Once I'd gotten enough of those, I started pondering the metal leaves. For this, I grabbed some wire and aluminum foil. I sculpted leaves out of the foil, taped them to wire and stuck them in the ground in my backyard so they were facing lots of greenery, then photographed them with the appropriate light. Additionally, I dug out a Christmas ornament we own that is a silver maple leave and photographed it in the same setting.

Reference in hand, I started thumbnail sketching.

Based on the timing of the assignment, I knew this was going to be the last painting I'd work on of 2016. Both because of that fact and the weight of what I was being asked to do, I wanted to really knock it out of the park. Given that my wife had to work through the holidays, I decided I had some time to experiment and try some different things in the process of making the painting. Of late, I've gotten into the habit of doing my sketches digitally, but I've always really loved Dave Palumbo's painted sketches. I wanted to give that a try, and so I did.

©Wizards of the Coast

I painted two different sketches. Both of these are oil on hardboard and each measures seven inches wide by five inches tall. While the second sketch doesn't deliver on the assignment's concept, I thought I'd give them an alternate take. Additionally, I went into the first sketch digitally to offer up a couple other options for a total of four.

©Wizards of the Coast

Option "A" was pretty much what they'd asked for in the art description. Option "D" was my alternate take. Option "B" was along the same lines as the art description but with a small tweak. Since the art wouldn't be printed as a card, I really didn't need to worry quite as much about the image being readable at card size. There was opportunity for a more subtle take. I thought it might be interesting to restrict the metal in the leaves to only the leaf veins and stems, leaving the rest of the leaf to the normal, green, organic variety. Finally, option "C" was inspired by a Christmas ornament I rediscovered when digging for the aforementioned silver leaf to photograph for reference. Option "C" keeps the black lotus leaves metal, but gives them a green hue. In all versions, I decided to make the lotus' stamens, stigmas, and seedpod metal as well, limiting the only organic aspects of the lotus to the the black petals themselves.

The fine folks at Wizards decided to stick with option A.

Before committing to the finished painting I looked at the calendar and realized I had the time to experiment with my process even further. I decided to try a color study. While I've never really painted a traditional oil color study before, I have been doing digital color studies on an increasing basis. Since I'd already painted two sketches, I figured it was worth trying my hand at a painted color study, as well.

©Wizards of the Coast

The study is also oil on hardboard and measures ten inches wide by eight inches tall.

The study allowed me to work a few kinks out that I hadn't completely resolved. It also gave me something pretty developed to show my peers in order to get some solid feedback before moving on to the finish. The feedback was quite useful (thanks to all of you who put their two cents in), and I implemented most of the suggested changes to the color study, choosing to hold off on the remaining changes until I began painting the final painting.

Speaking of the finish, here's how that came out:

©Wizards of the Coast

The finished piece was completed in early 2017, is oil on hardboard and measures eighteen inches wide by thirteen inches tall. The entire process was art directed by Cynthia Sheppard.

Between preliminaries and the finish, I made some changes to the metal leaves both in placement and scale. Additionally, I subtly changed the metal leaves' surfaces. In the preliminaries I treating them as basically smooth but shifted their appearance to better imitate the subtle bumps and ripples found in actual lotus leaves. Outside of that, the finished painting was just a more polished version of the image that was a tad more consistent with the reference I had.

Whether any of the process experimentation was valuable remains to be seen. On some level I learned a lot and I went into the finished piece with a higher degree of confidence. On the other hand, I felt like the painted studies had removed any experimentation I might otherwise do in the painting of the finished piece. In short, painted the final piece felt rather rote. Whether I paint sketches in the future or do any painted color studies seems somewhat unlikely for the vast majority of my commercial work. Even for my personal work I feel like so many developed preliminaries would undermine much of the spontaneity I quite enjoy. All that being said, I still think it was worth trying and I was glad that I had the time to do it.

In the end, the result is what it is. I'm rather happy with it, but there will always be folks who feel that there is only one true Black Lotus painting, that being the original by Christopher Rush. Then there will be those who look at Chris Rahn's take on the subject done for Magic Online as the more definitive. I have no control over such things and it's hard to argue with the various points of view. It's like trying to argue with someone over which cast of Saturday Night Live was definitively the best if you even believe there is such a thing in the first place. Point is, folks will either dig mine or not.

Regardless of fans' and collectors' feelings, I'm now weirdly part of Magic history in a way that I didn't ever expect to be. I mean, I've contributed a fair bit between my concept art and the many paintings I've done, but the Black Lotus is singular among fans and collectors of Magic: the Gathering. And whether I like it or not, the Black Lotus painting I've done will be equally singular in my body of work.

Still, this job did offer up a unique event that I will remember for a long time to come. Once it was done, I drove the finished painting down to Renton, Washington and delivered it by hand to a very eager art director. I felt bad since I was interrupting her lunch, but I have rarely felt the degree of appreciation and excitement professionally as when she took the painting into possession. That was a good day.

Aethertide Whale

Some assignments require a lot of problem solving and a ton of revision. Other assignments simply don't. Aethertide Whale is definitely one of the latter, which makes it extremely difficult to write about. As much as I like to explain my decision-making and my thought processes, pieces like this don't really have a lot that bears in-depth analysis. Most of the decisions were made for me. While that may sound like a complaint, it isn't. It's just another facet of the job.

It's probably best to backtrack and start with the art description:

Art Description:Setting: KALADESH
Color: Blue creature
Location: The aether-swirled sky of Kaladesh (for aether reference, see p. 21 in the World Guide)
Action: Show a gigantic flying sky leviathan like the one on p. 128B (note the scale). In this shot, it swims through a small fleet of whaling airships (see p. 105C and D for ship profiles) that scatter to avoid getting smashed. The ships are tiny by comparison. All around are swirls of aether currents. 
Focus: the sky leviathan
Mood: a creature completely in its element

Upon getting the assignment, I must confess that I was immediately taken back to my comic collecting days in the mid-nineties. Among the various titles I collected was Sam Kieth's, The Maxx, a comic which on at least one occasion featured flying whales—"air whales" if I recall. While I'm sure there are instances of implied or blatant flying whales in fiction before that comic series, flying whales will always remind me of that series. Well, that series and the whale from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Anyway...

Normally, when writing posts I remove references to World Guide page numbers in the descriptions whenever possible as they lack context. Since I can't show the pages and the designs upon which I base the illustrations, I feel that leaving such references in is a bit of tease. In this case I'm making an exception so as to be clear about what an assignment like this actually requires.

So, taking a second look at the description, we see that the aesthetic for the setting is indicated by images in the World Guide. There were several concept pieces from which to draw inspiration both on that specific page and in several other places throughout the guide and it was clear what they needed. As for the creature, that design too was pretty well established. The description was pointing to a full-color concept design that I stuck fairly close to. The ships were a bit less fleshed out and were just silhouettes on the page. As they were silhouettes, they contained no detail, just the broad strokes of how they should be shaped. There were, however, other ships in the World Guide from which to glean information. There was a little extrapolating to be done, but it mostly entailed looking at the other ships from the World Guide and applying design elements from those to mine all while retaining the overall shapes indicated by the aforementioned silhouettes.

With most of the elements figured out for me, my job was to take them and assemble them in a manner consistent with both the letter of the description as well as the spirit of the description. There was a bit of trial and error to make the image work, but in the end my responsibility was just to compose all of the things, toy with the scale, etc. In the end, I came up with this:

©Wizards of the Coast

When building a digital document like this, I typically keep the various elements on separate layers so that I can move them around, hide them, and resize them as much as I need to. In this case, each ship represents a different layer, and the swirling aether (seen as the white streaks) is on three separate layers depending on where it is in space. The front of the whale is on one layer and the tail is on another. Once I've locked down a composition, I'll typically wait until the following morning to send the sketch off to the client so as to be sure the image still works for me. If not, I tweak it as necessary and then send it on its way.

Wizards gave me the green light with one requested change going forward: the Art Director asked that I change the shape of the lower jaw a bit. Super minor and easily done. I took it to paint and here's how it came out:

©Wizards of the Coast

The finished piece is oil on gessoed hardboard, measures fourteen inches wide by eleven inches tall and was Art Directed by Mark Winters.

Despite being represented by white streaks in the sketch, the aether in Kaladesh is meant to be sort of an aqua color. As I painted the piece, I found that I was having difficulty keeping that color as vibrant as I wanted it to be. The aether tended to disappear into the sky and so I pushed it lighter in color to add more contrast, which only weakened the vibrancy of the intended aqua hue. Keeping the color of the aether was important to me, and so my best option turned out to be pushing the sky in a darker direction in order to allow the teal streaks to pop. Beyond that, there really weren't any struggles of note post sketch.

Jobs like this can sometimes be easier than others which require a lot of problem solving. I mean, there was relatively little for me to think about in this particular case, so what's not to like? However, sometimes these kinds of jobs can be far more difficult than others. After all, they are based upon pre-existing designs and frankly some designs are a heck of a lot easier to implement than others. Some designs or aesthetics don't mesh well with a given artist's sensibilities. Some designs are just plain difficult. And living up to the most difficult designs can be a huge headache and represent far more hours of toil to bring to fruition than something created from whole cloth. So in a way, they represent a problem solving as well. It's just a very different kind.

Fortunately, this time around it was just a whale, some ships, and some swirling aether. It's hard to complain about any of that.

Fevered Visions

I've failed miserably at posting regularly on this blog. Honestly, I can't really say what has kept me from keeping up to date for most of this year, but I know that I've gotten other stuff done along the way. I updated my website, built a store there, got a few things done around the house, and even got to go on vacation. Beyond that, though, it's been a bit of an off year for me to this point, and the blog has suffered. However, I shall endeavor to finish the year strong and bring the content up to the present in the coming weeks. That all starts here. With Fevered Visions.

So, Fevered Visions. It went pretty smoothly and had virtually no twists and turns. I got my assignment, did my sketch and painted the picture. As usual, we'll start with the assignment:

ART DESCRIPTION:Setting: INNISTRADColor: Blue and red spellLocation: See belowAction: This spell represents a cultist going mad from the influence of cosmic truths. One way to show this might be: show a close-up of a man's face, a terrified expression on his face. He's floating in an insane nonsensical landscape -- it looks like the inside of a massive brain, and tentacle-like neurons squirm around him, mimicking the look of Emrakul lattice. Maybe his eye sockets are empty, and we can see the lattice shapes inside his empty head, as well. Is this a glimpse inside the truth of reality, or has he gone totally bonkers? OR BOTH?

I read the above and somehow ignored it. Well, I ignored bits of it. When presented with a description like this, I tend to spend a lot more time thinking about it than actually drawing it up. I start out by reading the description a bunch of times and then walk away and let it sink in. Maybe mull some of it over. After a time, I'll begin to ask myself a series of questions about the piece in order to prioritize aspects of it, and better understand how I want to attack it. In this case, I asked things like: How close are we to the figure? How am I going to show an empty head? How do I even begin to touch on some of the abstract themes mentioned with a single image?

For me, the idea for the piece came together once I settled upon two things. First, I decided not to bother showing that the head was empty. I wasn't really interested in doing yet another body horror piece, and I felt it was going to be a bit difficult to truly pull off at card size when the environment itself seemed to be more vital to the image as a whole. Second, I decided that the piece needed a way to connect the space and the mental states described in the art order in order to get at the core of the concept. For me, the obvious way to make that connection was through the eyes.

Once I'd figured out the solution to the problem, the rest of the piece was pretty academic. The shape language of Emrakul's lattice is not actually too different from how neurons are actually shaped, so making that connection was easy. Beyond that, it was just a matter of figuring out the best way to present the whole thing. Here are the sketches I turned in:

©Wizards of the Coast

Upon doing the bottom version, it became instantly clear that it was a lesser image. Somehow, despite showing more of the face and hammering home the expression of horror, the idea itself felt watered down. Also, the sketch felt to visually connected to Duress, a piece I did years ago that had no connective tissue to this piece. Still, I'd bothered to make the sketch, and so I submitted it.

This was a bad idea.

There is a common school of thought throughout illustration that if an illustrator submits multiple sketches, the Art Director (or editor, or committee) will invariably chose the one the illustrator likes the least. The best way to combat this is for the illustrator to give them only sketches of things that the illustrator wants to actually paint. By submitting this second sketch, I opened myself up to the possibility of having to paint something I was unhappy with from the outset, and that is truly a miserable experience. Fortunately, the Art Director in this case was smarter than me and the first sketch was the one that was approved.

So I took it to paint.

©Wizards of the Coast

The finished painting is oil on paper on hardboard and measures fourteen inches wide by eleven inches tall.

This assignment was one of an increasingly rare breed where I got to do some deeper problem solving. The piece could have been a dude floating in space amidst a web of neuron lattice with maybe a hint of that lattice within. That might have been a fine painting, and indeed there are some who would have knocked that piece out of the park. For me, though, that image fell short of addressing the mental state. I needed to find a way to allow the viewer to more directly ponder whether the man has plugged into something deeper, or whether the whole thing is of his own creation. The resulting painting is probably no less distressing than that other version, but I think it ended up being more about the question than the man.

The Sword of Feast and Famine

The Sword of Feast and Famine is likely the highest profile piece I've ever done in the eleven years that I've worked on Magic. Sure, other cards I've done art for are more ubiquitous, but this one has had greater fan and collector interest than pretty much anything else I've ever done. One might think that because of the card's weight, the assignment would bring with it an extra degree of pressure and stress. Honestly, though, I didn't feel it. Maybe I should have. In truth, I approached this piece the same way I might approach any other.

Normally, I'd start out with art description, but the art description contains a lot of stuff I'd end up having to explain and so I'm just going to cut to the chase and give the explanation. Story-wise, we find the world of Kaladesh in the middle of the Inventor's Fair. Widgets and doodads of all varieties are on display for all of Kaladesh's citizens to peruse and consider. The Sword of Feast and Famine is one such item and I was asked to portray the sword sitting on a stand in a display. The sword was to be elven in make and design and so would be made of both wood and metal. The metal would be near black in its darkness, the wood alive and flourishing.

The shape of the sword was based largely on the ground work done by the team of concept artists that created the world-guide. Elvish motifs and design were fleshed out quite clearly and it was pretty easy to extrapolate the sword's look. Beyond that, I decided that rather than living wood, vines might be a better way to make clear the contrast to the deadly metal blade. In my thinking, vines provided two advantages: 1) I could more densely concentrate lots of living leaves and greenery in order to hammer home the life/death contrast, and 2) vines provided a means of transitioning from one material to another more easily. Sure, I could have integrated wood pieces throughout the sword, but I felt the contrast between the black blade and living plant life was visually a bit too stark and could benefit from a greater degree of nuance. So, being able to wind vines throughout felt more advantageous in that respect.

Additionally, the vines afforded me a small story-telling opportunity in that I could show them becoming less healthy as they approached the blade. Given that the healthiest vines exist at the hilt of the sword, one could go as far as to say that the hilt and its connection to the living wielder represents life and the blade, death. No new ground broken in any of that, nor is the idea particularly deep, so I totally understand if you're rolling your eyes at this point. But it ended up being a part of the thinking that went into the piece.

Outside of the sword, I had to make decisions about the environment and the display. Given that the sword is elvish I though it would be a good idea to reflect that in the design of the stand, as well. Rather than living wood I used dead, sculpted wood (which I guess you could say is dead because it made contact with the sword?) in order to keep the greenery where it was most important. After arranging the elements I had, I ended up with a pretty balanced composition and I decided to double down on that with a symmetrical backdrop of curtain and metal filigree.

This is the sketch that resulted:

©Wizards of the Coast

As you can see, the sketch is digital. Increasingly I've abandoned traditional sketching for assignments for the digital alternative. While it's disappointing to collectors, I have to say that the speed with which I can ideate and create alternative designs is something I rather enjoy. Perhaps I'll return to sketching traditionally sometime in the future, but for now I feel it's working rather well for me. If nothing else, it affords a quick means of doing color and value studies.

Anyway, the above sketch was approved. Here's how the piece came out:

©Wizards of the Coast

Above is the image as I submitted to Wizards. Some of those who've seen the resulting card online have inquired about whether there was any digital trickery used in the making of the image. My answer to that is yes and no. Digitizing any painting—be it through a digital camera or scanner—can be a bit tricky. Minimally, there is a need to do some color adjustments to make the digital image match the painting. For my work, there's often a need to retouch little ridges of paint in brush strokes that catch the light and cause tiny reflections in the file. It's painstaking work, but very necessary. Beyond that, I might do a bit of tweaking, like making an area darker or brighter depending on what might help make a piece read better when it's reduced to card size. That is the case with this piece. There were a few metal reflections that I painted in oil that I later found to be distracting and I dialed them down a bit in Photoshop. Later, I glazed the painting to match. Here's what the painting itself now looks like:

©Wizards of the Coast

The finished image is oil on hardboard and measures fourteen inches wide by eighteen inches tall.

The very decorative world of Kaladesh has many challenges inherent to it. The biggest of these in this context, is the fact that the world is so heavily adorned with filigree, that it's potentially difficult to show that one thing is more important than another. For this piece, I tried to keep the filigree to a relative minimum, make the shapes nice and large, and compose in a very simple and instantly readable manner.

In the end, I'm pretty happy with how this one came out. I like the overall contrast between the red/brown piece and the shock of green. I like the isolated black shape in the middle of the piece. And despite its triteness, I like the bit of storytelling with the dying vines. I only wish that that bit of storytelling read better when shrunken down. I think it's probable that however I tried to deliver that message, it would have gotten a little lost at card size. Even were this idea presented in a film, it likely would be been done with a closeup. Fortunately, anyone who sees the painting in person can get up close to it and do that part themselves.

Tyrant of Valakut

For someone who had no real drive to paint dragons, the last couple years have forced me to get into them in a fairly large way. Lots of drawings, a few paintings, tons of discussion and analysis (not to mention many a headache) was the result. But if I ever thought that my time worrying about dragons was done at the end of the Tarkir block of Magic, boy was I wrong. In terms of preliminary drawings, color studies, the number of images pulled from the internet for reference and total man hours, this piece represents quite an investment in still more dragons. Or rather one dragon. The Tyrant of Valakut (Intro Pack Version).

Here's the art order Wizards gave me:

ART DESCRIPTION:
INTRO PACK
Setting: ZENDIKAR
Color: Red creatureLocation: top of a cliff (use pp. 43-46 in the World Guide as a starting point, but make it your own)Action: Show us an immense dragon perched on a rocky cliff. See the dragon on p. 163, but remove the back protrusions. This dragon is thicker with several sets of tusks that protrude from its lower jaw. Its wings are unfurled, as it stands triumphantly over a medium sized dead Emrakul-lineage Eldrazi spawn (see pp. 228-230).
Focus: the dragon
Mood: Raw power. The uncontested master.

After soaking in the information from the description for a bit, I started doodling in my sketchbook in an attempt to grope my way toward a solution of some sort. Having to revise the design of the dragon a bit was an interesting challenge and I tried to remain fairly true to the spirit of the original while making the necessary changes and adding my own flavor to it. Here's where I started to figure stuff out:

Once I got to this point, I move to Photoshop for the sketch.

©Wizards of the Coast

The Art Director seemed to like it and gave me the go ahead. Before going to paint, however, I went ahead and did a color study.

As you can see, elements of the background began to change a bit. I found that as I filled in those large shapes with color, they began to feel uniform and a bit boring. In the end, I felt that breaking those shapes up really added a degree of interest to the piece. Still, I wasn't totally happy with it and showed it to a group of compatriots. They gave me some input and I tweaked it a bit.

A bit more broken up and a greater variety of direction in the floating mountains in the background. I was getting closer. I showed the revised version to my friends again and they had a few more thoughts. more changes were made and I settled on this:

I knew that things would likely change a bit more over the course of painting the piece, but I felt like I was in pretty good shape nevertheless. So, I transferred my drawing to the surface and went to town.

©Wizards of the Coast

The finished painting is oil on gessoed hardboard and measures twenty-four inches wide by eighteen inches tall.

As you can see, the piece became darker in the paint. This is largely due to my love of a heavier palette and the fact that I felt that the background was a little too washed out in the sketch. As I developed the painting, the darker background called for a darker dragon, as well. The added bonus of this was that it became easier to sell the molten crags in the dragon's skin. The downside is that piece isn't quite as luminous as it was in the sketch, and the overall lighting scheme shifted quite a bit. Such is life.

Painting this large for Magic is a tough thing. Inherently, a lot of detail is lost and the printed image fails to do the painting justice. However, as long as the piece reads okay at card size, that tends to not be too big a deal—at least for the purposes of the client, that is. For my purposes, I was just hoping to make a cool painting that had a degree of presence in person. I think I accomplished that. Still, I think it's apparent that this piece might fall outside ideal size for my Magic work. I'm beginning to feel that outside of landscapes, 18x14 is about as big as I can go without losing too much. That's not to say that I won't ever go this large ever again. In fact, it's likely I will should the right piece come along. Whatever the case, this felt like a worthy opportunity to go a bit bigger and it's an experiment that I'm rather happy with.