Welcome back. I’ve been on quite the hiatus. The benefit of the time off, is that I have a significant backlog of illustrations to share. I won’t have to scramble every week to come up with artwork to share. I’m going to attempt to consistently post, once a week. We’ll see how it goes.
Anyway, let’s get on with it. You aren’t here for my eloquent words.
Ghoulcaller Gisa is my third Magic the Gathering card. My art director, Dawn Murin could not have made me happier with this choice. The design of the character was enough on it’s own, but playing baseball with a zombie head was the icing on the cake. I love baseball. I started watching homerun highlights on youtube the same day.
I typically try to send three sketches for each MTG card illustration. As long as I can come up with 3 that I would actually want to spend several hours painting. We went with the 3rd option.
Reference collection is a bit of a work in progress throughout a painting. But notice the 3d model in the middle. I use DAZ3d to set up a scene. This step moves around a bit in the process. Sometimes, I start with only a pose in my mind. I set up a character in the pose, and move the camera around until something forms in my mind. Other times, I have already drawn out the idea, and use the 3d to visualize lighting and other finer details for the rendering.
I don’t normally do pencil drawings before I paint. It’s just not worth the extra time involved, usually. But, I started going back to draw out my sketches in pencil for Magic the Gathering, because I was kindly informed that people actually buy them. Once I was made aware of this, I actually incorporated pencil drawings into the workflow. All that being said, It’s been really refreshing to start drawing traditionally again outside of the random bar sketch.
You may have noticed that the image is cropped in a bit from the sketch. This was due to issues that the legal types had with the violence. Strange, since the zombie is already dead. But this was a much better option than not being printed at all. Which was on the table. Again, I have to thank Dawn for fighting to find a way to get it out in the world.
Here are a few detail shots.
Well, that’s enough typing for me for one day. Have a good day, and we’ll see you next week.