Fun_BigLittle

This is MTGinktober's day 21 post, "Big," starring my absolute favorite monogreen creature, one of the very first rares I ever opened back when I started, Silvos, Rogue Elemental. Going into this piece, I didn't realize how nondescript he looks--I'm not sure he has a face--so he ended up being pretty challenging to capture...

But anyway, I knew I wanted someone smaller in the foreground to contrast with his size, but who? Well, if I'm including my all-time favorite greenybopper heartthrob, then I had to include Mortivore, my all-time favorite creature, period (and perhaps the absolute first rareature I ever opened). But this was the Silvos show today, so I needed to sneak Morti in there, especially since it wouldn't be a clear comparison. Regardless, I did want to push Silvos's size anyway, so a human would be best, but how could I sneak Mortivore in there? Tie him in thematically. Thus the foregrounder had to be fellow green legend, Saffi Eriksdotter, of Lhurgoyphobic fame. So if you look at her boots and bracers, I incorporated all 8 type-named Lhurgoyfs (as of Kaladesh), including the Ice Age and 8E versions of the namesake star/star. Her knee pads are the Ice Age expansion symbol, of course.

The story I came up with in my head about this image is that Saffi was fleeing the Lhurgoyf, yelled back to Hans to run, too, but he ended up getting caught and eaten. Stricken with survivor's remorse, Saffi eventually decides to jump off a great cliff in the forest to atone for her cowardice in not staying back to help Hans. Her sorrow and pain are so great that in the middle of her fall, her spark ignites and she planeswalks to safety. She eventually teams up with Silvos and they decide to protect the deep forest from poachers and to assist anyone lost or in danger. Silvos will never be tamed, but he will obediently take command from Saffi, in whom he sees a hungry, honed power greater than his own.

I am super wiped out from these MTGinktobers, so when I found out (kinda expected, after "Big") that Day 22 was "little," I was relieved cuz it meant I might be able to do a smaller piece. This Metropolis Sprite got out of hand and while I had just wanted to draw her huge next to a d6 or something for a reality-check scale, I kept seeing more fun stuff we could incorporate at bite size.

For instance, there's an M15-bordered Japanese Mortivore (doesn't exist), a Champions of Kamigawa d20 (which doesn't exist, to my knowledge), and a From the Vault: Lore Dark Depths, curled to kingdom come, in reference to the famously horrendous and dangerous foiling process they use for these supposedly extremely special edition printings. Since college, I've enjoyed hiding my signature into my art so that it adds to, rather than detracts from a piece (and it's harder to remove or notice by nefarious people)--this was heavily inspired by studying Will Eisner's designs--so I did have to puzzle over how to hide it in the wing. The d20 hosts my favorite number at top, 13, using the old dice font.

Oh, I also recorded myself inking some of the wing, by the way. The full video ended up going for 15 minutes, but Instagram has a 1 minute version. Wish I knew how to time lapse...I'd like to do some video stuff, including streaming when we return to digital...kinda want to color a couple of these...

Reuxben