FanArt_ink.Mysterious

MTGinktober skulks into Day 15, "Mysterious," starring Seekers' Squire and Witch-Maw Nephilim, just the picture of obscure!

I needed an explorer-type creature and was torn right down to the wire between using the more famous Tireless Tracker and more simply attired Seekers' Squire. I went Squire because I had reference on what the front of her costume looked like so I wouldn't have to eat up time doing major design. As I was a little behind schedule, I needed to be extra conscious of time-budget, though I discovered nothing larger than cardsize art for reference, so there was still a good amount of impromptu figuring-out to do!

Fun Facts: In the flurry to upload to Twitter and Instagram by deadline, I often forget what the prompt was or what the cards I referenced were, so for the file name, I just use whatever comes to mind first if I can't immediately recall the actual information. In this case, I saved this as Kaonashi, which I can only imagine was Greg Staples's inspiration for his Nephilim design. I have since developed the practice of labeling the refs with the full card name in my reference document, easy.

Easter Eggs: I like to plug mushrooms into my forest scenes, and this one referenced the notable skull mushroom from yore.

The story behind this composition is that I wanted an explorer/tracker-type creature to be intrigued by the mysterious mask WMN has on its head, unaware of the true monster that lies beneath. Originally, I was hoping to draw all four of the Nephilim similarly hidden as apparent background elements, but alas, no time. On the bright side, I was also eager to try heavy blacks on this piece, as I know one of my hesitations is going brutal with black space. Fear of a black panel?

Not normal,

Reuxben