MTGinktober crashes into Day 12, "Shattered," starring Feldon of the Third Path and Loran! There are two spellings of Feldon's wife's name, but I'll use that of her namesake, official story, "Loran's Smile."
This was a neat change of pace. I wanted to do something more symbolic, in my unending quest not to do the level-one, or more "immediate," card/concept. I already did a beat-up artifact for last year's "Broken," so for this somewhat similar prompt (a trait I've noticed creeping up into this year's prompts), I went with a more metaphorical approach.
Magic is infamous for trying to imbue its cards with story, and Feldon's card is one of the only cards to evoke an actual emotional response from me when I first saw it previewed. Even without knowing the full story, the card itself was enough to communicate or at least inspire a compelling story.
Oddly, the first and only other card that I felt actually choked-up-emotional about was Darksteel Relic. Peculiar that the most emotional cards are artifact themed. That card got me because of how minuscule it is--the last remnant Mirrans have is this tiny, basically meaningless, useless yet permanent shard of their former great existence. There's pride in its permanence, but it's such a feeble representation of what they once had, and ultimately it says more about the utter domination they fell to.
Fun Facts: Since I wanted this piece to feel extra glassy, I decided to make Loran feel like a stained glass construction that was ironically warmer than the human the art is actually about. Continuing the irony, the human would be the thing that was fracturing apart. To give Loran a more artistic, non-human quality, I went with a Leyendecker/Mucha "art nouveau" style, with heavy emphasis on outline. A special quirk for this piece, I drew Feldon in full, snapped a reference photo, and then went over it with the shards, inspired by the Etherington Bros.' fantastic glass-break guide. Also, since I need 31 pages of good paper this month, I'm burning through some old sketchbooks I've had laying around (one's already done!), so not all the pages of this current skethcbook are pristine--there was this inkblot on the page, so I devised the designy treatment to cover up for it!
You might notice in the photos, some water damage has tinged the bottom of most pages yellow, and there's also some intense warping to the paper that makes even scans not so great, since portions of the page recede from the scanner's surface. I try to limit the digital post production strictly just to boosting the brightness and levels and clearing away the permagunk that gathers along the edges of my traditional pages, as well as stubborn pencil/eraser scars, but I do make an exception to try to patch up the places where paper warping messed up the image capture, such as reconstructing Loran's face a bit.
Easter Eggs: Loran's holding the Golgothian Sylex that brought upon the Ice Age, Feldon's holding Feldon's Cane, and they are standing in front of the Ice Age expansion symbol since their relationship is so tightly involved in that looming development. Not sure if it's quite an "Easter Egg," but I made sure to put on a smile on that face. For Loran's outfit, I used the visual language of one of my favorite parts of Feldon's art--the semi-circular window framing.
Not normal,
Reuxben
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