Ok, we wrapped
MTGintkober, but I got a request from
Tibaut on Tumblr for a creature I never got around to, namely
Sygg, River Guide, so here he be at long last!
My hope with this year's MTGinktober run was to hit as many of the obscurer Magic characters as I could, since the main guys always get all the attention, but I was positive I'd miss some characters near and dear to some people's hearts. Thus I made the offer early on to consider anyone's pet cards, to see if I could work them into a future illustration, and even flat-out do "bonus tracks" after Inktober ended to clear out any characters people were really hoping to see.
I don't believe Sygg was ever a candidate for a piece this year--the closest he could have gotten was maybe
Deep or
Underwater, but as indicated in those process posts, I had other concepts in mind for those prompts. But I got the request near the end of the run, so the cleanest solution was just to dedicate a special-edition-type post just for him.
Fun Facts: This is the first "traditional" merfolk I've ever drawn. Kiora is technically a merfolk, but she's of the convenient plot-construction school of design, meaning she's got legs rather than the usual, fishified finish to her anatomy. I also drew this in the sketchbook that only contains one Inktober 2017 piece,
Ship, since I had rediscovered that the paper of this sketchbook randomly splotches ink, making it too risky to use for full-fledged Inktobers. But since this was a special edition, there was less pressure to avoid cleaning up random errors in Photoshop, and besides, I had a bunch of just-cleared pages just going to waste!
Easter Eggs: The background of this piece was based on Sygg's
Lorwyn art, though we lowered the camera to get that half-submerged look.
Not normal,
Reuxben