FanArt_ink.Crawl

 MTGinktober scrapes the bottom of Day 31 "Crawl," starring Etrata, the Silencer!

 Well this is the finale, kid.  I don't know if I'll do another MTGinktober, and frankly this is a weak note to go out on, but man, the election weighs heavily on me, and I have to focus on that exclusively now.  Still happy to take a couple requests though, so let me know if there's any character I missed over the past five years.

 Fun Facts: I've been trying to get Etrata in a piece for days now, and we finally have a relatively good fit for her.  It was either her or another Drana.

 Easter Eggs: The bats in the background are based on one of my favorite creatures' background elements--the backing bats in Bloodhunter Bat.  My signature is in the tree at upper right.

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FanArt_ink.Ominous

 MTGinktober looms over Day 30 "Ominous," starring Aminatou, the Fateshifter and Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker!

 Ah, this was another enjoyable, relatively easy one to draw since the shapes were so simple.  The toughest part was the tight details on Aminatou's costuming, really, and I guess the ropes' perspective on Shirei's.  But that dress was more tedious than difficult.  Pressed for time as always, but setting up for more volunteer shifts before the election is a worthy cause.

 Fun Facts: This is actually Shirei's second MTGinktober appearance, believe it or not.  This is also my first attempt at using my Deleter white ink for the streaks on the background, and man, it didn't go well--it gummed up my nibs!  So I went back to my gel pen, which is definitely easier to use, but is running dangerously low and is much more transparent. Prolly just gotta thin the Deleter ink a bit.

 Easter Eggs: This is of course a reference to the famous Spirited Away scene.  I totally didn't think to put my signature in Shirei's board, so it's back in the tree at top.

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FanArt_ink.Shoes

  MTGinktober kicks into Day 29 "Shoes," starring Phoebe, Head of S.N.E.A.K.(ers) and Lightning Greaves (Michael Komarck's FNM version)!

 Man, I wasn't sure what to draw here, as a lot of characters aren't illustrated with feet, but those with prominent footwear aren't quite good fits for the prompt.  And do we use in-universe shoes or make a tennis shoe ad spoof?  Well, I went with Pheobe since her name sounds like "sneaker," which is a word I hate, but that gels with the shoe theme.

 Fun Facts: This is our first image to break the half-page format, as it was crucial to feature her full length prominently, which stretched past my Bristol board's halfway mark.  The illustration was large enough to preclude any kind of background in our time crunch, so I just pushed the smoke tendril things, which I hope I read correctly from her original illustration--I also needed to merge multiple scans to fit the entire image!

 Easter Eggs: We have a special guest star in Acornelia, Fashionable Filcher, as a throwback to the original tennis shoe fashion ad treatment we were considering. Plus I wanted a chipper character to cheer up our more dour main star. My signature is in her boa.

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FanArt_ink.Float

  MTGinktober drifts into Day 28, "Float," starring Tibor and Lumia!

 Going into this, I just wanted a character enjoying a root beer float.  Looking up float refs was wonderful; not a huge soda fan, but love floats.  This character redraw kinda shows how far we've come / pull our punches when it comes to inking now, but this year's been pretty manageable--minimal pains/strains.  Compare to that first run, my eyes permanently blurred a bit and I was in pain by the end of that run, not to mention the stress (I even ended the run before finishing cuz the election made me so distraught, but we're sure gearing up for sweet revenge this year, aren't we?).

 Fun Facts: This is Tibor and Lumia's second MTGinktober appearance, pre-divorce of course (see the original post for our little story behind that), and they are on a date high above the Ravnican Skies--really enjoyed drawing these these guys again, though they have some wacky hairstyles.  

 Easter Eggs: The background is loosely based on the actual card, but also memories of the references from our previous Ravnican skyline.

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FanArt_ink.Music

 MTGinktober rocks out Day 27, "Music," starring Gerrard, Weatherlight Hero; Karn, Silver Golem; Mirri, Cat Warrior, and Ertai, Wizard Adept! 

 Ah, man, what a salve these four were from this hideous homage piece.  This was a real joy to make, I absolutely loved studying Mr. Jamie Hewlett's style.  And it was done in record time!  Each ink took about 4 minutes on average, Ertai's 3 being the fastest.

 Fun Facts: This is our second computer-assisted piece, actually, but as I am quite insistent on doing these as traditional as possible, the only reason I used Photoshop to assist here was--as is the only valid reason--to dump a ton of flat black onto the piece (and I am running super low on ink for my broad spot-black inks!), but I remain committed to using nigh exclusively traditional techniques (there was a slight clean up on a splotch that my white ink didn't quite clear up completely here).

 Easter Eggs: Obviously, this is a spoof of the most famous Gorillaz album cover, though mine references domain, one of the big mechanics from the Invasion block, the last hurrah for this crew.  I cast Ertai as Murdoc since he's villainous, Gerrard as 2D since he's the "pretty boy" leader, Mirri over Jhoira as Noodle since I already Jhoira and have been meaning to draw Mirri, and Karn as Russel since they both have that bulky look, of course.  I wish I had a better band name, maybe Gotalldeez, but Weathaz seemed close enough.  Not normal,

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FanArt_ink.Hide

 MTGinktober cowers behind Day 26, "Hide," starring Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician!

 This has to be the record for total turnaround time.  Mighta been about two and a half hours total from beginning to posting the scan.  Obviously crazy pressed for time, so tons of corners cut for this one, including a crazy close close-up, tons of negative space, and a completely reference-less illustration aside from the card art.

 Fun Facts: This is Ib's second MTGinktober appearance--I'm listening to Pod Save America right now, funnily enough.

 Easter Eggs: Hid my signature in Ib's helmet.
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FanArt_ink.Buddy

MTGinktober pals around with Day 25, "Buddy," starring Chandra, Fire Artisan and Zirda, the Dawnwaker!

This was one I felt could have been really great, but man, I woke up pretty late after being simply conked out from the previous two days of marathon phone banking on minimal sleep, so time was quite severely limited.  But the idea was to take on Chandra's "Go get 'em, buddies!" line from Arena, so I looked for some notable fiery elementals to accompany her, without rehashing last year's Chandra piece too much.

So a notable, recent fire-based elemental, which actually would work with her in a deck was Zirda, who hasn't seen much play, but is such a cool (and thankfully relatively simple) illustration anyway, so it was a happy inclusion.

Fun Facts: Again, trying to avoid getting to close to our previous Chandra-based MTGinkober entry, this interpretation is kind of a mix Fire Artisan and Chandra, Flame's Catalyst, with Oath of Chandra anchoring most details, as usual. 

Easter Eggs: I hid my signature in the floating mountain on the left, and the grounded mountain on the right is taken from Zirda's illustration, so this is a mix of Zendikar and Ikoria.

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FanArt_ink.Dig

MTGinktober excavates Day 24, "Dig," starring Ghoulcaller Gisa!

Always eager to draw Gisa, and this was the perfect prompt for a shovel-wielder.  Particularly pressed for time and energy on this one cuz I just got off another 10-hour virtual phone bank shift (perhaps my last of the cycle--it's super exhausting, but I hope to give it at least a couple more efforts), so I even forgot to snap a photo of the "preliminary inks" phase, which is how the illustration looks like fresh off the basic inks before going back in for touch-ups, so I'm including the preliminary scan I used for our Twitter/Instagram post. 

Fun Facts: This is Gisa's fourth MTGinktober appearance, which I believe ties her for the most appearances with Domri, who is probably my favorite Planeswalker.  Speaking of Domri, I erased the line I drew between his illustration and this one, so they actually overlap a little bit on the left, not sure if I'll cut the Bristol board at some point...

Easte Eggs: Always love hiding my signature in dirt formations, and you can find it in the upper right.

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FanArt_ink.Rip

  MTGinktober shreds up Day 23, "Rip," starring Domri Rade!

  I had a pretty good idea of what to draw here, but knew it was crucial to keep it relatively simple since I was also scheduled to pull a full day of virtual phonebanking, so I'd be sapped of energy more than usual, and only had about an hour or so to draw and another to ink.  The idea was to incorporate a pun of a "ripped" dead character--Domri's fourth appearance, by the way-- ripping pictures of other dead characters--rip.  They all died in War of the Spark, coincidentally.
 

 Fun Facts: With this piece, we are now onto completely new supplies--we replaced our nib here, and switched to new ink here, and are now using a "new" old book of Bristol board (rather than our completely filled sketchbook, spanning back to 2015!), so our dimensions will be a bit different going forward--I'm actually dividing each Bristol page roughly in half, so they will even be a little further off among themselves. The tools are all working well together, though this paper seems to eat ink rapidly, which is mildly concerning, but I'm confident we can last the rest of the month.

 Easter Eggs: The other characters getting memorialized here are actually two of my least favorite designs, the caveman Gideon, and the 90s romance novel coverboy and beaten deadhorse Dack Fayden.  Meanwhile I used my trusty favorite (OG) Domri Rade iteration, but his JP hairdo.
 
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FanArt_ink.Chef

MTGinktober cooks up Day 22, "Chef," starring Hanna, Ship's Navigator!
 

This was a treat to draw, as it recalled one of my earliest comics influences, back when I started drawing comics.  I reread the first volume (and chapter, specifically) of One Piece over and over to inspire, but also flat-out teach me how to draw and write comics.

As for the gag, I thought it'd be funny to have One Piece's famous flirt try to charm a Magic character, and in this case Magic's version of the One Piece navigator, Nami.

Fun Facts: Today's page provided by the bonus piece in progress to the post-MTGinktober request for a drawing of Arvad--it wasn't looking good anyway, and I'm happy to sac it to give it another go later on.

Easter Eggs:  Obviously, our guest star is Sanji from One Piece.  The background comes mainly from the Double Masters version, and my signature is carved into the wooden design in the back.  I normally prefer the pre-time skip versions of the OP crew, but went with the neo take for the sake of ease as at this point, that version is probably more familiar to people, but I included a flower on Sanji's lapel as a reference to hana, the Japanese word for flower.

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FanArt_ink.Sleep

 MTGinktober snoozes into Day 21, "Sleep," starring Gallia of the Endless Dance and Lurrus of the Dream-Den!

 Ah, at last, our first Algen art of this year's run!  Never let a year go by without some fan art for the Boss.

 We've been close to getting Lurrus in this year, too, and this was a great spot for everyone's favorite cat nightmare companion. I actually didn't put it together until later that Lurrus of the Dream-Den inherently has a sleep-based theme to it, my organizing anchor here was simply drawing Gallia wiped out from partying, and just having a sleeping cat to drive home how placid things have gotten for the rambunctious Gruuligan.

 Fun Facts: Today's cleared page comes courtesy of our old Rainbrella sketch, which is a bummer because I love rain, and this was a sketch from a lovely, rainy night on the train, if I recall.

Easter Eggs:  The background is inspired by the shape language in the trees in Gallia's art. As is tradition, we include the "swooshy B" (ß) in any Algen art, except this one's more up front about it with the whole "Who's the ßoss?" cup. The banana is a reference to the famous fruit from Gallia's art.

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FanArt_ink.Coral

MTGinktober dives deep into Day 20, "Coral," starring Jori En, Ruin Diver!

 Man, this was a tough one, cuz I'm not crazy about drawing merfolk, but what else has coral in it?  Again, pressed for time, I couldn't plan for something as complicated as a Kiora piece, so I went with Jori En as she's mostly negative space, so only so much detail would be necessary, plus she has a pretty neat design, anyway, and I have been meaning to draw her for these past couple years.

 I was sorta bouncing between both present versions of her to get a better idea her costuming, but improvised a lot on the helmet, which appears here not quite as its depicted in either version.

 Fun Facts: Today's wiped page was an old sketch I believe I started on the train one night, again trying to draw "normal" Magic types.

Easter Eggs: The background is heavily from Jori En's Game Day promo.  My sig is in her staff.

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