FanArt_ink.Nest

MTGinktober settles into Day 9, "Nest," starring Prime Speaker Vannifar!

Loathe to go too obvious with the prompt and draw a literal nest, I went with nesting dolls.  So I needed a Magic concept that lent itself to a chain of related things, ideally of diminishing size--enter Modern Vannifar Combo (slightly antiquated since I didn't want to use the current choice 2-drop, whose art was done by the art thief who got kicked out of Magic). Interestingly, two cards in the combo--Kiki-Jiki and Restoration Angel make their second MTGinktober appearances here.

Fun Facts: Despite spending a good four and a half hours on pencils alone and staring at this illustration for that long--let alone the two hours or so to ink--and having Sam Pardee's guide as well as giant images of each card in the chain displayed the whole time, I still messed up the combo (ironically the missing card had the biggest reference image, too).  Frustrating, but a classic blunder where you forget comically obvious stuff from tunnel vision (I even remember getting to the last doll and thinking, do I have an extra?  Hmm, might as well drop a BoP here). 

 Easter Eggs: Well, left to right, we've got Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker (Steve Belledin version); Restoration Angel (Hannes's version, of course); Bounding Krasis; Scryb Ranger; Birds of Paradise (Marcelo Vignali version); and then Vannifar's holding Noble Hierarch (Mark Zug version).  To counter these nesting dolls' home culture, I modified Vannifar's trident to the Coat of Arms of Ukraine, a really cool symbol in general. And speaking of cool symbols, whenever we draw Algen fan art, we hide that swishy B (ß), in this case in Resto's wing.

Reuxben