FanArt_ink.Fall

MTGinktober descends upon Day 28, "Fall," starring Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief; Domri Rade; and Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts all of whom be posing and zhushing and blue-steeling up tha joint!

Ok, this piece came about just because I wanted to dress Magic characters in fall fashions, which is easily among my top four kinds of seasonal fashions. We've crossplayed a character before, when we had Nahiri dressed as Toph from Avatar, but this time our mission was clear--this time, we're modern-cladding them.

Fun Facts: I scoured my bookmarks' fall fashion tag for, my gosh, dozens and dozens of outfits, and my reference document, which I prepare as research for each piece, was overflowing with costume ideas, last count was 37 candidate costumes. Sadly, only three could make the cut, and deez were dem. Super, super hard to trim down the options to just these, and it felt much like struggling to cut that 24th or 61st card, times 34...!

Easter Eggs: I carved my signature into the pumpkin, how about that! Also, Drana has a black mana accessory on her hair, Domri has the Gruul symbol on his beanie, and Teysa has an Orzhova brand sweater under her fabulously fuzzy jacket.

This one was quite a treat to do, and I hope to do this trick again some time with some of the other outfits we had to cut. I definitely see Domri and Teysa as little fashionistas...wonder who else we can deck out...

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FanArt_ink.Juicy

MTGinktober drips towards Day 23, "Juicy," starring Lil'iana, the Raven Man, and Kid Josu, and featuring the severed head of Joyce. It's fun for the whole fambly!

When I got the prompt, I thought, sweet, I want to draw chubby cheeks trying to hold down some plump, juicy fruit or something, and that's how this piece all started! From there, I pondered what could be funny to draw counter-intuitive to more typical munchable material, so my first idea to contrast chomping into a fruit was a zombie biting into a brain. A natural couple that might present this would be Liliana and her freshly zombified brother, which would coincidentally be a great opportunity to draw the kids again but in greater detail.

The reason I engineered for all of this to occur was because it was a classic family picnic under a tree. And if these were kids on a picnic, why not have a parental character looking after them? So I used the Raven Man as that chaperone figure, and as a nod to the story, he is doting after Liliana, trying to wipe her face.

Fun Facts: My position used to be that I would never draw Jace, as I detest the character and how they shove him down our throats, and more offensively, how they insist he is representative of Magic players in general, as the go-to Mickey Mouse of the property. But I needed someone to be having their brains getting eaten and Joyce seemed like an appropriate pick over either a random face or a random other character.

Easter Eggs: The juice boxes feature the word "juicy" in Japanese, which is also how you pronounce the name of the juicebox's mascot, Jushi Apprentice. The background is taken from Tree of Perdition. Liliana is eating a fruit from a Utopia Tree. Josu is eating the brain of specifically Jace, Memory Adept since the D. Alex art is great.

Here's a look at the initial sketch I roughed out when I first had the idea for the illustration. It started in landscape orientation. These early roughs help me anchor the emotion and general poses so I don't lose sight of the driving vision throughout the penciling stage. There was originally a raven nibbling out the eye of the decapitated head, but that felt just a smidge too gross, since it was supposed to be a more amusing/cute piece than actual horror. There were also sandwiches, which I also cut for time. They started out as elementary-school-age (see the roughed in idea for a backpack for Liliana), but ended up drifting to sorta teen-aged by the end of the pencils phase.

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FanArt_ink.Furious

MTGinktober feuds on Day 21, "Furious," starring Ghoulcaller Gisa and Stitcher Geralf getting ready to throw down, meanwhile Daxos the Returned and company do their best to break it up!

I was originally unsure whether or not to repeat any characters from last year, but I really, really wanted to redraw these two, not only because I wasn't too happy with last year's effort, but also because these guys really embody the season. A gothy, Hot-Topiccy duo is just perfect this time of year, plus Karla Ortiz's stuff is just killer and this is my way of paying homage to her incredible work and inspiration.

Fun Facts: I originally wanted to have them being broken up by Geralf's Messenger and some other notable zombie, or refereed by Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, but we were short on time as always, and waffling wasn't productive. In fact, before that, in my efforts not to repeat characters, I briefly entertained the idea of having the Twins of Maurer Estate be the feuding duo broken up by Evil Twin and his brother. After that, I thought of the compromise of the kids fighting on behalf of the Cecani siblings, like Pokemon. Still keeping that idea in my back pocket.

Easter Eggs: The background borrows from the Therosian background of Daxos the Returned's art, but also merges in Innistradian influences, like those tombstone with Avacyn's symbol and the onlooking zombies from last year, originally inspired by Ghoulcaller Gisa's background. But I also hid one of my favorite this-should-win-me-the-game-oh-wait-I-just-lost cards from M15 limited, Carrion Crow. I loved how powerful that card seemed it should be, but invariably, I had it the precise turn whenever I needed a blocker...I also used one of my favorite resources for emotional inspiration, the Colbert/Blunt sketch, which I finally got to tackle here. I also wanted to include Gisa's shovel, but couldn't quite work it into their pose, so I stashed in the background, which actually felt fitting.

Anyway, I'm positive I'll be drawing these two Cecanis again at some point. Karla Ortiz knocked it out of the park with them, as she is wont to do, and I had a killer idea for them midway through drawing this...for now, let this year be the year they got caught up over a zoning dispute on who gets to drudge up corpses where.

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FanArt_ThaGthang

I finally got around to colorizing this old sketch of Stitcher Geralf, as depicted by the incomparable Karla Ortiz.

It's under-cooked, but I just wanted to make something quick without overthinking for once. I dunno. They always say to just go for volume, but it frankly disgusts me to release stuff I don't feel looks as good as I can presently make it. I understand I will get better and make better stuff than what I think is "acceptable" now, but that's not the point. I want it to look "good enough" now, not this goo-goo-ga-ga, A-for-effort stuff we're supposed to post to make us feel good about ourselves.

That's nonsense. Make it look as good as possible now, so that when you look back on it, you can claim you're legit better now, not "Well, obviously the new stuff is better, this old stuff was done forever ago and was purposefully weak. Also I'm a boxer in training trying to feel good about myself by picking a fight with a toddler."

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FanArt_28

Revamping the old 27 piece. Completely re-inked it digitally, even.

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Fun_RelaxWet

This was for Inktober's Day 15, "Relax," starring Tamiyo readin' like a noid. Ironically, this was not as relaxing as I'd hoped it would be; I'm kinda exhausted from working on these MTGinktobers daily, but it's a good kind of tired. I've been pushing myself on these all month, and after the first Liliana piece, I've been really winded, so I'm just hoping to keep chugging along and get these all done on schedule.

Tamiyo was mildly difficult cuz there are tons of little inconsistencies across her official depictions. Like the gloves--some have them open fingertips, some have palm-side trim, one rebel even has no gloves! I love details, so it was tough deciding what was "correct." I was delighted to find she tucks pens in her hair bands, so I gave her a G-Pen, like mine. Plus she's reading a scroll on Yale and Astrophysics, how about that!

Next for Day 16's "Wet," given my well-documented love of rain, I knew I wanted to do something with skytears, so after a couple quick brainstorm sketches (I try to keep pre-planning to a minimum so pieces can be as "live" as possible) I decided on a Totoro spoof starring Garruk as Totes and Kid Lil as Bobby Bouchet ft. her dead brother as the ghost of Encino Man.

I knew I needed a huge, bulky character to contrast with the tiny girl in the composition, so Garruk felt like the best choice since I could use his fur-trimmed, muscular silhouette to mimic Totoro's shape (I used his Relentless look). And I thought of Lil' Lil pretty soon after pausing to ponder who to "cast" for that role.

It clicked when I realized she had a brother who died, and the pose called for a little figure to piggyback. I also thought of that famous historical war photo of the Japanese kid who hiked with his dead brother on his back, so this image acquired an even darker subtlety baked into Liliana's already grim deadbro-carrying.

As a little bonus, this was almost the image I was going to go with before hitting upon the Totoro idea. It was Tibor and Lumia in their academy days, before they got married, where Tibz first kinda puts da mooves on Lumia, by which I mean offers her his umbrella on a rainy day. It was cute and I still kinda want to draw it...all these new ideas I want to bite into after Inktober. But for now, on with the show.

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Fun_TransportWorried

MTGinktober lurches onward with Gisa and Geralf as our floor models for Day 11's "Transport." I unfortunately caught this prompt ahead of time and was somewhat dreading it since I don't really draw vehicles much. But I tried to keep it out of mind and focus on the given day's prompts instead.

I knew I wanted to avoid traditional concepts of transportation, and idea of piggybacking hit me, but then, rather than buddies, why not an adversarial take? I thought of the zombie bros. from Innistrad, Gisa and Geralf, as drawn by Karla Ortiz, who I've wanted to cover for a while. What if they were teaming up and used zombies as their personal rickshaws?

Fun Facts: The animals hanging out in the tree are two bats and a robin who thinks he's a bat.

Easter Eggs: The background echoes the faint zombies in Gisa's card. Geralf was inspired by Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Edward Scissorhands, and his hair contains Jack Skellington's curly mountain.

Next was Day 12's "Worried," and I was not sure what to do on this one. I was thinking maybe Pia Nalaar facing execution or something, but then I thought, wait, why not kid Chandra? I loved the idea of a menacing arm guiding the kid, which is terribly disturbing. I hate the idea of adults abusing power and bullying kids. I've had to be around people who disrespect kids and it's utterly sad.

The thopter was pretty fun and I loved getting really tight with the details there. I feel like I leveled up a bit on this piece because I managed to get the G-Pen to work with my ruler smudge-free (ish). Also, I liked that by using shadow, I could turn the Kaladesh guard's white sleeves almost black, but the black Evil Empire glove was a must.

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