FanArt_ink.Dizzy_II

MTGinktober spins me right round again on Day 19, "Dizzy (II)," starring Anje Falkenrath!

Indeed, this is our second spin on this prompt, after it appears the official list accidentally reused a word.  I have always felt that last attempt was pretty weak, and again, owing to limited time, this one had to be super simple, so it isn't quite a sweet revenge, though this prompt isn't terribly inspirational to begin with.

I will say, her outfit is surprisingly simple, and mostly just-plain black, so that was a great benefit for speeding though actual inks--a record 30-minute inktime.  Another advantage was that the original illustration features considerable distortion, so that meant I could really be loose with the background and stay not only in the spirit of Anje's card art, but also in line with the prompt, which should feel a bit disorienting. 

Fun Facts: The page we cleared for today's illustration was a sketch in progress that I believe was supposed to be a girl and her dragon--the Black Egg logo was a reference to IGPX, of course.

Easter Eggs:  My sig is in the blood--spooky stuff.

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FanArt_ink.Trap

 MTGinktober gets the drop on Day 18, "Trap," starring Nahiri, Heir of the Ancients and Mindbreak Trap!
 

Again, pressed for time, so I had to go with something relatively straightforward, and fortunately, I had been wanting to draw Nahiri since yesterday, as a curveball for Storm, so I already had a bunch of reference pulled up for her.

She also felt like a good fit for Trap since she kinda pulled a treacherous switcheroo on her pal in the Zendikar Rising trailer.

Fun Facts:  Today's cleared page was notes I took between rounds at a prerelease, I believe, on a neat T-shirt I saw some guy wearing.  This is Nahiri's fourth MTGinktober appearance.  Helpfully, she doesn't really change card to card, so I kinda bounced between all her various cards for different details, though her ZNR and SOI versions were my anchors.

Easter Eggs:  The sword is the Double Masters alternative art for Sword of War and Peace (the red-white sword, of course). My signature is in the explosion at bottom left.

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FanArt_ink.Storm

 MTGinktober thunders into Day 17, "Storm," starring Melek, Izzet Paragon!

 Man, I only had super little time to work on this one, but it looks like it went pretty well on Twitter, which...of course.  The ones I like least always seem to do the best, but that's kinda always true whenever you really want to put your best foot forward, particularly when sending sketches for a commission--they always, always pick the worst one.

 I wasn't sure who to use for this prompt, but since time was scarce, I just had to go with a simple-looking character with anything even remotely--but obviously--storm-related, sorry Lannery.  I must say, the time crunch disallowed for much care in constructing this guy, and the perspective on his armor is just a lamentably missed opportunity to me.

 Fun Facts: Not to be completely down about this illustration, I liked that I got to use one of my favorite textures, that toothy design for his outfit.  And I officially switched to my new Deleter 3 ink (plus I'm on a fresh nib, so this feels like a sleek, new drawing experience).  Also, the page we cleared for today's illustration was our old pal, Hagootha, which was just a random sketch one night, again in the vein of making an original Magic character that isn't "MTG-centric."

 Easter Eggs: I love hiding my name in wacky elements--in this case, the lightning  across both arms.  The background is kinda from Cyclops Electromancer, which I picked because it had a great, immediate "Ravnica" profile and most crucially lended itself well to negative space, a great, reliable time saver in a pinch.

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FanArt_ink.Rocket

MTGinktober blasts off into Day 16, "Rocket," starring Anax and Cymede and Brimaz, King of Oreskos!

Always a tricky proposition to get a prompt with a modern technology, but when I think rocket, I think of the OGs, Team Rocket, of course, though I did consider including more literal Easter Eggs, at least.

This was our first piece that required some touch-ups the next day, so I'm presenting the slightly refurbished version for today's final. In my defense, I had to sanitize some groceries, which took up precious time.

Fun Facts: The only real debate here was whether to have actual Jessie and James dressed as Anax and Cymede or have the Therosians dressed as the Rockets or just have A&C embody the TR theatrical spirit.  We went with the last option, as you can see, I hope it reads.  Also, today's page was originally a neat little drawing in process, really like how it came out, but ultimately it had to go to make room for ink--we switched to a new nib for this piece, runs like a dream, but next time I'll have to start on that new ink brand, kinda nervous how it'll hold up.

Easter Eggs:  Slightly visible in the pencils, I messed up implementing the dramatic, swirling jet stream from the little Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug cameo, so it became a more subtle inclusion in the final.  I changed "James's" signature rose to a Black Lotus.  No neat place to put my signature, so it's clunkily in the guy's armor (is that one Anax?).  Obviously Brimaz is our straight-up reskin using Meowth as the base.  Cymede's arm armor has the BNG set logo, one of my favorite designs. 

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FanArt_ink.Outpost

 MTGinktober stakes out Day 15, "Outpost," starring Dominaria's Soldier Token and Kjeldoran Outpost!

 This was a tricky prompt because there are quite few good options available, so we even ended up straight-up redrawing the actual Kjeldoran Outpost art, something I am usually reluctant to do because it doesn't really allow for any personal twist, unlike when you merely take inspiration from old art.  But I enjoyed drawing Jakub Kasper's Soldier Token, particularly the hair, and as much as I'm not so big on Jeff A. Menges's art, it was certainly better than drawing the other version, and I certainly loved the cold weather change-up, for sure. 

 Fun Facts: I wiped a sketch in progress for this page that just looked horrific (I believe it was supposed to be a bonus piece of Arvad), so I won't be posting it.  But I had already cleared the page of an even older standalone graphite drawing for that sketch, which dug so deep into the paper you can still clear remnants of it on the actual paper (see the camera images).

 Easter Eggs: I wanted to hide an actual message in this one, so you can see "VOTE!" in the snow bank at left.  My signature is the only tweak to the Kjeldoran Outpost art--I added a second flag for the date.  And while I usually dislike drawing smiling people, this one just felt fun and goofy.

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FanArt_ink.Armor

  MTGinktober defends Day 14, "Armor," starring Adriana, Captain of the Guard and Shield of Kaldra (promo version)!

Man, just stuck in this cycle of being pinched for time, but we're doing what we can here.  With that in mind, I wanted to pick someone with prominent armor, of course, but without super heavy detail demands, since I anticipated this one was going to cut it close, which is why we gave Adriana the edge over the slightly more complex Danitha (who has now just missed making an appearance twice this year).

Interestingly, both today's featured character and her runner-up, Danitha, are both illustrated by Chris Rallis.  I used to be super not into his art for its rubbery, waxy, or generally overly "CG" feeling, but he's made real efforts to step it up lately, and I appreciate it.  Heck, this isn't even our first Chris Rallis fan art this run!

Fun Facts: Today's erased page was a character study in progress of the stars of the MTG comic that wasn't meant to be.  Also, while I suspect we may not have enough Pilot ink to finish our next illustration, I'm now concerned my nib is about dead, too--noticing a lot of jagged line drags!  Fortunately I have spares to work with, way more worried the new ink will not work out.

Easter Eggs: Though Danitha didn't make the final roster this time, her background lives on in this piece.

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FanArt_ink.Dune

  MTGinktober sands down Day 13, "Dune," starring Pianna, Nomad Captain and Shefet Dunes!

 Gosh, I hate hot weather, so I definitely hate drawing hot weather, especially deserts, so this was kind of a bittersweet prompt, as I have no desire to draw such draining environs, though on the bright side, it's a lot of negative space, so more time to get in some Arena Drafts after hours to collect some full-art landos.

 But regardless, D. Alex is one of my favorite artists, and Pianna is one of my favorite character designs from way back when I started, so any excuse to give her a starring role eases the pain of drawing sandy stuff.  I do lament the Twitter cropping though...

 Fun Facts:  This is Pianna's second MTGinktober appearance, after her first run as a candidate, in fact.  The page we toasted for this illustration was more thumbnails from our never-to-be MTG comic.  Also, we are just about out of ink!  I'm not sure we'll be able to last through the next illustration without resorting to our weaker, back-up supply, assuming that ink even works.  Bummer.

 Easter Eggs: Not a ton of wiggle room here, but we plopped our sig into the sand at the bottom right.

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FanArt_ink.Slippery

 MTGinktober sneaks through Day 12, "Slippery," starring Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive and Gingerbrute!
 

 I really wasn't quite sure what to draw here, and only after being well into this drawing did I think some kind of oceanic character might work, but that still didn't really sound as interesting as being metaphorical.  I was considering some kinda banana peel gag, but in the end just went with a difficult-to-block motif.

 To really hammer home the slippery nature of our starring cast, I made sure they were already highly unblockable creatures inherently--Tetsuko is straight-up unblockable of course, assuming she retains a 1 among her combat stats, and Gingerbrute is just 1 mana away from being nigh unblockable--but Tetsuko makes a 1/1 Gingerbrute just as purely unblockable as herself.  But wait there's more--see the Easter Eggs section.

 Fun Facts: The page we wiped for this illustration was some more thumbnails for my never-to-be MTG comic.  This one really digs into the story.  This is also a gingerbread-based character's second MTGinktober appearance.

 Easter Eggs: Continuing from our Fun Facts, the background is from Rogue's Passage, which makes each creature doubly, unrestrictedly unblockable.  Note Tetsuko is a Rogue herself, though that doesn't make a difference--you're not blocking either of them with this land out, let alone if they all are out together.  You can also see a bit of Umezawa's Jitte.
 
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FanArt_ink.Disgusting

 MTGinktober barfs up Day 11, "Disgusting," starring a truly gruesome foursome: Omnath, Locus of Creation; Lotus Cobra; Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath; and Oko, Thief of Crowns!

My gosh, this was really gross to work on.  Staring at the "Me and the Boys" screengrab and then having to carefully redraw it...serious yuck.  But also delightfully stupid.  So I'm glad I did it, but would prefer never to do this again.  Plus I hate these cards. 

I've gone on at length at how WotC is willfully ignoring their own, personally-generated institutional knowledge of the lessons of decades of MaRo,  AaFo, RaBu, ZaHi, etc. articles in their recent design philosophy.  Ultimately I blame Set Design and especially Play Design until given other reason to blame anyone else (there are rumors of a higher up mandate to be actively doing this), as they should be catching these errors far earlier as professionals.  They should absolutely be ashamed of themselves, and do believe it's time for people to be fired. 

Speaking of which...breaking news: Omnath is now banned.

Fun Facts: This was actually much harder to pull off than expected.  It was easy on the hand, but it definitely took concerted to nail the parody.  I even needed to draw a little grid to help match proportions.  Uro was a little tougher to draw in the grossly simplified Spider-Man style, but hopefully he doesn't look totally unidentifiable.  Today's tossed page is our old Space is the Place.

Easter Eggs: The template and its simplicity didn't allow much wiggle room, but we squeezed our signature into Uro's shoulder.

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FanArt_ink.Hope

 MTGinktober aspires to Day 10, "Hope," starring Liliana, the Last Hope and Hopeful Eidolon! 

Man, I had to take it easy on this one because I had hoped to squeeze in time to check my votes for this year's ballot (not to mention give my aching hand some relief), but I was thinking of spoofing the famous Star Wars: A New Hope poster, but that woulda been quite labor intensive--like Garruk as Vader, maybe Basri as Luke, Elspeth as Leia, Parhelion II as the Death Star, etc.

I was also a bit reluctant to use up our Liliana allowance on a Saturday post, since weekend posts tend not to get as many eyes, but who knows.  There's been a pattern of posts not doing well initially, then blowing up later, and that's fine, too.  Just a bummer when they flat-out tank.

Fun Facts: Today's cleared page was an old drawing called Saltines, after the Jack White song, in a series of experiments where I was trying to figure out a way to draw a Magic-adjacent character, to see how that would look--basically, pondering how to make Magic fan art that wasn't screaming from the rooftops, "THIS IS MAGIC FAN ART!!!"  These random, periodic explorations ultimately developed into Coverage Draft, I suppose, but they were unrelated at the time, just wanted to make "original" fan art.

Easter Eggs: The background shadow belongs to Emrakul, the Promised End, of course.  My signature is in Liliana's cape thing.

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FanArt_ink.Throw

 MTGinktober lobs into Day 9, "Throw," starring Tinybones, Trinket Thief and Lutri, the Spellchaser!

 This was certainly an enjoyable one to draw, just a couple cutesy characters playing around, but as for the actual drawing itself--my mild hand and back pain are growing more noticeable, though a lot less pronounced than in recent years, I just gotta be sure to take it easy and I'm confident we can manage through the rest of the month--almost halfway there.

 I was kinda stressing out because it was like 4 or 5pm and I was feeling behind schedule when someone said I have a midnight deadline, so relax.  This is a fundamental misunderstanding about art and me: I draw really slowly--which is bad enough--but as I mentioned, I need to factor in time to rest my hand and back as well as any impromptu reference hunting as situations arise (like this piece's background!).  So while drawing takes forever, inking usually takes about 2 hours tops, then I need to scan and prep the file (about an hour), then post it!

Fun Facts: The page we cleared for this illustration is another thumbnail for that MTG comic I'll probably never draw--see previous days for other entries from this mystery project.  This illustration was a nice return to the oddly pleasing task of drawing otters.

 
Easter Eggs: As I mentioned, I suddenly thought to have a specific background rather than just a generic beach--it's where a B and U/R creature might meet: Zagoth Triome.  And the spell they're batting about is of course, One With Nothing, which would not make sense for Tinybones to cast or Lutri to clone, but here we are.  Sig is in the grass near tiny feet.
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