Due to my schedule and workload, I generally do not take on private commissions and only offer black and white ink and marker drawings on the back of Magic the Gathering's artist proofs. That said, occasionally, I find myself taking on a piece I would not otherwise accept. The first person to my table at Pensacon asked if I would do a paint alter extension of the Breaching Hippocamp Magic the Gathering card. This is something I no longer offer, but as they were first to my table, agreed to the price, and were fine with me doing it after the convention, I found myself with a paint alter needing to be done. It didn't hurt that this was the second card I painted for MtG, so it has a special meaning for me. Here is the altered card.
I have not traditionally painted anything since September 2016. Yes, that long. That was the completion date of the final Star Wars painting that I took on. Since then, I have been working digitally for any client work I accept. My books, which take up nearly all my time, are limited to black and white colored pencil, black ink, and white acrylic paint. Yes, I am still using white paint, but this was more involved than that. In fact, I was a little nervous about taking this on since it has been so long since I painted anything with actual paint. I was worried about something that I didn't need to worry about. I was amazed at how it all came back to me, even after a nearly six-year gap. I will be honest, one of my artist faults, if you want to call it that, is that I am not great at generating color from thin air. I look at a lot of color reference, and I have a workflow both digitally and traditionally that generates a color mess on the canvas that I can then respond to and work on top of. Even though I can not pull colors quickly or easily from the ether, I can match what I see and work with and from the color on a surface. In other words, it takes me a lot of work to (digitally) paint that sky initially, but I can quickly match it with paint and extend it. I am also not a big fan of working as small as the MtG cards are, but I find a way to make it work. In the end, I am thrilled with how the card turned out, and it almost - ALMOST, makes me want to do more. Here is the Breaching Hippocamp card before I got to work.
That's all for another exciting Monday on the blog. See you back here on Wednesday! Until then...
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