Locations
You get to drink from THE FIRE HOSE!
As I now feel like I am on Stanley Spadowski's game show, looking for a shiny marble in the oatmeal, these art reviews have become impossible to craft set by set for the time being. The pace has become frenetic. One cannot even obtain the images fast enough before the next set arrives. Without waxing poetic like a baby boomer about their favorite decade of the Cold War, The Muppet Show must go on and I need to write a good art review. But for who?
The task to find even a top 20 is masochistic. I've been that 11-year-old running through museums trying to find the hits-never even pausing to see what's next to the Mona Lisa, the real craft of what a curator does. But we need the haste here - these articles are valuable for those who haven't the time. I have purposeful intent here. For who is for folks that need to vote.
Award season for Chesleys submissions begins effectively now, as Infected by Art's submission just ended.
Some rubric things you should know:
- I always look to arguably the 5 to 10 highest quality artists, especially those that use traditional media. These are the Victor Adame Minguezes, the Ryan Pancoasts, the Chris Rahns, the Magalis of the world. These artists have a high average for quality. They don't miss much if ever. You should start any list by looking at these high-quality people to see what they made. This isn't bias, this is just the reality.
- I am actively looking for art that has a shot to win awards. You will see them littered throughout, with an emphasis on the end. Do art awards matter has been a topic covered every few years on Muddy Colors the blog. I do believe they do, hence why all this effort is necessary.
- I also encourage people to look at the highest priced cards of the year in Scryfall, because often the art directors will put a high-quality artist on those works. (Often, not always.)
- As for Secret Lair - where technical quality and ability is sometimes secondary to style and narrative, I have a separate section for those.
- I also give extra weight to artists of color and indigenous artists, considering how much more difficult it is to grow and thrive in this field of work. (Separate whole discussion on why that is, is a later article.)
Weirdly apparent was the focus on making Dungeons and Dragons esque team-up/parties in images all throughout the year. The image of the whole squad in one image was in nearly every set. The team up, yet focused on one of the group, was an interesting dynamic. This is a top down 2024 thing for Magic.
If you'd like to just see the top, scroll to the bottom otherwise I'm gonna call out a few things that catch my eye. This will be a long one. Enjoy.
-Mike
This is the year we are looking at, omitting the Secret Lair drops and the promotional/special works outside of sets.
Ravnica Remastered
I like the idea of old borders in the set. It helps the older, enfranchised Magic players amongst us able to play our all connected borders like Alexandre Honore's Rest in Peace, or just a nice picture of some security boys in Dogpile. Lavinia and Steam Vents are both really quite strong works.
 |  |
I like the anime styled cards in English to make the style more accessible. I still struggle to know when in Magic we see a technically superb anime work, it's a gap in my knowledge base. I only finally watched the whole Akira during the first year of the pandemic. It's a 2025 goal to have an expert weigh in - hold me to it.
Finally getting to use the Magic Online exclusive art in print was a huge win for the set. I have been waiting for years to see these being able to be used in paper.
 |  |
We still wait for the stellar Chris Moeller MTGO only promo cards though. One day we will see them. One day.
 |  |
I think Keening Apparition brings the art description to a new level. Tran fires on all levels showing us a spirit in Orzhov that ties to the corporeal. It's a colored pencil, velvety soft masterful work that Reddit muppets will complain of censorship vs. the previous version. Yet this shows the effect leagues better, with a new composition that tells a cooler story that allows us more views of the Orzhov.
Keening Apparition by Tran Nguyen
Acrylic and colored pencil on watercolor paper
14-1/2" x 10-1/2" (36.75cm x 26.67cm)
I also liked Tetsu Kurosawa's Fblthp, the Lost as it expands the story. It's busy, but the whole story is busy. That part works. They even made a Pinfinity version - knowing it's fun.
Murders at Karlov Manor
Murders at Karlov Manor is the ninety-ninth Magic expansion. It is a backdrop set taking place on Ravnica and was released on February 9th, 2024.
Conceptually using the strongest plane/world to visit in a game about worlds to visit, is about the only place where you can use it as a set dressing. Here we get noir, which looks appropriate for a misty, wispy Ravnica, but it can only be PG to PG-13 to explain a murder.
The casual Magic fan will ask repeatedly, why isn't Azorius just doing the investigation? Isn't that the guild's actual job? They are the police aren't they? They have detain as a previous set mechanic. This dissonance was, and is, still puzzling to people. (It's because after the Phyrexian invasion, some guilds were more annihilated and depleted than others.) But the obvious question that cannot be answered will plague this set forever because not everyone reads the web fiction and the flavor text cannot devote 10-15 cards to explain this over and over. That's an utter crime too, as Roy Graham and his story wizards are exceptional at crafting the online web fiction. It is so utterly fantastic if you put the time in.
To a cynic, it is visually a Malibu Stacy now with hat but I dismiss the notion. It's a pilot. (And if you read the story, you grasp the depth, but I digress.) This is a test to see if they could use planes to tell something that isn't the continuous Magic narrative. Can you tell one of the seven basic plots solely and the plane is developed enough to not need explaining? I'd surely like the option.
What stood out to me tallest were the Case cards. All were all a welcome addition to Magic. I'm a sucker for a good still life.
Then hearing Emily Teng talk with Rhystic Studies ie Sam Gaglio ie Magic Man Sam on the three card narratives are worth the hour of your time on YouTube:
Every example that Emily mentioned was great mini stories that will hold up fantastic over the years, just as making a Spirit of the Night was to kids in the mid 1990s. I don't know the future of what Un- silly sets could be, but this level of whimsical levity, reignites my The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery nostalgia. The artists had fun with it and it shows!
Fallout branded Commander Decks
Recently, I finished Fallout 4 - the first in the entire series I played. I'm still unsure if I actually finished the game as it just continues, but a lot of the references finally make sense now. Things like the Unexpected Windfall you can roughly understand the concept despite not playing, but the Thought Vessel requires a lot of trust into what that actually means in the games. It's a sci-fi clean computer terminal? Isn't this about the post apocalypse? I think that's a good thing for the Universes Beyond. You need the less obvious visual representations and don't explain them.
I think it is interesting that Fallout was chosen before Bioshock. Though, I'm sure the analysis was found to do the more current franchise.
I like the compositions of these three works, they all immediately feel like Fallout and have great light and textures.
 |  |  |
I had to give a little crop of Campbell White's Power Fist. Lovely smushing and pushing from the punch digitally painted. We also all hope he gets well soon!
Outlaws at Thunder Junction
Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ) is the 100th Magic expansion. It was released in mid April in 2024.
We have a conflict here. Let us hope we don't see a collision.
Reading up on Donny Caltrider and John Dale Beety's analysis is also very much required reading for this setting. Hearing from one of Magic's very few indigenous artists is a required footnote in talking anything about art and culture of the set. I also welcome the strong criticism Parker LaMascus wrote up on mining and the environmental impact of the western setting, unable to be decoupled from indigenous culture. His quote is fitting for us to talk about a high hurdle of cultural competency, especially in speaking about the best artworks:
How do you make real-world criminals fun without marginalizing their victims?
To me, you cannot begin to discuss Western art without mentioning Remington. And this is the only opportunity I'm going to get to talk about this set.
For those of you that know, you cannot make Western art a clean slate, a pastiche, a saturday morning cartoon world to visit when you are an adult and know a modicum of history. There is no Kids Bop version of western art cleaned of its colonialism, genocide and racism. To even begin to learn of Western art, you must learn a short overview of Remington.
A Dash for the Timber by Frederic Remington
Oil on canvas
48 1/4" x 84 1/8" (122.56cm x 213.68cm)
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Amon G. Carter Collection
Quite literally every cowboy / pioneer / covered wagon image you likely may have ever seen, Remington was probably in the mix.
As the only son, he had the ability to attend college, drop out of Yale, and move across the country with an inheritance from his father passing. He started painting what he saw in Kansas. And his western artworks showed up in popular print journals. Despite not having a long career, he was the first to create art that gave a visual depiction to printed stories at the time. He was one of the first people to start showing the visual culture of the Western stories, to be more precise. After coming back from the Spanish-American War as a war correspondent, he moved away from these illustration jobs and went into painting largely about night scenes.
While he is known for yee-haw, his technical work of darkness is what he should be remembered for. This is the art I was looking for in OTJ.
 |  |
Frederic Remington, In From the Night Herd, 1907, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Gift of Albert K. Mitchell
The worry about Outlaws of Thunder Junction is that the very real negative aspects of Remington's depictions would also be included.
In many of his paintings, white pioneers or cowboys would be fighting Native Americans, or showing them driven out and walking from being defeated. This is an ongoing issue with our current indigenous neighbors because the stereotype of a Native American is still in the 1860s, complete with headdress. They are frozen in time, and thus invisible today.
Performance artist James Luna (Puyoukichum [Luiseno]) commented on this back in 1991, where he asked the crowd to take a picture with real indian, and then changed his outfit three times. There was little wonder what outfit people wanted a selfie of.
This leaves us stuck.
How can you continually choose real world influenced cultures for settings - Ixalan, Innistrad, Kamigawa, Amonkhet, Avishkar and choose current contemporary culture without stepping on a rake. How can you overcome that Remington created art that didn't depict reality, and was problematic to say the least?
Returning us to Mark Rosewater's Blogatog Tumblr comment response, that is what Western art is and how Wizards responded to that was by attempting to use a blank slate and instead use the visual culture to paint the brush of the plain.
The problem is that you can't erase the indigenous communities. The "unsettled west" with Manifest Destiny is intertwined with it being unsettled. Omitting them is also incorrect, so how do you do so with cultural competency? You create a tribe.
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
My professional opinion? I think the art directors threaded the needle pretty darn well considering the high risk of seriously having major issues arise with depictions. I believe the story team led by Roy Graham utterly stuck the landing. Reading deeply into this new tribe was a delight, and it pains me that more people didn't read it.
Getting back to art, Sidharth tried to paint a Mardu Heart-Piercer, a Discover the Impossible, a card that explains the entire plane. It's western art - made contemporary with a little fantasy. He did a heckuva job on it.
Bounty: Vara Beth Hannifer by Sidharth Chaturvedi
Oil on canvas
14" x 19"
And few of us were even able to see this and sought out the other Bounty cards. All those artworks are very solid!
 |  |  |
Some other works I did enjoy including the Rahn near monochromatic Gisa, the Hellraiser. The crack in the clouds behind her are a masterful touch.
The sword that is joining some of my favorites is the WAP from Dominik Mayer. It's storyline significant, mysterious and composed such that you want to learn more what is going on here. Great art description writing by the creative team. You love to see it.
 |  |
Modern Horizons 3
Modern Horizons 3 is a Magic booster set that was released on June 14, 2024.
I already covered two of my favorites from that set in Broodmate Tyrant and Glasswing Grace in my art review of Modern Horizons 3, which includes the commander set:
 |  |
Rahn takes his grays and darkest darks to a red tone in MH3. Good work Chris.
Craig is just doing all the things on a forgettable uncommon with a community beloved prior image. Plus natural hair? Impressively good.
I would add to the list of very good artworks of the set in Hydra Trainer. While we haven't seen the notes on this card, I assume Ryan was given a lot more latitude, thus, resulting in better art. Plus, he always goes hard.
Two expert compositions were the mixing of frame to art with Lena's Pearl Medallion and Ben's 1995 homage to Magic in Consign to Memory. Next to each other is the basis for the study of art history made possible by Heinrich Wolfflin in 1929.
 |  |
We see a digital creation with extra polish, extra zoom, borderless vs. a constrained in size, yet focused on the concept in such a small space. This is Magic in 2024 - we get both and more. You just have to look to find your style these days but I assure you it is in the game, just not on the short list of recommended cards you need to play for your Mardu commander deck.
Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed is a product in the Magic: The Gathering Universes Beyond series that was released by Wizards of the Coast on July 5, 2024.
I like these two images. Both are digital of course, one was Become Anonymous that looks loosely painted. A nice digital brush used there for students to check out up close!
As for the saga, I think it shows exactly the brand well and having an in-game logo of the series, especially if the set logo isn't that, is a smart addition going forward.
 |  |
Bloomburrow
Bloomburrow is the 101st Magic expansion. It was released on August 2, 2024.
This entire set is overdue. We have been waiting for a light, storybook feeling set since Lorwyn, which was over 15 years ago. They had to swing for the fences hard, and they achieved the vibe perfectly.
 |  |
We were able to see fourteen classes created and zero misses.
Every single artwork is great. I wish we had more time to cover each of them. They are owed a full review, one by one, in painstaking Magic Man Sam detail.
I asked the Vagabondgallery ie YhettiSkull ie Nathan to confirm if he saw what I saw. He spoke on Hunter's Talent:
The pre-renaissance style of this painting couldn't be more perfect for it's setting; from the half profile view of the subject, to the imperfect edges outlining the composition, the texture of the canvas and use of its negative space, the simple and smart costume design, overcast lighting and soft values which are cool and calming, the tangible textures. This painting, even devoid of Magic's context, is enchanting.
 |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
We have the entry for best standing on an edge of the year, with Chris Rahn's masterfully lit mouse Emberheart Challenger. I think Osteomancer Adept by Daniel Zrom is the opposite, less dynamically lit and more opulent in terms of stuff crammed in. Both are exceptionally strong artworks.
 |  |
HIdden in the digital only Arena drop is the masterful Buxton, Decorated Host by Justin Gerard. He's had a giant introduction to the fandom after painting expert hits like Squirrel Mob as well.
 |  |
Mystery Booster 2
The convention exclusive set with the play-test cards are a fun little thing available to the Festival in a Box from Las Vegas's Magic Con.
It's largely a reprinted and compilation set, but two artworks are worth noting.
 |  |
While Victor's came out a few years ago, to be used on Magic Online as a digital only work, it was printed this year in the set. Who doesn't love a good painted rock? Love those rocks.
Filip below here is a tragedy of the card frame. This rarely happens these days but worth noting and allowing everyone to see what his full painting looks like under the frame. Enjoy!
Duskmourn
Duskmourn: House of Horror is the 102nd Magic expansion. It was released on September 27, 2024. Good required reading is the commentary on eyes as windows to the soul on the Dominarian Plowshare substack.
I loved one work in it, which will be referenced below.
I don't mind the 1980s horror, it's a little on the nose, but the whole year was, so I don't mind it. Amongst the good works were Marina Vendrell by Magali Villeneuve. She always brings the heat with good costuming and acumen with painting faces. Delightful work.
 |  |
Valgavoth is also the first foray into traditional painting for AJ. We love seeing a surprise strong work from a digital artist with the time and ability to give us some oils. Very strong.
Valgavoth, Terror Eater by Antonio Jose Manzanedo
Oil on primed paper, 12" x 16"
Art director: Ovidio Cartagena
A good reminder that not all Magic art looks the same. Here are five cards in the same set that are all radically different in mood, technical execution and action.
 |  |
 |  |  |
Foundations
I'm not as bullish about Foundations being the best set of the year, though I found some utter stellar works snuck into that set that weren't rare or mythic special versions.
Plate Armor by Greg Manchess is fantastic art on a forgettable card. For those of you who weren't at the Spectrum cons in Kansas City, you missed the mad dash to his booth to buy one of his helmets. A master in the painting of metal with minimal brushstrokes, he did this for a few years and folks owned them like calling cards. We finally get to see him in Magic and he paints a stellar knight, directly in his style.
I'm always captivated by good lighting and Steven Belledin, noted realism master delivers yet again on his Swamp from Foundations.
If the Liliana in a graveyard wasn't enough for you, this purple lit tombstone should catch your attention. This is a gritty, unpolished space, counteracting the demure polished character of Liliana. Steve does this effortlessly and rarely gets landscapes. When he does, he always makes sure the rocks are painted correctly, the light is spot on, and the composition of where your eye is led is intentional.
The lighting along in that swamp should be studied extensively by Steve Belledin. His Sangromancer is similar in the jumpstart pack.
SECRET LAIR
As for Secret Lair - I find the task impossible to rate styles where fun is the objective vs. technical quality. Like dogs, they're all good. Not all are for everybody though - you know, like beagles.
I thought the 40th iteration of Relentless Rats by Sadboi to be striking with its flat woodcut/screenprint vibe.
Revel in Riches has less of a technical difference and more of a fun callback to propaganda posters mixed with Byzantine icons and journey west adverts that fit clearly as done by Kelogsloops.
 |  |
Julie Bell finally getting into Secret Lair was a good move. Her unicorn is good art of one of the hardest subjects to paint: horses.
The diorama secret lair by artist Laura Plansker is exactly what I expect to see in the drop-focused Magic release product. It's weird, fun and the quality of art brings in a new style that players will pause at, unable to give a knee-jerk criticism so exemplified by Reddit. I like them, especially the Aura Shards because it's a sum of visual culture. This is Quizno's subs and absurdist humor for millennials. This is seeing a diorama by a classmate in college, except it's good. It subverts and delights. I would love to see more efforts like this to use non digital, non painted, ever unexpected media.
 |  |  |
And finally, below is a graph of how many new artworks were made for Sol Ring in Magic's history.
I like this new one Lindsey Look made. She doesn't paint a ton, but when she does, she often wins awards. If you are making this many Sol Ring each year for commander players, I'm happy to report that at least one of them in the past year, of the thirteen, is definitely one of the best of the year. You would hope it would be!
The Four Best I Cannot Ignore
Here are an objective best of list to squabble over. You can argue on the order, but they're in the top ten for quality, the eye test doesn't lie here.
Bristly Bill, Spine Sower by Daniel Zrom
Oils on paper, 39.5cm x 28 cm
Art director: Taylor Ingvarsson
Under ten card artworks.
That is all Daniel has ever made for Magic and he has not been in some special, booster fun, noodley arm special artwork not to return. He's a main set expansion person; it's just that he doesn't make that many paintings.
Akin to Lindsey Look, the low amount of creations should tip you off. When making, it is often, on average, exceptionally crafted.
With Bristly Bill, we see a meticulous creation, painstakingly whittled down from thumbnail raw idea to fit a 2" x 3" rectangle, created furiously with raw creativity.
Daniel moved to watercolor studies. Centering the cactus-like humanoid in an engaging posture, while still giving focus to the ability - the magic, the effect, coming from its hands. The cacti around him create a scene with depth and reinforces movement, instead of a man standing on a rock.
The watercolor is evocative of light sources, a key to an exceptional artwork, and Daniel went a step further and recreated the cactus creature in Zbrush, a digital 3D program, to study its lighting in the work. He was intentional in making the lighting directional, yet it's soft lit. That outdoor sunlight filtering through impossibly high clouds on the Great Plains of the United States of America is realistic. This is fantasy, yes, but it's also realism. We are grounded and also otherworldly.
We have to comment on the detail itself. The textures vary from organic cactus (skin?) to worn fabric. Cactus needles, clouds, veins and even the slight flowering hairs on the cactus (not sentient) around him feel real, alive. That realism makes this feel plausible. It's imaginative realism, precisely.
I love the color contrast here.
Plant based greens contrast with the southwest browns and fabric. This pops out against the blue sky, the orange dotting of flowers. The figure is nearly camouflaged amongst the fellow cacti, yet it stands out. I often talk of the skill in using a muted palette while centering a figure being a masterful approach that Chris Rahn has in working values. Daniel does it here with contrast and then uses it for storytelling. What is this creature doing? Is it taking from the plants? Growing from them? Defending them? Protecting them? That open ended narrative reinforced with subtle flavor text that show that it can talk to them, creates intrigue. That contrast is a harmony of color at such a small size to tell a story, a triumph of illustration's job - fulfill the prompt.
Daniel Zrom shows that he sits near the top of the Magic pantheon of today with excellent composition, technical expertise in creating an image, storytelling, color contrast and harmony. This is outstanding and that feels both immersive to us on a world that needed more depth and conceptually rich as a technical illustration.
Dark Confidant by Victor Adame Minguez
Acrylic and oil on cradled gessobord, 20" x 16"
Art director: Zack Stella
Victor, from the MTG Art Market auction, stated "This is one of my best paintings to date, my second favorite only slightly below Lord of the Undead, and it is in no small part due to Art Director Zack Stella trusting me and the process to go where my imagination took me. It's one of the few rare birds nowadays in which the artist gets freedom to do something that isn't tied to a plane or story, very reminiscent of classic MTG, and that's why this art is very special to me."
We have seen what happens when art directors are able to loosen the reins.
Donato Giancola spoke of this often back in 2013. Mark Winters, the then art director at the time, and a deeply underappreciated art director for his stellar work on Dominaria, invited him to make Serra Angel for the set after a full eight years of not accepting work. Art descriptions had become too busy, too much, so restrictive, that he went off to do personal commissions. Mark offered a morsel - make the iconic angel, and you have an open runway to do what you wish. There are a few things to stay on the world, but trusted him. Victor was given a similar offer, a wide open runway, and the result is astounding.
All right, let's break this down in a way that really gets into why this piece is so damn good.
First off, the clay maquette - this is some high-level dedication to getting the lighting and form just right. Most artists might sketch things out, maybe do some digital renders, but physically sculpting a reference shows a real commitment to nailing depth, structure, and how light interacts with complex surfaces. The demon's texture, the subtle curvature of the face, and how the light falls across the spikes is correct. This all carries over beautifully into the final painting.
Now, looking at the finished piece, the composition is brilliant. The sheer scale of the gigantic demon against the calm confidence of the woman sitting on it makes for a compelling contrast. She's not cowering in fear, she's completely at ease, which tells us a story immediately. The lighting, informed by the maquette, is dramatic as hell, with a warm, hellish glow against cooler stone-like shadows. It's this push-and-pull of warm and cool tones that makes everything feel like you can touch it. It's tactile in a word.
Then there's the rendering! That extra polish! Look at the details in the demon's face. The texture of the skin isn't overworked, but it has just enough sharpness to make you feel the roughness of the stone. And her expression? Again, it's that confidence. It's almost playful, yet she will stab you. She has that hint of danger, exactly what you would want from an actual advisor to a demon, a Dark Confidant. Adding that she has a magical spell book is just icing for us to exude power. We are magnetized to her, pulled in closer. Rizz, I believe is what the youths call it.
This is next-level painting from one of Magic's S-tier artists. You can tell this was created by someone who understands form at an almost sculptural level, then once you see the maquette itself, it all clicks. It's exceptional and one of the best in 2024.
I am transported. It is 1997 again. I am eating Chicken in a Biscuit while flipping through the Diablo 1 booklet that came with the game. This artwork by Babs Webb is visual nostalgia. It masterfully blends the nostalgic essence of that 1990s horror with contemporary artistry. It feels hand drawn and scanned in, because it is. There is a full sketched work that is exactly this, and she added digital color. I didn't like much about Duskmourn the set, but this image encapsulates the entire set of evoking a sense of eerie familiarity while introducing modern nuances.
At the heart of the composition lies a formidable and presumed demon, drawn with meticulous attention to detail to make it not seem like a summoned creature card. That is so impossibly difficult. IF you center a character, it's a creature card. You have a 2" x 3" box to show the art, that is the art rule. This uses that and adds more aspects, while muting the whole work in minimal color, to push it back to being a spell. Babs makes supernatural feels palpably real that is happening, and it's not a good thing.
The background, though subtle, plays a crucial role in setting the scene. Abstract eyeballs in the moth wing patterns and muted tones create an atmosphere of suspense and unease, characteristic of classic horror narratives. This backdrop not only complements the central figure of Marina Vendrell but also invites viewers to imagine the broader story unfolding beyond the card frame.
Webb's "old school" technique showcases a seamless fusion of traditional and digital methods, resulting in a piece that feels both accepted to Magic the Gathering's boomers or a word, timeless, and also contemporary to players who have to have artworks that can actually paint hands. The deliberate use of light and shadow, combined with a restrained color palette, pays homage to the horror illustrations of the 1980s while embracing the clarity and precision afforded by Photoshop's newest subscription service.
Through subtle innovations and a keen artistic sensibility to ground the work in pencil, in graphite, she ensures that the piece resonates with today's viewers, bridging the gap between eras and reaffirming the enduring power of evocative imagery.
From Donato Giancola:
"Sheldon was in a fight against throat cancer and Wizards' wanted to get this commission (a portrait of Sheldon casting one of his favorite instants Inkshield) out as quickly as possible. It was an honor to be considered by Sheldon for this project, as unknowingly he had chosen another person affected by cancer.
I was a cancer survivor myself (testicular cancer, 33 years ago as a young man) and embraced this portrayal of Sheldon as a way to pour my love of painting and appreciation of the game into this image, and to celebrate our mutual fight against cancer.
Unfortunately, Sheldon lost his battle back in September, 2023 as I was working on this card.
I was saddened to now be creating a memorial portrait, a tribute to someone who has helped give great pleasure to millions through his dedication to Magic."
I was genuinely delighted to see Donato Giancola's artwork for Inkshield, which beautifully captures the likeness of the late Sheldon Menery, the esteemed founder of the Commander format. Typically, I find that incorporating real-life likenesses into game art can result in stiff or unnatural portrayals. I've been on the record many times to say how much I dislike them. However, this piece is a refreshing exception, exuding both vitality and depth.
Giancola's use of the spirits to create a dynamic portrait alongside expressive lighting breathes life into the illustration, making it feel as though Sheldon is actively engaging with the viewer. He is a planeswalker, casting his spell, and the spell is a gotcha. "I told you that action wouldn't be a good idea."
The attention to detail, from the intricate textures to the nuanced facial expression and furrowed brow, adds a layer of authenticity that resonates deeply. This thoughtful portrayal not only honors Menery's legacy but also enhances the overall aesthetic of the card, making it a standout piece of the year.
The community's response to this artwork has been overwhelmingly positive, reflecting a collective appreciation for both Sheldon's contributions and Giancola's artistic excellence. The card was featured in the "Sheldon's Spellbook" Secret Lair drop, which raised over $2.1 million for the American Cancer Society, underscoring the profound impact of this tribute. The painting selling into the five-figures is also not lost on me.
A good year for art, can I have another.
-Mike
