MTG: Angler’s Shield (2025)

While we were in Chicago

The original art and preliminary studies shown here are available for sale. The links were posted up first for paid subscribers and now for free subscribers, and later will be made publicly available elsewhere.

• The original art for Angler’s Shield is sold

• The preliminary study is sold

• The alternate preliminary study is available here

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Angler’s Shield (2025) 9x12” oil over acrylic on illustration board

I picked up this Lorwyn-related illustration early in 2025. I had been doing more digital than painted pieces in the prior 6 months and while I'd just completed a couple of other paintings, neither one felt quite up my alley. This one, featuring a merfolk holding a shield with a stretched anglerfish head over it, had more opportunities to create something that I enjoyed more.

This particular merfolk has either put together or found this shield, and has surfaced to offer it for sale. Her terms are very reasonable.

A selection of roughs, actual card size, pencil, ink and acrylics

In the original sketches, the angler fish head is still alive and is chomping down on some other weapon.

I picked #3 above and created a study to work up. I quite liked it and submitted it in February 2025, right on the eve of departing for a few days' vacation in Chicago before MagicCon Chicago. It was our first time to Chicago, so we booked a few days to take in some of the city.

Alternate study, 6x8” pencil, ink and acrylic on toned paper

digital submission. Looking at it months later, I still really like this one.

While in Chicago, I received a kind of an approval. However, there were a good number of minor adjustments requested. Experience told me that trying to bend my original composition to accommodate the numerous small changes would fundamentally compromise what I liked about it. So I made the tough call on my own to just start again.

Occasionally, my life as an artist looks just like you might imagine it. Our hotel room overlooked Millennium park.

It was going to be well over a week until I was back in the studio, however. So I decided to create the second sketch from vacation--something I rarely do. It was super cold and also we wanted a layback vacation, not packing it with too much sightseeing, so there was some free time. I had some drawing materials with me and a clipboard but no good paper. So I took the complimentary note pad provided by the hotel, and did my sketch on it. I decided to leave the sheet whole rather than trim it, as it provides a neat snapshot of the circumstances--a future collector could crop in on the image by matting it, so it wasn't a big deal either way.

preliminary study, 4x5.25 sheet, pencil, ink and Posca pen

I attended MagicCon Chicago right after and had a great time meeting lots of fans and players. Coming home with an approval, I hit the ground running and the painting went smoothly from there.

digital study

I sent a phone pic of the earlier notepad sketch and emailed that for approval, I included notes specifying that the background would be darker, the figure mostly in shadow, allowing the light of the angler to shine. But when I returned home, I still did my standard digital value study, which just goes to show that I do them because I need them, too!

Acrylic underpainting. You can see I stapled the board to a larger board to work. This allows me to handle it easier (it’s not so big), and raises it up on the easel a little.

part-way through, I’ve switched to oils already and am working on the figure. You can see I removed the blue tape as soon as I could, as its color was throwing me off with so much blue in the painting already.

Angler’s Shield appears in the Through the Omenpaths set of Magic Arena, digital release only

Shared with permission from WOTC
TM and © Wizards of the Coast