MTG: Gideon’s Avenger (2010)
Concepted at Prescott studio
Often, these posts will include a sketch, and then a grayscale study in which I’ve scanned the piece and applied gray tones using digital tools. Not long before starting this piece, I had a look at The Art of Drew Struzan, at New York Comic-Con in 2010. Going through it, I fell in love again with Drew’s preparatory studies, all wonderfully drawn, largely in charcoal. They really made me ask myself why I wasn’t doing similar. I’d already established that I enjoy making detailed sketches, and increasingly since 2000 or so, once it was common to email sketches for approval (versus fax them in!), I’d been spending more time on sketches.
The reason I went the digital grayscale route was for time’s sake. I spent years doing my sketches in pencil--doing grayscale images in pencil takes a lot more time. But that’s the problem--in illustration, it’s very easy to get a system down for doing things, and to stick to it for so long that you can start to forget the other ways you can or used to do something. Years ago, I used charcoal more often. Primarily in college, but there were a number of studies and things done professionally, even some interior illustrations, which I rendered entirely in charcoal. The downside is storage--you have to be more careful storing charcoal drawings and handling them, since they smudge easier. That was the primary reason why I put them aside. Plus, early on in my career I did much quicker, sloppier sketches since they would be delivered low-res by fax.
