MTG: Karplusan Forest (2021)
Revisiting an old illustration
Artist proof DMU cards can be purchased here.
Having worked on Magic for 30+ years now, with over 200 unique illustrations, over a tenure that began when I was just 20 years old, there are inevitably going to be some illustrations you wish you could get a do-over on.
In my case, that ends up being a good handful of mostly early pieces that for whatever reasons—mostly related to being inexperienced, taking on too much work, and just not being good enough—sometimes went out the door with me already wishing I had time to start over. They were done much faster back then. Much, much faster—in a couple of unfortunate instances in as little as a day (last-minute requests in those cases).
Sometimes I would take a little time to do another version if I could, before turning it in. But sometimes, those pieces left my studio and were immortalized in print and remain to haunt me to this day, and here sometimes!
The thing is, though Wizards frequently reprints old cards with new art, it is extremely rare that they let the original artist take another crack at it later. Having a fresh aesthetic on the art is usually very cool, so it’s fine, but after some many years, the original artist has also probably evolved a fairly fresh aesthetic, and it would also be cool to see what they would do with an older concept, now. In my case, that had never happened. Until here.
