MTG: Park Heights Pegasus (2021)
Still not settled on boards
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Park Heights Pegasus is available as an artist proof in the shop!
Full of gangster film tropes and Art Deco style, Magic’s Streets of New Capenna seemed, to me, a bit of an outlier, stylistically. The set has more modern clothing—relatively speaking—and even vehicles. Not quite automobiles, but close enough. But there are still Pegasi in this world, perhaps incongruously!
I spent a lot of time in 2020 working on two illustrated books. I worked on watercolor paper for a number of the illustrations, which I had in the past as well. I cycle through substrates and go through phases. Some of them I will probably never return to, but others I always figure are just not what I’m using now, but I could see returning to them. After those books, I regained an appetite for working on paper, but didn’t enjoy as much the fragile weight of even a heavier mid-weight watercolor paper. So I opted to return to illustration board for its additional stability. I used it extensively the first decade of my career but have spent the past decade dedicated to masonite panels. I’ll still use masonite above a certain size because if it gets too big, illustration board starts to feel a little fragile again.
Since 2016 when working on Ixalan, I’ve been doing thumbnails for Magic cards in blank card frames (of the type the specific art will print in), at actual size. I actually print out card frames and sketch in them. Since I have a habit of noodling details in my paintings, I figured that at least constructing the bones of the piece at-size is a good idea before I start applying details that don’t really read at card size. I still apply those details, of course, but I don’t design with them in mind.
As I started working on these, I was wary that there are only so many good angles to show a pegasus from, and so I went and searched for all the pegasus art done for Magic over the years, and worked to steer away from those same poses.
The pegasus is supposed to be flying away, searchlights shooting up as it is being tracked or followed. I most liked the upper right pose, but I think I swapped in the environment from the lower left, with a large building behind.
From there I worked up the figure for the pegasus. It was supposed to be armored as well, but at this point I didn’t concern myself with it. I figured I would need some iterations on that, so I decided to do that digitally. From there, I worked up a digital sketch by compositing the drawing above and working up the rest digitally for submission.
I’ve also taken to submitting my sketches both as just art, and also within a framed mockup. I still only submit in black and white, but I think showing them in-frame with appropriate typefaces and such helps everyone understand how the art should look in context.
In this case, it was submitted with a full-width frame option, by request. The template also indicates for me where the art would be cropped in the standard frame, so I can keep important elements out of those areas.
That the card changed name during production is hardly worth noting, as that sort of thing happens all the time.
In progress, you can see some of the acrylic underpainting as I’ve begun fleshing out the cityscape in the background, including what’s reflecting in the building.
In retrospect, I probably would have had more success with a different background from the thumbnails, as I don’t think I succeeded so much in what I intended with those buildings and the reflection of the main one, but in the end it was an enjoyable piece and the most “fantasy” of the pieces I did for Streets of New Capenna.
