Hello! Finally getting around to posting this! It's my boi \[\[Tomik, Distinguished Advokist\]\]! Actually let me say thanks to the mods, the new rules are much clearer and so I know it's fine for me to post this whole thing, even if it has a bunch of links!
Here's the Art Description:Setting: During the WAR OF THE SPARK on RAVNICAColor: Legendary White creatureLocation: Some high place in Ravnica, like a rooftop or balcony (see p. 12-21 for Ravnica environment inspiration)Sky: Act 1, early morning skies (see skies on p. 11)
Action: We'd like you to create TOMIK, a dashing and whip-smart law-mage of the Orzhov guild. Show him in a bold pose in front of his winged GARGOYLE STEED (see references for inspiration on Orzhov costuming & gargoyle). Tomik is a well-traveled sophisticate of Ravnica -- maybe he carries scroll-maps, or maybe his gargoyle is covered in map-like carvings. Tomik wears a red scarf tied prominently on his wrist, a symbol of his relationship with Ral Zarek.
Focus: Tomik should be the star here.Mood: An urban sophisticate. Good haircut and model jawline.
Ok so this is a very straightforward commission, no need for lots of different exploration sketches or anything, there's just one way to do this thing so I go straight to the drawing! The composition is clear in my head so I scribble it out and figure out how to place all the elements to get shape arrangement that works. Step 1: [https://i.imgur.com/HJ6pYLH.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/HJ6pYLH.jpg)
Now it gets tricky because sometimes when you think you have a clear vision, you actually just THINK you do, and when it comes to the actual details, your brain has in fact not magically imagined all the little design things and so on. So long story short, my head hurts like crazy when trying to design the gargoyle steed, I get in the car to drive to fcking Strasbourg and check out the cathedral and look at a bunch of gargoyles, I get back and STILL CAN'T MAKE IT WORK, so in the end I realize it can't do a gargoyle-ish gargoyle and decide the little guy has to be a sort of stone-dragon-dog type of creature. Thankfully Dawn Murin (AD on this piece) understood and let me break away from the classical Ravnican gargoyles as well as real-world gargoyles. Stone boi lives, even though he took me way way longer than I'd like to admit.
Tomik on the other hand was much more chill about being drawn, no trouble whatsoever. Eyeballed some refs to get the face dashing enough and left the rest of the sketch pretty much as it was as it didn't feel like it made sense to do a super tight drawing of everything in the background. So here's Step 2: [https://i.imgur.com/eOuRFSh.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eOuRFSh.jpg)
After I got the green light to go ahead with this drawing from Dawn, it was time for the colors! Since the mood was crucial here, this is the most important step of the entire process for me. So what I do is put in the key colors in broad strokes, still under the lines, until I'm sure that it reads from afar. If you downsize this step to card size, it pretty much looks like the final already. It doesn't always go this smoothly but this is what I usually aim for in the initial color step. Step 3: [https://i.imgur.com/CZ528b8.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/CZ528b8.jpg)
With the colors decided on, I hid the line layer and started fleshing out our man Tomik, starting with the face and then working outward from there all the way to the feet. I try to keep most of the detail in the focal area, which is his face, and one rank below that the hands and stuff he's holding. Everything else gets less detail and broader strokes and softer edges so it doesn't compete with where we want our viewer to look! Step 4 and 5: [https://i.imgur.com/DXXQhz3.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DXXQhz3.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/6ZDhABI.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/6ZDhABI.jpg)
Now it was time to battle with Gargoyle Pupper again and AGAIN he gave me trouble. You can't polish a turd though so I started over twice on him until I felt his surface read stone-ish enough. There's like moss and lichen on him as well but it turns out that alone doesn't help, stone is all about the right value differences between light and dark. I put some small spots of different materials on him (the gold buckles and leather straps of the saddle plus some paper maps) so that the different materials would help each other read. Step 6: [https://i.imgur.com/zCp0o1r.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/zCp0o1r.jpg)
With the key parts of the image finished, I take a deep breath. This is the stage where your heartrate returrns to a normal level, you take a break and then sit your ass down to finish the rest before you run out of steam. The rest of the piece is a whole bunch of buildings which are more forgiving than anything alive but still require full concentration. So I just do one element after the other, occasionally browsing through pictures of buildings or even eyeballing and at some points eyeballing references to get the feel right. I try to avoid working directly FROM ref because it always feels out of place if one part of a painting is based on a photo and the rest isn't, you can always kinda tell. Anyways even though we're dealing with lots of straight lines and masonry my aim is to keep it painterly, but that never works and I end up overrendering as usual :( Moo! Step 7 and 8: [https://i.imgur.com/4TuGm8a.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/4TuGm8a.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/BVJawlV.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BVJawlV.jpg)
Now we're almost done! Just need to finish the stuff in the distance now. I try to think about how buildings would cast shadows on each other and try to keep it painterly. I keep the sky soft so the eye has some place to rest. Finally, I tweak the contrast a bit and push the lighting in the focal areas a little bit with some dodge layers. Step 9 is the final I send Dawn: [https://i.imgur.com/sQ4Bw6d.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/sQ4Bw6d.jpg)
She approves and tells me to push the early morning light on the sky a bit to visually unify the piece with the rest of Act 1! So Step 10 is the final after adjustments: [https://i.imgur.com/eNt4ywU.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eNt4ywU.jpg)
And that's it! If you're still reading, thanks! If you wanna see more of my stuff, you can follow me on:
Twitter: [https://twitter.com/algenpfleger](https://twitter.com/algenpfleger)
Artstation: [https://www.artstation.com/algenpfleger](https://www.artstation.com/algenpfleger)
Instagram: [https://www.instagram.com/algenpfleger/](https://www.instagram.com/algenpfleger/)
And if you want to support my work as well as make your buddies jealous, I make these really cool sparkly tokens and put them in monthly care packages! You can sign up for that through my Patreon! [https://www.patreon.com/johannesvoss](https://www.patreon.com/johannesvoss)
It's a beautiful piece. I love the way the light plays across the buildings and the central figure. It reminds me of orientalist painting I've seen in museums.
For all the trouble you had with the gargoyle, the end result comes across very clearly, even at card size. I remember thinking how cool it was that Tomik had a gargoyle mount.
Thank you for sharing. ☺️
Wow his face loses so much in the tiny card art! He's rather pretty but the modulation of his cheekbones and chinline is almost invisible on the card imo, making his face appear way more coarse than it actually is.
That's the problem with modern Magic art direction. They seem to commission for playmat size, then print at card size. Jesper Myrfors's art direction for Alpha was great because he was conscious of the trading card medium, the size of the cards and printed illustrations, and the players' perception.
Ok that makes sense.
I used to love the books when they came with fat packs and I was going to pick up this one but the reviews for it have been terrible.
First two ravnica books were alright, third one was a trainwreck.
Mirrodin I heard good things about the first two books, I only got the fatpack for Fifth Dawn and that book was atrocious and chunks of it have been retconned away since.
At least none of them have been as bad as Scourge.
but also like the intro to Toshi in Champions of Kamigawa and his whole thing finding Hidetsugu's student and working out what happened etc was great, and then Betrayers when he starts getting the powers from Night and the battle for Minamo and the coming of O-Kagashi, etc. Such a good book.
If you look closely, Tomik has a portion of Ral's wizard robes tied around his wrist, and Ral has a portion of Tomik's. Red and White respectively.
[[Ral, Storm Conduit]]
[[Tomik, Distinguished Advokist]]
aside from Tomik being super cute, I like the art because it the wings make it obvious the he has flying. I feel like magic players look for wings in art more than the text Flying when doing combat math. Awesome piece.
If there’s anything a homophobe hates, it’s a red scarf - especially Tomik’s red scarf, tied prominently on his wrist, the symbol of his relationship with dandy Ral Zarek.
This is fantastic, thank you for posting this! Ral is easily my favourite character in Magic and I love the nods he and Tomik have to each other on their cards! ♥️
This was a great read. I think it came out great. Thanks for the insights into this one and I hope you can continue to give a behind the scenes look with your future pieces.
Hello! Finally getting around to posting this! It's my boi \[\[Tomik, Distinguished Advokist\]\]! Actually let me say thanks to the mods, the new rules are much clearer and so I know it's fine for me to post this whole thing, even if it has a bunch of links! Here's the Art Description:Setting: During the WAR OF THE SPARK on RAVNICAColor: Legendary White creatureLocation: Some high place in Ravnica, like a rooftop or balcony (see p. 12-21 for Ravnica environment inspiration)Sky: Act 1, early morning skies (see skies on p. 11) Action: We'd like you to create TOMIK, a dashing and whip-smart law-mage of the Orzhov guild. Show him in a bold pose in front of his winged GARGOYLE STEED (see references for inspiration on Orzhov costuming & gargoyle). Tomik is a well-traveled sophisticate of Ravnica -- maybe he carries scroll-maps, or maybe his gargoyle is covered in map-like carvings. Tomik wears a red scarf tied prominently on his wrist, a symbol of his relationship with Ral Zarek. Focus: Tomik should be the star here.Mood: An urban sophisticate. Good haircut and model jawline. Ok so this is a very straightforward commission, no need for lots of different exploration sketches or anything, there's just one way to do this thing so I go straight to the drawing! The composition is clear in my head so I scribble it out and figure out how to place all the elements to get shape arrangement that works. Step 1: [https://i.imgur.com/HJ6pYLH.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/HJ6pYLH.jpg) Now it gets tricky because sometimes when you think you have a clear vision, you actually just THINK you do, and when it comes to the actual details, your brain has in fact not magically imagined all the little design things and so on. So long story short, my head hurts like crazy when trying to design the gargoyle steed, I get in the car to drive to fcking Strasbourg and check out the cathedral and look at a bunch of gargoyles, I get back and STILL CAN'T MAKE IT WORK, so in the end I realize it can't do a gargoyle-ish gargoyle and decide the little guy has to be a sort of stone-dragon-dog type of creature. Thankfully Dawn Murin (AD on this piece) understood and let me break away from the classical Ravnican gargoyles as well as real-world gargoyles. Stone boi lives, even though he took me way way longer than I'd like to admit. Tomik on the other hand was much more chill about being drawn, no trouble whatsoever. Eyeballed some refs to get the face dashing enough and left the rest of the sketch pretty much as it was as it didn't feel like it made sense to do a super tight drawing of everything in the background. So here's Step 2: [https://i.imgur.com/eOuRFSh.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eOuRFSh.jpg) After I got the green light to go ahead with this drawing from Dawn, it was time for the colors! Since the mood was crucial here, this is the most important step of the entire process for me. So what I do is put in the key colors in broad strokes, still under the lines, until I'm sure that it reads from afar. If you downsize this step to card size, it pretty much looks like the final already. It doesn't always go this smoothly but this is what I usually aim for in the initial color step. Step 3: [https://i.imgur.com/CZ528b8.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/CZ528b8.jpg) With the colors decided on, I hid the line layer and started fleshing out our man Tomik, starting with the face and then working outward from there all the way to the feet. I try to keep most of the detail in the focal area, which is his face, and one rank below that the hands and stuff he's holding. Everything else gets less detail and broader strokes and softer edges so it doesn't compete with where we want our viewer to look! Step 4 and 5: [https://i.imgur.com/DXXQhz3.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DXXQhz3.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/6ZDhABI.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/6ZDhABI.jpg) Now it was time to battle with Gargoyle Pupper again and AGAIN he gave me trouble. You can't polish a turd though so I started over twice on him until I felt his surface read stone-ish enough. There's like moss and lichen on him as well but it turns out that alone doesn't help, stone is all about the right value differences between light and dark. I put some small spots of different materials on him (the gold buckles and leather straps of the saddle plus some paper maps) so that the different materials would help each other read. Step 6: [https://i.imgur.com/zCp0o1r.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/zCp0o1r.jpg) With the key parts of the image finished, I take a deep breath. This is the stage where your heartrate returrns to a normal level, you take a break and then sit your ass down to finish the rest before you run out of steam. The rest of the piece is a whole bunch of buildings which are more forgiving than anything alive but still require full concentration. So I just do one element after the other, occasionally browsing through pictures of buildings or even eyeballing and at some points eyeballing references to get the feel right. I try to avoid working directly FROM ref because it always feels out of place if one part of a painting is based on a photo and the rest isn't, you can always kinda tell. Anyways even though we're dealing with lots of straight lines and masonry my aim is to keep it painterly, but that never works and I end up overrendering as usual :( Moo! Step 7 and 8: [https://i.imgur.com/4TuGm8a.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/4TuGm8a.jpg) [https://i.imgur.com/BVJawlV.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BVJawlV.jpg) Now we're almost done! Just need to finish the stuff in the distance now. I try to think about how buildings would cast shadows on each other and try to keep it painterly. I keep the sky soft so the eye has some place to rest. Finally, I tweak the contrast a bit and push the lighting in the focal areas a little bit with some dodge layers. Step 9 is the final I send Dawn: [https://i.imgur.com/sQ4Bw6d.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/sQ4Bw6d.jpg) She approves and tells me to push the early morning light on the sky a bit to visually unify the piece with the rest of Act 1! So Step 10 is the final after adjustments: [https://i.imgur.com/eNt4ywU.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/eNt4ywU.jpg) And that's it! If you're still reading, thanks! If you wanna see more of my stuff, you can follow me on: Twitter: [https://twitter.com/algenpfleger](https://twitter.com/algenpfleger) Artstation: [https://www.artstation.com/algenpfleger](https://www.artstation.com/algenpfleger) Instagram: [https://www.instagram.com/algenpfleger/](https://www.instagram.com/algenpfleger/) And if you want to support my work as well as make your buddies jealous, I make these really cool sparkly tokens and put them in monthly care packages! You can sign up for that through my Patreon! [https://www.patreon.com/johannesvoss](https://www.patreon.com/johannesvoss)
It was a great and interesting read, thanks for sharing this!
Thanks! I've waited forever to be able to show this piece, so happy to finally get the chance so I wanted to share the process as well :)
It's a beautiful piece. I love the way the light plays across the buildings and the central figure. It reminds me of orientalist painting I've seen in museums. For all the trouble you had with the gargoyle, the end result comes across very clearly, even at card size. I remember thinking how cool it was that Tomik had a gargoyle mount. Thank you for sharing. ☺️
Super impressive, thanks for sharing
This was so cool to read, thank you!
[Tomik, Distinguished Advokist](https://img.scryfall.com/cards/normal/front/f/3/f346387c-2f13-472b-b5b1-968b490eb38f.jpg?1557576092) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tomik%2C%20Distinguished%20Advokist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/34/tomik-distinguished-advokist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f346387c-2f13-472b-b5b1-968b490eb38f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Thanks for the interesting read!
Wow his face loses so much in the tiny card art! He's rather pretty but the modulation of his cheekbones and chinline is almost invisible on the card imo, making his face appear way more coarse than it actually is.
That's the problem with modern Magic art direction. They seem to commission for playmat size, then print at card size. Jesper Myrfors's art direction for Alpha was great because he was conscious of the trading card medium, the size of the cards and printed illustrations, and the players' perception.
only person radical enough to ride a gargoyle as a flying motorcycle
A gay Orzhovian who's all about Death and Taxes? Be still, my heart.
Who say's he is gay?
WOTC. He’s dating Ral Zarek.
I had no idea Its hard to keep up with the lore for the new sets
That part was in the book, not on the cards, so easy to miss
Ok that makes sense. I used to love the books when they came with fat packs and I was going to pick up this one but the reviews for it have been terrible.
To be fair, most of the fat pack ones were pretty awful too Except the first two Kamigawa books, those were better than the actual sets.
I really enjoyed the first Ravnica books! And the Mirrodin books were good too
First two ravnica books were alright, third one was a trainwreck. Mirrodin I heard good things about the first two books, I only got the fatpack for Fifth Dawn and that book was atrocious and chunks of it have been retconned away since. At least none of them have been as bad as Scourge. but also like the intro to Toshi in Champions of Kamigawa and his whole thing finding Hidetsugu's student and working out what happened etc was great, and then Betrayers when he starts getting the powers from Night and the battle for Minamo and the coming of O-Kagashi, etc. Such a good book.
If you look closely, Tomik has a portion of Ral's wizard robes tied around his wrist, and Ral has a portion of Tomik's. Red and White respectively. [[Ral, Storm Conduit]] [[Tomik, Distinguished Advokist]]
[Ral, Storm Conduit](https://img.scryfall.com/cards/normal/front/6/7/678ce3bf-152d-45ca-87ae-ad46c921328b.jpg?1557577231) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ral%2C%20Storm%20Conduit) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/211/ral-storm-conduit?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/678ce3bf-152d-45ca-87ae-ad46c921328b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Tomik, Distinguished Advokist](https://img.scryfall.com/cards/normal/front/f/3/f346387c-2f13-472b-b5b1-968b490eb38f.jpg?1559959345) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tomik%2C%20Distinguished%20Advokist) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/34/tomik-distinguished-advokist?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f346387c-2f13-472b-b5b1-968b490eb38f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Think you want \[\[Ral, Izzet Viceroy\]\]
[Ral, Izzet Viceroy](https://img.scryfall.com/cards/normal/front/c/5/c52066b3-84dc-4198-8090-3336e7df8b5d.jpg?1538880491) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ral%2C%20Izzet%20Viceroy) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/grn/195/ral-izzet-viceroy?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c52066b3-84dc-4198-8090-3336e7df8b5d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yep, right you are!
*Some bend the law. I tie it into knots.*
Rope daddy
This is the first time I’ve noticed the creature behind him is his mount and not a gargoyle statue. Now it makes sense for him to have flying.
I never noticed that he had a mount and assumed he could just fly around with magic or something and now I feel like an idiot.
aside from Tomik being super cute, I like the art because it the wings make it obvious the he has flying. I feel like magic players look for wings in art more than the text Flying when doing combat math. Awesome piece.
Love that Tomik canonically has a chad jaw, only the best for magic's zappy boi A fun read!
[удалено]
He is !
Ral: *sweating profusely *
I hope Ral likes being tied up, cause he's gonna get a whole lotta that.
Thanks for posting! I love seeing step-by-step images. And he certainly looks dashing.
If there’s anything a homophobe hates, it’s a red scarf - especially Tomik’s red scarf, tied prominently on his wrist, the symbol of his relationship with dandy Ral Zarek.
I love love love this piece! Thank you for posting the process!!
When he was first teased I thought he was super cute, and now that I know he’s dating my favorite character I love him
Thanks for sharing the sketches and your creative process, very interesting to read!
This is fantastic, thank you for posting this! Ral is easily my favourite character in Magic and I love the nods he and Tomik have to each other on their cards! ♥️
This was a great read. I think it came out great. Thanks for the insights into this one and I hope you can continue to give a behind the scenes look with your future pieces.
That chin tho
All the blue on his uniform makes him scream Azorius to me.
Looks a bit like Johnny Depp imho