Counterflux- MTG painting

Here is a fun one that was a bit of a blur to produce. I was working on 5 MTG paintings for Return to Ravnica, which was my biggest contribution to the game in years. But while I was doing these I also had to finish the art for Lottie Paris 2 AND do a massive amount of silhouettes for Jodi Picoult's "Between the Lines".

In the end this meant I had to produce 80+ pieces of art in a span of 2 months. I went into full hobo mode, and somehow came out the other end smelling like roses. (Though my family may disagree with me on that score!)

This is the final image:

And here are three stages of it.

1. Like my other Ravnica pieces, I didn't start with a drawing so much as I built it up with lasso shapes. You can feel the silhouette work I was doing for 'Between the Lines' bleeding into all of my images for this set.

2. I don't love doing perspective, so imagine my joy when I realized I could build the background in Sketch-up and riff on top of it!

3.And here is the painted background using the sketch-up model as a roadmap. At this stage I had not even started the figure beyond the rough silhouette you see in the first sketch.

A final detail of the face, which was an exercise in subtly for me. But the truth of the matter is, I kept painting that eye, and not liking it. So I repeatedly blurred it out to paint it again and again till at one point I thought, "Hey that looks better all smudgy!" And left it as you see it.