Thread by @WingBuffet

~~ Process thread for how I went about making this painting ~~

Teysa was a pretty challenging painting project that I started a few weeks ago, with the express intention of making a Magic: The Gathering style (and hopefully M:tG quality) image.

The painting is based on the M:tG card 'Teysa Karlov', originally by Magali Villeneuve (@/Cathaoir1), and I worked from a brief written by Paul Canavan (@/abigbat), who helped me all throughout the process.

Step 1: Collect reference/inspiration for the aesthetics I wanted, including images of Teysa and her guild in the world of Ravnica (the 'Orzhov'), as well as real-world fashion looks that might relate.
This was an organic board, so I added things throughout the whole project.

[also pictured: my 'Godless Shrine' Orzhov playmat that I use as a mousepad, with art by Jenn Ravenna Tran (@/JennRavenna), that I've had for the past couple of years 😊]

2. Using the written brief and inspiration, I sketched out some thumbnails for the painting, focusing on the big shapes and lighting for the scene.

Orzhov cards are often a big contrast between bright golden sunrise/sunset lighting and deep shadows, so I kept this in mind here!

3. After selecting a thumbnail to go with that matched the brief (a very central and imposing/authoritative figure), I built up a slightly-more-refined rough.

[I wanted to learn some Blender as well, so I did a quick crash course and did some basic modelling for the city model!]

Blender was super useful to get the city set up to paint over, and even though I'm not great at it yet (I mostly just remember how to model, and my nodes are a mess) it felt extremely helpful and let me rest my brain a bit from painting.

4. Over the next week I steadily built up detail in the background characters and model, getting super-helpful critique and paintovers from Paul (see the loose mockups here) to play around with lighting, pose, value, etc.

These really helped keep me pushing forward!

During this time I also worked on resolving the background characters, which I wanted to feel very distinct and matching with the Orzhov aesthetic.

[Also, as several people have noticed, the fellow on the left is a reference to Angel of Despair from the Orzhov's original debut!]

5. At this point I was happy with most of the image, but her outfit felt like I was 'collaging' her past costumes into a new one.

Inspired by Karla Ortiz's 'Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts' that totally reinvented most of Teysa's outfit, I decided to design one of my own too!

6. At the same time, the pose from my rough didn't have the energy I wanted for the character — she looked hunched with her shoulders crunched inward. I made a quick drawing to re-position her, settling on a more asymmetrical pose to make the costume details easier to see.

7. With the characters all fixed up, next was just rendering! Besides the characters, the model of Ravnica in the foreground took the most time.

[I had to keep reminding myself that these miniatures weren't 'real' buildings, which made them a bit tricky for lighting]

8. With rendering done, all the remained was balancing and making sure that the image was reading properly at different sizes. I'd repeatedly checked the image in an M:tG card border throughout the project, just to make sure it looked good in situ.

And that's it!

I've got a few more M:tG card paintings that I'm working on to post over the next few weeks, so if you enjoyed you can keep an eye out for those!

These have been breakthrough paintings for refining my process, so special thanks to all the artists I mentioned that inspired me 🥰