Thread by @jsraphael57

illustration for Commander Legends Battle for Baldur's Gate precon Commander
thanks my ADs for providing me with this cool assignment!
AD Dawn Murin and Deborah Garcia #MTGCLB #dndart #magicart #MagicTheGathering
process THREAD-->

[BRIEF] Heres the brief Dawn gave me, he's originally supposed to be a BLACK Legendary Creature but they changed it into RED later in the process

[INSPIRATION] Some images that I compiled that got me going. Art by @indusconcept , @chengwei_pan , and @XiaoGuang_Sun

[SKETCHES] from those refs I tried to draw a welcoming pose, came up with couple options but later I narrowed it down to 2 (1/2)

[SKETCHES] more sketches (2/2)

[SKETCHES] here are the sketches I sent, with the original Baeloth art they provided

[FEEDBACKS] from there, Dawn chose B and requested to change the armor and cape to Dark RED since he will be a red creature. She also suggested to light up the environment more so we could see his face clearly. So I changed the lighting

[REFS] I went and made simple 3d base for the background and made a simple lighting mockup for the character using webapp.magicposer.com

[REFS] I also searched for red-neutral color relationship palette refs. Image by @jacobsontyler ,@7200ss , and Jack Wang

[PROGRESS] Using those refs I started painting and painting

[FINAL] And heres the final hires with the card preview

[GIF] and process gif, hope this helps!