The Knight is one of the cards I made for Magic the Gathering Commanders Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate.

When Art Director Dawn Murin sent me the brief and I read the words “Baldur’s Gate” in the email subject I fainted a little.
I mean, not only I lived in Baldur’s Gate with my imaginary character while playing D&D. I also played the crap out of all the video games when they came out a billion years ago, to the point that I could almost draw the map of the city out of memory.

Look at this ancient beauty.

As far as the Knight goes, I was a bit troubled about the release.
Wizards of the Coast published the list of cards for the release last month, but I couldn’t see mine in it. I kind of thought it had been culled or something like that.
Then a friend at work, who is kind of a Magic the Gathering Pro, dug it up and pointed it to me.

Being it a token card is not part of the regular bunch, hence the mistery.

If you’re curious, here’s the page with all the token cards for Magic the Gathering Commanders Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate.

Anyway, here she is in all her fierce Tiefling beauty.

The Knight is a member of the Order of the Flaming Fist, patrolling the riverside on her Eriskay pony.

Talking about the process, the same friend asked me if I had worked on her face separately and then moved it into place, which obviously I didn’t.

But that made me realize that her face might look a bit overworked compared to the rest, which it probably is.

I have to confess that the things I always struggle with the most in a painting are faces. I often over-compensate by spending a lot of time on them compared to most of the rest, which often results in them being more detailed and polished than the overall composition.

I think that from now on I’ll try and do the same number of passes in all elements of the picture and see if that improve things. Thanks Levy:)
Upside of going to the office: people talk.

Since I’m a diligent boy, I kept the sketches.

There’s still a whole bunch of cards that I made that haven’t been released yet, this one was finished more than a year ago!
However, together with the ones already out it starts to look like a line-up:)

Also, and this a huge thing for me, I kind of graduated to the standard game, so this time I got the printed proofs, and they look awesome.

Fun fact. This was the first time I had worked with AD Dawn Murin. I received the brief while I was already working on two other cards, and the moment I accepted it I scheduled the time on my planner and took it off my mind, as it was weeks ahead.

Then one day I came across the art order again and “OMG I MISREAD THE DEADLINE DATE! IT’S TOMORROW! I HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED”

So I wrote a super apologetic – and admittedly panicked – email that sounded like “I MISREAD THE DEADLINE I’M SO SORRY CAN I HAVE MORE TIME?”, to which I was replied something along the lines of “dude chill, you are misreading it now, it’s still two months ahead”.

“Oh, ok… well that was me, nice to meet you then:)”

Everything ended well and nothing was damaged aside form my self respect.

By the way, if anyone wants signed proofs drop me an email.

by Paolo Puggioni