New Magic Cards, and a Blog Announcement

I was having one of those roller-coaster days yesterday; on the back of an in-depth review of the new Theros art for Magic: The Gathering, I made an informal remark about how selective I am about which pieces of card art I post on my blog and put in my portfolio.

That was mostly meant as a teaching moment about putting your best work forward. Probably 1/3 of my Facebook feed is now young artists and students, and that's a point I've been trying to drive home a lot during portfolio reviews. But after sleeping on it and meditating for a bit, I realized that I do also feel guilty for not making every painting equally accessible, and part of my statement was an excuse. I'm a terrible self-critic, and maybe I should lighten up a bit; plus I've seen whispers on reddit and other sites like "heeey, when is she gonna post [xyz painting?!]" and I don't want to let down fans, even when I don't feel a piece came out as strong as it could if I had it to do over again.

THE PLAN
I made another informal statement in the comments about a plan I've been devising for the last month. I intend to make a tagged entry for each of my Magic cards, like a Cynthia's Magic Card Database type thing, so that they're all in one place here on the blog and easy to search. They'll be listed under the tag "Magic: The Gathering Card Artwork." There's always The Gatherer for quick searches, but I've always regretted that Gatherer doesn't cover special cards, like my DCI Judges' foil promo of "Bribery," or my Innistrad Zombie token. Plus, doing it in blog form, I get to add notes about any interesting stories regarding the artwork, or links to step-by-step process pics. It feels like a good idea, and I'm planning to go live with it within the next month. Hopefully that will satisfy people who've had a hard time searching for my work in the past.



Meanwhile, I just received my whiteback proofs for Wingsteed Rider and Scholar of Athreos in the mail, just in time for next weekend's Escapist Expo! As a quick note: I am still horribly behind on sending out sketches and signatures by mail- if you're waiting on something from me, I promise I still have it and it's coming, and I apologize for the loooong wait. I'll be changing up my policies on sketches-by-mail soon and will try to keep that info up-to-date on the new Magic blog section, too.

BACK TO WORK.