Magic Card Art: Sorin, Solemn Visitor

Card Name: Sorin, Solemn Visitor
© 2014 Wizards of the Coast

Gatherer Link: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=386672

Medium: Digital
Original Art Available? No
Prints Available? Yes
Artist Proofs Available? Yes
Foil Artist Proofs Available? Yes

Artist notes: My first Planeswalker! Eeeee!!! I could not have been happier for it to be Sorin, either. You know, me and vampires and all. ;)


^^Some of the early sketches. The mood was "mysterious," as Tarkir is definitely not Sorin's home turf, and he was supposed to look and feel a bit out of place. Because of that I decided early on to make the terrain warm, in yellows and oranges. Some folks have even commented that Sorin's gray skin looks blue because of the color contrast between him and the landscape.

If I had to pick a favorite technical part of the painting, I'd choose the scrolly armor. Metal filigree is up there with fabric as one of my favorite things to paint. Thankfully, Wizards provides us with detailed reference, so I was able to look closely at the original designs before attempting to render them. But maybe the coolest thing of all is that dragon bones in the landscape weren't actually part of the assignment, and I was unaware of the lore reasons for Sorin being on Tarkir (his search for Ugin). I had just read that Tarkir was "littered with dragon bones" and thought they'd make an awesome visual backdrop for our vampire protagonist. As a humorous extension of this happy accident, the painting has earned the nickname "Is That Ugin?" among my close friends. And there was also one evening where we were just looking at random objects around my apartment and asking each other if they were Ugin... [at my lamp] "Hey guys, is that Ugin?" Repeat ad nauseum. Heh.

*UPDATE: Want to see a larger version of the image? Wizards featured it in their Wallpapers section!