At this point I have no idea how many people still follow me from my blogging days, but if any of you are still around, HI! I actually really miss writing about the things that inspire what I make and having a place to interact with people and get their thoughts and perspectives on it. Like pretty much everyone I see clearly the limits of the various social media feeds I’ve been pushed into using and want to get back to more direct and longform stuff even if it reaches fewer people and gets less (superficial) “reactions”. Also, and this is a major factor, I miss being able to provide LINKS because crediting and sharing other people/works I find interesting is hugely important to me, and it’s a struggle on all these other platforms that are designed to keep you confined entirely in their apps.
Part of my reason for coming back to it is the fact that I finished a big project with a lot of pieces I think would be fun to talk about, and that is the 12 paintings I did for the MtG Secret Lair Astrolands series. These are basic land cards mapped to the signs of the zodiac and I conceptualized and completed all the paintings in the first 3 months of 2021. They will be releasing one a month for the next twelve months in the order the signs appear.
I’ll start by saying that I never anticipated being reached out to for something like this. I love fantasy art but realize my style isn’t really what most people are after in the more mainstream fantasy world these days. The art director for this project Jessica Lanzillo reached out to me because she saw my Endless Skies series and felt it could be a good jumping off point for what they were after, which was a psychedelic and not necessarily literal or traditional take on astrological imagery. The direction was pretty open ended beyond that, and I had a lot of room to interpret .
Personally I’m more than willing to say I don’t know much about something and I’ll say I don’t know much about astrology. Or rather I don’t know much with any real depth to it. As someone who’s interested in the history of magical practice and mythology it crosses and intersects into a ton of my reading and of course I encounter it in the more popular sense disseminated in aesthetics and art, memes and offhand comments from friends who dabble. But in terms of the real deal practical craft I am clueless, and trying to jump in what I find is charts that are inscrutable to me as a novice.
I was really excited when Jess said they’d be willing to hire an astrologer for me to consult with and immediately knew I wanted to reach out to Maya Brooks, someone I’ve always enjoyed talking to about occult stuff, an insightful thinker on astrology AND a MtG nerd. Maya was ultimately responsible for arranging the alignments of signs to land types, and I think a lot of people will be surprised that some of them are a lot more creatively and thoughtfully chosen, not necessarily the more obvious or literal choices which actually made for some fun and cool challenges for me.
Coming up with concepts for me is usually a matter of gathering a thousand ideas and inspirations into a murky brain stew and then waiting for something to congeal into an image and while I’m sure a fraction of my thoughts going into the piece are legible from the outside I think it helps push me in less obvious directions. For this project there was a lot to balance. Keep the pallet as bright as humanly possible, draw from my previous work, the practical qualities of each kind of landscape, the associations of the land/mana types in MtG, classical zodiac mythology and imagery, the elements and planetary rulers of each sign and all of the deeper astrological concepts and insights Maya brought me for each one.
Here’s the first finished card, Capricorn! For this card Maya and I talked about the rulership of Saturn over Capricorn and I was most interested in playing off of the Roman concept of Dis Pater. This means "rich father" and is actually applied to Pluto/Hades, but in this case I thought it was relevant to Capricorn/Saturn as well because it's an earth sign, and the appellation refers to the connection of cthonic gods with wealth, both material mineral wealth and fecundity that comes from the underworld and the earth. There's a certain binary way of representing death, and the affiliation of death with swamps that's a bit limiting to me, because generally speaking in mythology and a lot of occult systems death is strongly connected to rebirth, and to change and harvest and this fits the with the rulership of Saturn, and the placement of Capricorn at what is the beginning of a new year in many traditions.
Additionally swamps are nutrient rich environments where rotting matter is constantly turning over into new life. I'm fascinated with chimera so a Sea Goat is a really interesting creature, made up of elements of both land and sea, which I felt could make an interesting bridge for an Earth sign that finds itself in the wet environment of the Swamp. I made it skeletal as a very basic reference to the association of Swamps with death in MtG and also because of all of the associations mentioned above, but I also designed a little insignia of a living one which I intend to offer as a template for customized proofs when I get them. (see above)
This is also a silly thing, but I look to a lot of random places for color scheme ideas, since I had to come up with 12 at once which were all bright, seemed to fit with each other but not be too similar to each other and my jumping off point for this one was Mad Marc Rude's cover for Earth A.D.
For all of these I wanted to create the most saturated pallet possible so I used very few drab neutrals and no black except in some limited ways mixed with color for linework and deep shadow. In most places for this series I actually used royal blue instead of black which I think gives a lot of the series a hazy dreamy quality I’m pretty into. Also worth noting for people that don’t play MtG, the lands all have mana colors associated with them and for swamp it’s black. I didn’t take the mana colors literally and instead went to the qualities associated with them, but it’s funny painting a “black” card with no black I suppose.
I’m really excited for some of the cards coming up, some of my favorite will be coming out this summer. So far it’s been a mixed bag to be on the receiving end of commentary from a huge fandom. Everyone contacting or commenting to me personally has been really kind and excited about the project, and I genuinely am excited to have contributed art to a game that means a lot to a ton of my friends! I’ll be selling my originals shortly and as they drop through a broker in a fb group so feel to contact me if you need that info. Eventually I’ll be getting sheets of artists proofs and will be able to make custom sketch cards available, though I hear the sheets have been pretty delayed due to covid so I’m not sure when that will be.
Also wanted to mention that Amy from Amazonian reached out to me to answer some questions about the art. Unfortunately, I was too busy to set up recording a chat with her this week (the card drop caught me off guard actually!) but I was able to answer some questions via text and she did a great job translating them into a short video you can watch here.
As always you can find me on instagram and reluctantly on twitter where my art posts can be found sandwiched between my harassment of hyperlocal politicians or email me with any questions at wanderinggenieart@gmail.com. Oh and check out the band Maya sings in, The Ire! One of my absolute favorite local bands without a doubt.