Bitterblossom

The original Bitterblossom card was first published when I started as a Magic the Gathering artist, and having played it a lot I felt very honored to be allowed to make my own version.

I immediately decided that I wanted to be at eye level with the fairies, looking down at them in a beautiful but deadly forest bed of pink flowers. In the first sketch I liked the pose, but the overall look felt too cute and cartoony. I went with the composition, but redrew the fairy and changed the face so she looked straight at us, creating a connection with the spectator.

My composition centers around one female fairy hanging ready to take flight. All around in the flower clusters more fairies are hiding, ready to swarm. The faeries in this Lorwyn world are very tiny like small insects, and have legs like dragonflies. I wanted to create a kind of macro effect, and so I started to look at photographs of insects in flowers, wanting to simulate the way it looks.

I sent the sketch to my art director Taylor Ingvarsson and crossed my fingers that he would like it. He had one comment that I am grateful for. Since the card mechanic is that it puts a fairy into play every turn, he suggested that I add a small flying fairy that has already taken off in the background. The story line becomes so much better with this little additional fairy. I also added a small corset made out of pine cone to give her size some scale.

The color comp was almost a given. The fairy was going to be very blue in the skin tone, the flowers pink and violet. So the only thing to decide on was the background. As you can see I did two versions and decided on the bottom one because the blue sky made the figure stand out and created a nice silhouette effect on the flowers. Also this blue light magenta happens to be my third favorite color after purple and pink.

I love her expression: Beautiful but deadly, like she couldn’t care less if you lived or died. The cast shadow on her face gives an added mysterious feeling.