Vraska, Senatorial Gorgon - MtG Fanart Process

A few month ago, when I saw the first announcement for Reality Fracture MtG set I get really excited about it and especially about the implication for one of my all time favorite MtG character, Vraska. So I get into a bit of "what if" and fanart, and I thought it could be cool to share more in deep my process to create this piece !

Reality fracture is a lot about "mirror" version of well known characters, and by the time I started the drawing we had only a small preview of Vraska in it, and that's all. So I decided to create my own interpretation of what a "mirror" Vraska could be, basing myself on the Guild of Ravnica set era, and in particular on one of my all time favorite Magali Villeneuve's artwork : Vraska, Regal Gorgon.

So I thought a bit about it and fixed myself on the following idea (all personal theory obviously) : what this alternative Vraska had been adopted by the Azorius guild and made one of them. From that I created a first design trying to keep the big shape of the official design while making it strongly different. I added some armor pieces, something often seen in Azorius characters, and tried trough gloves hiding Vraska arms pattern, veil and bound hairs to give the idea she is not free of being herself and have to hide her gorgon nature.

One I had the design ready I started thinking about compositions, trying to find something that would both remind of Vraska's Ravnica artwork and looks new and clearly not "normal" Vraska.

I chose to go for Vraska reading some law or similar things parchment on a stair case, turning the camera a bit higher the character, opposite to the low angle of the original card, and also giving less power to Vraska, and more the impression we are looking down at her.

After that I tested some colors schemes, with blue and white dominant colors, following Azorius guild colors.

I ended up leaning more toward the pink one, that I found more interesting than the really monochromatic blue one, but de-saturated it a bit so it doesn't look to friendly.

Once all was set up I've shoot some references and checked my building perspective in 3D, with the help of blender. That's helped me notice the arch wasn't enough for Vraska face to be in shadow, something I wanted as the original Vraska is often represented half in shadow. So I added another lightblocker, using the shadow of a giant wing - a sphinx one, but that's hard to tell from only a shadow. I also added a sphinx statue wing and made some adjustment to help the composition read better/

And after that ? "Just" a lot of rendering and going back to ref to be sure I wasn't messing things up especially with perspective in such a urban background.

And so around 40 hours later, here the final ! Hope you love it !