New Magic: Minotaur Younghorn

I'm very excited today to share with you a new Magic: the Gathering card that was just released this past weekend. Unlike my last MtG related post about Setessan Oathsworn, this card is actually the first I was ever commissioned for the game. Have a look:

Minotaur Younghorn 12" x 14" Oil on masonite

This guy was created for a special encounter deck called Battle the Horde. Which is a special preset deck that players can play against to try and defeat the bloodthirsty minotaur clan. So, sadly this card can't be used in regular game play....i think? I don't quite know the the rules regarding this card, but I think it can only be used in conjunction with the horde deck.
Anyway, I'm really happy with this painting and it was a blast to create. Here's the sketch:

12" x 14" charcoal and digital

I'd like to thank Dawn Murin the AD on this one for giving me my first opportunity to work on a game I've wanted to create art for ever since I saw it back in 1998. It's an honor to be a part of all the other outstanding artists working on the game. 

Both the painting and sketch are available for purchase please contact me at murphyillustration@gmail.com 

Dungeon Magazine - Some Wererats

I just saw that the recent Dungeon Magazine issue #217 has been released. Here's a painting I did for the article a couple months ago. The story helps give flavor to a Dungeons and Dragons scenario that takes place in the Undercellar. An interconnected network of dreary rooms below the city filled with all manner of nasty things. My task was to show a couple of wererats up to something....probably no good.

Charcoal sketch with some digital touches.

 8"x17.5" Oil on illustration board

Dungeon 212

Here's a couple pieces I did earlier this year for Dungeon Magazine issue 212.
These are always fun because no matter what the assignment, I get to paint any combination of creatures, arms and armor, and magic. What could be better? 

8"x17.5" Oil on illustration board

This one shows the famous D&D sorceress Iggwilv and her little demon friend, and a good reason to not invite her to dinner...Unless you like it when she turns your roast into a cloud of flies.

8"x17.5" Oil on illustration board

In this one, an angel catches up on some reading while he is trapped in a library, but he's not alone.

Dragon 415: The Ghost Caravan

Hello everyone, it's been a while since i've posted on here...but what else is new? Things have been busy as usual around here. I've got quite a few things waiting in the wings that I can hopefully show soon. My girlfriend and I also took a little vacation to Norway two weeks ago. Maybe I'll get a post in about that in the coming days, but for now here's a new one I did not too long ago for an article in this month's Dragon Magazine. The article tells of a mysterious caravan that has been sighted on many occasions, and is believed to be ghosts, but is actually just a bunch of smugglers who travel in secrecy for the king.

8x18" Oil on illustration board

Duel Masters: Onigunso, Hammer of Anger

Earlier this year I got an email from art director Dawn Murin over at Wizards of the Coast. She was looking for artists to create work for the japanese card game Duel Masters. I had heard of the game before but never really knew much about it. Especially since it was a game played mostly by japanese boys between the ages of 10-14, and the art was completely different from my typical style. But for this project, she was trying something new, and that was to try and incorporate a more "western" realistic art style into the Duel Masters brand. In hopes to make it stand out a bit more from the other Japanese card games. So I said "sure!" and thus began my journey.

For this guy the description was as follows:

He's an alien humanoid that is about 14 feet tall, chubby rather than muscular like he never lost his baby fat, and dimwitted. Instead of hands, he has giant steampunk-esque mechanical ball maces, and he's covered in glowing tribal/alien tattoos.

Now having researched some previous art for Duel Masters, I realized that everything was pretty over the top and crazy. Most things just didn't make sense. I needed to make him pretty big and weird and aggressive, while maintaining my usual painting style. 

Here's a few of my thumbnails, as I did a lot...They're pretty much just the the big dude flailing about in different directions since the game is about in-your-face monsters fighting each other:

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

So we decided to go with thumbnail #6, and off I went to take various akward photos of myself and build little ball maces out of sculpey to help with lighting on them. Also, as a last minute addition, the publisher decided that this character is controlled by a summoner. Luckily there was a good empty space on the left where I could sneak him in:

©Wizards of the Coast

I've been doing most of my final drawings in charcoal for a while now, but lately I'm also doing quite a bit in photoshop to help set up the lighting and add some extra details. It saves me time in the long run.

Gladly, the sketch only required a couple tiny changes and It was off to the finish. Being designated as a "fire" card type helped me to determine the red colors for his skin in this one, but a bit of tweaking in my photoshop color study helped me to settle on the blues for the secondary color.

©Wizards of the Coast
13"x15.25" Oil on board

And here's how the final card turned out:

A big thanks to Dawn for this one because I had a lot of fun pushing my own boundaries with this guy.

New Image for Dragon 411

Here's another new one I did for Dragon magazine not too long ago. The gnoll guy was pretty fun to paint. These tall narrow layouts can be a bit tricky, but I also find them a fun challenge to play with composition and cropping.

10"x22" Oil on illustration board