The second piece I did for Bloomburrow was called Arthur, Marigold Knight.

My first instinct was to present him leading the charge as shown in the first sketch. It felt befitting the description and the character as I understood it. I've done similar compositions to this in the past however, and I wanted to explore more options. So, I looked to art history for inspiration. I found it in the form of Gericault's “The Charging Chasseur.” And so I sketched that version, as well.

Can't explain why I drew either vertically when the card compositions are horizontal, but it felt right at the time. After all, you can always add to them digitally, which I did before handing both sketches in.
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Arthur, Marigold Knight

For Magic: the Gathering
Oil on hardboard, sixteen inches wide by twelve inches tall.
AD: Zack Stella

As I pointed out in yesterday's post, I found inspiration in Gericault's "The Charging Chasseur," which was nice as it pushed me in a direction I likely would not have gone on my own—both in terms of gesture and palette. But that's also true of the set itself, which required me to paint these adorable little critters in the first place. I'm frankly relieved and a little surprised that I was trusted to be a part of this set owing to how often I'm asked to paint things that are either directly horror or horror adjacent. In all reality, I think I've painted enough horror stuff to last a lifetime at this point. Minimally, I was very ready to paint cute animals when this piece came along.

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