Glacial Fortress - Tempered Steel Deck Alters

Time for another card from the Tempered Steel Deck and this time its one of the two nonbasic land.

One thing you have to be very aware of when altering other people's art are the dimensions the original piece was created in, additionally there is usually some cropping when the art is added to the card frame which can throw things off slightly too. this is important because if your not careful you can lose the focus of the work. For example there are many very accomplished lightning bolt extensions of the most recent art, the problem is while they add some very nice looking mountains suddenly the image just looks like a basic land with some fancy lightening.

The same thing applies here I could have extended the rocky icy downwards but this image is all about the sheer scale of the monument, your meant to be starting up at this imposing barrier towering above you. That said looking back at it now I would probably add subtle hints of rocky structures a bit further down, dark but another to blend it in a bit more.

Ravnica Karoo Land Alters

I really enjoy altering lands, These three were no exception, while they are relatively simple you still have to try and maintain the feel of the place with whatever you plan on adding.

My favorite is probably the one in the middle, ok the  perspectives not perfect but the minimalism of the colours exudes eeriness. The Garrison was probably the most technically difficult, I like the way the arch frames the city and it took some time to get right.

MTG Alters Sorin & Sacred Foundry

The second more up to date project I will be looking at today is a pair of MTG alters.

The sacred Foundry actually went quite a bit more smoothly than I had anticipated as orange and yellow tend to be a pain to work with especially when it comes to colour matching. Sorin on the other hand was quite a different beast. Having not worked on a Planeswalker before i was a little hesitant at first this quickly faded as i worked on the card. Of more interest was the fact that i began altering without looking at a larger version of the original image.

This led to some interesting assumptions on my part the biggest of which leading to me adding a river to the bottom right of the image, theres also a second volcano in the original art that seems to have been cropped from the cards art. Finally finding a version of the original made the whole composition make more sense and i added all the trees that had been missing from the left hand side including the very large one that I had assumed was just some sort of billowy cloth. on the right i added a forest as i felt the mountain looked a bit on the bear side. Was my original version any less right than what i ended up with? probably not but i am glad I did add the trees to the left the autumn colours and the shapes add quite a bit to the image, the rivers still theres though meandering its way behind the trees.