Pete Venters

The auction can be found here:
www.facebook.com/groups/mtgar...

The magical staff he wields is a part of him, not only fully melded into one of his hands, but if you look in the lower left you'll see that the base of the staff forms from his roots. The orange flowers echo the warmer tones hidden in the trees, rocks, and grass.

With the especially dour expression, I had to give him a side-swept 'hairstyle' of roots reminiscent of some of the original emo-rockers! Having his eyes glow a brilliant green was both a necessity to provide dramatic lighting around the face and to really amp up the intensity of his stare.

It's time for my next auction on the MTG Art Market: Great Forest Druid.

The art description called for a grumpy rowan treefolk standing guard at the outskirts of a forest. The treefolk has the form of a stump and his face sits in the base of the stump.

Of course, if I'd known the card was going to be called Flamebraider I would have rendered the flames in a much more coiling fashion.

The second reason was that I felt introducing all those other strong colors would actually diminish the final piece. What works on a card doesn't always work on a full sized piece, and now, almost a year and a half later, I still believe the narrower palette benefits and unifies the final piece.

The big change between the original and the card image is the lack of the multi-colored flames. I did this for two reasons; one, the practical, in that moving the color shifts to a digital layer allowed me to experiment.

My opportunity to paint a Flamekin in Lorwyn Eclipsed came with bonus deity-action courtesy of Eirdu. The Flamekin is a worshipper of Eirdu, showcasing her joyous reverential dance on a gentle peak, giving her an uninterrupted view of her god. Her outfit includes a number of stylized sun symbols.

The auction's link:
www.facebook.com/groups/mtgar...

And a little background on the painting follows...

I have been remiss and failed to mention that my original art for Flamebraider is being auctioned in the MtG Art Market on Facebook. The auction ends tonight at 11pm Eastern/ 8pm Pacific.

Meanwhile...

Ah, my final Lorwyn card - and my second favorite piece I did for the set - has just been officially revealed.
And yes, I wish this was a physical card too.

If you check out the details of the bassinet you'll see it's actually a repurposed kithkin boat with extra masts tied to the sides to give additional height. With this concept in place, it seemed logical to make the teething ring be the boat's old wheel.

The art description called for a changeling to have replaced a giant's child, but at only a quarter of the size of the original, making it seem tiny in its bassinet. The inclusion of an oversized teething ring was suggested. Well, Lorwyn's giants tend to repurpose items taken from other races...

The auction for Crib Swap has begun on the MTG Art Market. It'll be concluding at 11pm Eastern / 8pm Pacific on Thursday January 22nd.
www.facebook.com/groups/mtgar...

This was an unusual and deceptively tricky composition.

SCG CON Portland 2026 - SCG CON

scgcon.starcitygames.com/event/scg-co...

And by some crazy trick of chronological time, SCG CON Portland is only a week away! There's going to be over 30 Magic artists in attendance which may be a record for a Portland show.

BTW, my other confirmed 2026 events so far are:
SCG CON Cincinnati (May 15-17)
SCG CON Las Vegas (June 26-28)

Thanks! I'm happiest with the elf token and Spry and Mighty.

Here's the other 2.

Four of these pieces will be auctioned in the next few weeks in the Mtg Art Market on Facebook. I'm holding on to the Elf Token art for the foreseeable future.

Here's 3 of my cards that have been released in Lorwyn Eclipsed. It's good to finally see these in print as they were painted in the latter half of 2024. They're all acrylic paintings on gessobord.

I told Wizards a couple of years ago that Muppets was one of only two Universe Beyond products I’d be interested in. The second was Aliens.

There was kind of a third option… it was the first two options combined!

Very good. Take a hint, ghost, stay dead. Jeez.

How'd it go? Or is it happening right now?

If only I’d had as much success breaching containment in the game.

“Hooligan manners befitting an orc player” thank you very much.

I really need to find my Orc team to show you. OMG, I think they were painted 35 years ago!

Do you have photos of the alt art boosters you're missing?

You had the color one. So fancy.

Hah! If only I could solely take the blame for that wee nightmare realm. Quite a bit of the codification was being set by John Tynes before I arrived, but I did help it to flourish. 😁

It often eludes me that because you've worked on Magic's story, it means we've worked on the same project, albeit 25+ years apart.