This week's Sketches looks at the Judgment common Arcane Teachings by Mark Brill. This card has an interesting story behind it.
1. Art Description
These are the instructions given to the artist:
"A dwarven mage, perhaps a cleric, doing his thing (not fire-related). This card should show a dwarven mage in his study intently studying some object there. The focus should be on the mage."
The nifty thing about this art was that is was not originally for Arcane Teachings, and wasn't even for Judgment. The card this description was for was a Torment common called [Dwarven Cleric], a 1/1 for
that had the text of Pitchstone Wall: "Whenever you discard a card from your hand, you may sacrifice CARDNAME. If you do, return the discarded card from your graveyard to your hand."2. Sketch
This is the preliminary sketch submitted by Mark.
The problem was that [Dwarven Cleric] was switched into Pitchstone Wall after the art was commissioned, and once it was done there was no card to use it on. So it just sat around unused.
3. Final Art
Here is a large version of his final piece.
There was a card in the Judgment file named [Big Tim]. When the creative team saw that it was a red card that could potentially use the old [Dwarf Cleric] art, they came up with a good name to tie it all together, Arcane Teachings.
4. Card
Finally, here is the card as you all know it today.