This week's "Sketches" looks at Windswept Heath from Onslaught, a land that went through many changes.
1. Art Description
These are the instructions given to the artist:
"Color: Land
Location: Between Wirewood Forest and Daru Plains
Action: where the plains of grass and dunes turn into the birch forest
Focus: elements of plains and elements of birch forest
Mood: life
Notes: Fetch Land Cycle. Reprint."
This description was written back when the fetchland cycle was just going to be a set of reprints of the Mirage fetchlands. This one was slated to be Grasslands.
But after a bunch of swapping, the art commissioned for this piece ended up somewhere else, and the art that wound up on Windswept Heath was originally commissioned for what became Daru Encampment. Back then, the land was part of a cycle of lands that tapped for either of two colors of mana if you controlled a creature. This one was blue and white.
"Color: Land
Location: Daru Plains, Order encampment
Action: This is the coastal side of the Order encampment. The beach between the water and the encampment.
Focus: all
Mood:
Notes: Populated Land Cycle"
2. Sketch
This is the preliminary sketch of that blue-white dual land submitted by Anthony S. Waters.
By the time the sketch was submitted, R&D had already abandoned the dual lands for tribal lands and made Waters take the water out of the art.
3. Final Art
Here is a large version of the final piece. Note that Waters changed the palm tree in the foreground into a sort of totem. While this art could have worked for the Soldier land, it looked much better as the art of the new white-green fetchland, so it was moved from Daru Encampment to Windswept Heath.
4. Card
Finally, here is the card as you'll see it in booster packs.