About the Project

Sections

1. Preface
2. An Altered Commander Deck
3. * (Asterisk)
4. Categories
5. Digital Drawings

(Hover over for Magic: the Gathering terminology meanings.)

1. Preface

I used to sketch/doodle a lot in high school and took traditional art classes in college for my digital media degree. I eventually focused on programming, and while I still found creative outlets in my adult life, drawing wasn't a focus.

Then at the end of February 2025, I decided to spend at least 10 minutes a day sketching. When I was deciding what I was going to sketch, I had recently returned to Magic: the Gathering (MTG) after about a ~4-year hiatus.

There is a website called scryfall.com, which is a search engine for every card in the game. It has a dedicated button for pulling up a randomized card, which you can also access at scryfall.com/random.

So, I decided to hit the random button for each sketch, focusing on creature cards as I mostly sketched figures. After a month, I increased the time to 20 minutes. And as I approached the third month, I wanted to figure out what would be the next step.

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2. An Altered Commander Deck

Since I had about 60 creature cards, I decided to create a Commander deck out of them.

Commander is a 100-card variant of MTG where you cannot play duplicate cards (aside from basic lands and cards that specifically note that you can play more than one).

While I could just add 40 basic lands and be done with it, I wanted the deck to be somewhat playable. The plan is to continue pulling random cards from some of the major categories of deckbuilding. I will be pulling more than the recommended amount for each category, then trimming the entire stack down to 100.

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3. * (Asterisk)

The asterisk in title of the project refers to the deck building process in two ways:

1. First, as mentioned, I am not hitting random 100 times in total. That deck has a high probability to be wildly imbalanced and not my idea of a "good time" in Commander.
2. Second, I have chosen seven cards specifically to try to hold the deck together. Six of these cards are to match typal synergy between all the cards. The seventh is a land that allows all lands to produce any color at the later stages of the game.

Note that currently I am still in the middle of randomly generating cards, so a synergy may still arise from the chaos. So, while the current plan would have 93 random cards and 7 non-random cards, this could change.

Also, I could always expand the card pool if I am still drawing past the project's original scope.

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4. Categories

The following categories are the different filters that I will be using on scryfall:

1. creatures (60): The bulk of the sketches are creatures. The commander is currently Sliver Hivelord, which allows the use of every color.
2. ramp (15): Adds to mana production. I have done two weeks of sketches (one day I did two and felt it shouldn't count as a separate day).
3. removal (21): Disrupting your opponent's plans through cards that would remove their permanents. Ideally would have targeted and mass removal. I did this for three weeks to try and get a good mix.
4. card advantage (14): Cards that draw cards. Not necessarily replacing itself, but give a positive card exchange, i.e. casting 1 card lets you draw 2+ cards. This one took two weeks.
5. land (28 + basics): I'm hoping to get a lot of dual lands, so giving it four full weeks, but I will be randomizing art for each of the six basic land types to help fill in gaps if/when needed.

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5. Digital Drawings

While this started off with sketches, I ultimately would like to digitally paint each of these cards as well. Pictures I took of each sketch didn't scan well, so I thought about inking. However, after playing around in Clip Studio Paint, I liked how much more the art popped when applying an MTG card frame around it.

Digital painting takes a considerable amount of time, and I do not want to burn out, so I'll be limiting paints to a max of three a week. The "Current Full Card Progress" at the top of this blog is how many full-card paints I have done. This might not reflect the number of paintings I have posted.

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