Transcript
Speaker: Do you have a print site? Do you sell play mats? I mean, is there someone that we can get stuff from you? We throw cash at you is what I want to know. I think the people that want that stuff, they're going to figure out how to get it. What I really appreciate is people following along with my Adam Puck at Instagram or on Facebook or whatever and just keeping an eye out for that stuff.
Speaker: Nothing particular to plug. Go do a hike, that sort of thing. Yeah, I would like to plug nature on behalf of nature. I miss you guys. Come hang out. Hello and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. This episode is the first of our two mailbag episodes with magic artist Adam Paquette.
Speaker: We took your questions and asked Adam what he thought on a range of topics, ranging from his influences in the art world, what he would do if given infinite resources in a magic painting, and, you know, a couple of sillier things like whether or not he's on Team Beard. So, without any further ado, let's get to the show.
Speaker: Hello Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of The Goblin Lord.
Speaker: Good to be back. Thanks for taking even more time out of your day, Adam. This is the second time we've been up at 6 AM to meet with you. But in the last episode, we kind of discussed Adam's work. There were some questions that were asked that we were interested in. And now it's our guest turns to ask Adam. So we solicited mailbag questions over the last week, and we're going to kind of get to those in a second. But first, we got to do introductions again.
Speaker: Yeah, we got a new burning inquiry kind of dovetailing off of our last episode we had talked a lot about kind of the connection with nature and So we're gonna ask I'm gonna ask my guest and the co -host to answer this introductory question Can you describe your favorite natural world experience that you've ever had that too? Yeah, okay
Speaker: First one would be before, I think it was the first Legendeer event, which I mentioned to you guys last time a little bit about Legendeer. I was in Bali, I was living in Bali, and the moment was standing in the middle of the rice fields, 360 degree
Speaker: view around me. Listening to the song Grand Canyon by Pussifar. I don't know if any of you know Maynard Keenan from Tool's side project, Pussifar. And they have this song that's just this kind of like epic, thundering kind of ode to nature. And like as I was standing out there listening to this song, I think I must have just bought the album. And like
Speaker: as I put that song on the clouds just transformed in front of me into a thunderstorm because Bali is a volcanic island and so those those clouds just like push up really quickly and within a minute you've got a thunderstorm in front of you and it was just like rocking around me in 360 degrees and I felt super like in the middle of that energy that was that was the first moment
Speaker: The other one was hiking up to the top of the Picos de Europa National Park, which is in the kind of middle north of Spain. And I took my painting gear up and I did a plein air painting from this ridge line that was up above the clouds.
Speaker: And it was dead silent up there and way above the vegetation. So it was just this incredibly steep, it looked like Switzerland. I was really surprised that that kind of thing existed in Spain. And I was up there painting dead silent. And I looked down to mix some paint and do a bit of work on the painting. And I looked back up and there was this eagle that had floated up on a thermal. And it was just hovering at my eye height.
Speaker: Maybe like 30 feet away, just like staring at me while I painted the dead silent. I just like didn't move the paintbrush and just like watched it for a minute and then it went off. Wow. Yeah. That is wild. Witnessed. Witnessed.
Speaker: Well, the rest of us better just not working. Let's move it on. Yeah. I'm Alex Newman found on Twitter at Alexander new M and I figure I can help reset for my co -host because I got to admit here, I don't really have a lot of good, you know, transcended experiences with the natural because I haven't really spent a lot of time in the natural world.
Speaker: That's just kind of been a factor of my life. And to be perfectly honest, it's a thing that I, it's a thing I'm not recognizing that I'm lacking. It's a thing that I'm, I want to go start to try to go out into the natural world.
Speaker: thanks in part to, well, playing magic and some of the great art and some of the great things I've starting to experience through this. But so kind of my answer for this is my family had a cabin in Wisconsin when I was growing up. And we spent almost every weekend there through
Speaker: Oh, until from when I was about eight till about 16 or so. And then when I was in the teens, I started being old enough to stay home and I decided that I wanted to stay home because home is where the video games are. Home is where the internet is. And so then I started to do that and then I just stopped going and now my parents have got a place elsewhere in Minnesota and they've sold that cabin.
Speaker: But what I remember of growing up is not the video games I was playing or whatever the hell I was doing those weekends. It's the quiet times sitting at the lake, the times of my family sitting at, not really in the woods, but the little thicket of woods through trees that were around there. And that's kind of been a lesson for my life that sometimes the things that are the visceral thing that I want to do in the moment is not really what sticks with you. And it's not really the good and important thing
Speaker: So I've been trying to find those moments and spend more time on those things as opposed to the, I want to play this game or do this activity in the moment.
Speaker: It's an aspirational experience, I like that. And I'm Joe Redemann, you can find me on Twitter at Fyndhorn. And I think the most transcendental experience that I've had in nature, I've gone to a lot of national parks. I actually have, US national parks. I haven't, I've barely been out of the country. I actually have,
Speaker: one of these little passport to your US national parks stamp books where every time you go to one you can get like a little cancellation stamp to say like yep been there you know I've got receipts son
Speaker: I'm very cool. Can you claim those as a business expense? I've been learning about the mail carrying across the US. Yeah, there is a fun fact about that that I can tell you off air relating to national parks and mail carrying but why would that be off air? Okay. Because I don't want to take up all this time. But okay, first, first and foremost,
Speaker: My transcendental experience was this past summer when my wife and I went with my in -laws out to Glacier National Park because we hiked to the Grinnell Glacier one day and that was like
Speaker: I don't remember exactly how long but I think it was like a 20 mile hike or so you know during the middle of the hot summer you know uphill it was a long hike and it was really physically challenging but it just had the most gorgeous views you know every time you would stop to catch your breath or take a drink of water you know you just sort of casually look around and you see just these incredible vistas that you don't get to see being a city boy like I am having lived in
Speaker: a metro you know metropolitan area my whole life and the things you know on the way up to the top there are turn back points sort of like this is a little more challenging now from this point on so just be careful but like it was the middle of july and there's a large ice flow that you have to hike across to get up to the next part
Speaker: And at one point, you know, sort of in a divot where the mountain or the glacier sort of tipped back down, there was this large patch and we saw a grizzly bear, you know, a hundred yards away and two little grizzly bear cubs. And then you get to the top and it's this gorgeous, like, caldera of pure, like, glass blue water.
Speaker: because of the melt of the glacier into that thing, into the cup of the glacier. And it's just one of the most incredible views, one of the most incredible visceral feelings to do that and get down at the end and go, we just did that. That was a thing we just did.
Speaker: Yeah, I need to know the more important one, the mail carrying thing. I just need to know it's bothering me. So in the Grand Canyon, there is a Native American reservation down towards the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And so the only way to get mail
Speaker: anywhere else to the postal office that serves that Native American community is by borough. So they have to take it on donkeyback on the switchbacks down the Grand Canyon to the post office. And that is also the post office that has the largest
Speaker: freezer in the US because they have to be able to store food that they import for the Native Americans to come in and pick it up and to serve their community. I was really, really worried that you were going to say, once the burrows make it down, the freezer is very necessary. I thought this was going to a much darker place, so I'm very glad to hear that.
Speaker: I'm HobSkew. I can be found on Twitter at HobSkew. I'm gonna make this completely irreverent and just take us way off the left field. It was a very meaningful personal experience, but it is a little irreverent in that there's this... We've all peed behind a tree.
Speaker: So I mentioned on the last episode that family had, family friend had a cabin up in the Sierras. And that's where, you know, my dad worked in the oil fields, never took vacation, this family friend kind of offered, Hey, you can stay at this cabin, because it's a cheap vacation, we basically had to pay for gas.
Speaker: We cooked our meals, we caught fish, and we did all of the camping and hiking stuff and got to stay in this cabin. So we went there, kind of like Alex was saying, not every weekend, but that was our family trip every summer. And as we got older, my dad and I would do a lot more of the longer hikes.
Speaker: I was in the Boy Scouts. He was one of the leaders and that was one of our home bases because we could do these long hikes. I mentioned earlier it was on the backside of Yosemite. We could actually hike over to Yosemite. So set up a base camp about 10 miles back and then just do day hikes around there. One of the lakes that is back there is a lake called Gem Lake.
Speaker: is technically man -made because they used it for hydroelectric power down to this small village or this area, June Lake Loop. It's in communities that are down there and they set up power. So there's really interesting as you're hiking up to it on the switchbacks, there's actually many train tracks that they would use to bring materials up and they created a whole dam. So it's this man -made lake five to 10 miles back
Speaker: that almost nobody is on. We actually, one time when we were up there, we were doing some hikes to the backside of it and found some really odd government set up. There was computers that we came across on tables with nobody there. It really was. We were like, we shouldn't be here. But this lake, it just has this beauty because it is manmade and
Speaker: You would never know that being up on it. It's an area that thunderstorms roll in. It's volcanic in the area, but thunderstorms really truly roll in almost like clockwork. One of the years that we hiked up there, you would have clear skies.
Speaker: three o 'clock in the afternoon, thunderstorms for an hour gone. And we were there at a time when we were actually close enough to see lightning strike the lake. So I mean, this is a beautiful, amazing area. Unfortunately, one of my close friends that we used to hike with died at a young age. And so I believe the statute of limitations are over so we can say this now. We spread his ashes up there, which is not really allowed on federal land.
Speaker: But while spreading his ashes, this very solemn moment, we're up there with his brother, one of his best friends, me, my dad, just the four of us, spreading his ashes. The solemn kind of discussion of his life as we're overlooking this lake. My dad goes to throw the bag of ashes and a wind kicks up.
Speaker: And if you've ever seen The Big Lebowski, it is straight up like that. I'm standing there with a mouthful of my friend's ashes that got blown straight back into my face. He'll always be a part of us. Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it was the most fitting and, you know, the joke was this is a friend who liked to use the phrase, bite me a lot. But it was this kind of solemn experience that also was very real because that that was us. I mean, it was very apropos that that happened in the setting. I think humor is always a really important part of grieving and celebrating someone's life too. So yeah, cool that that.
Speaker: Yeah. How very unbrand for you two. Oh, yes. And I was the person who got hit with the most of it and I am trying not to laugh. But you're laughing. It's coughing out a cloud. It really was like if you haven't seen Big Lebowski, it's worth it for just the scene that I'm kind of referencing. Oh, man. So we want to get to our mailbag. We did put out those questions.
Speaker: Very nicely, we apparently used to call this section Story Circle, or when we've done it before, it was just our mailbag. But now we have Mail Carrier Joe. So it is now Mailbag section with Mail Carrier Joe. Oh, man. Maybe we can call it Post Office at the Grand Canyon. Oh, there you go. With Mailbag Joe. With Mailbag Joe. On a donkey. He's on a donkey. As long as you don't start calling me old mailbags, because that also sounds dirty, like Donkey Express.
Speaker: Well, I just need to make a quick note on Twitter real quick. Hey Alex, would you like to start us off with a mailbag so that I can make sure to embarrass you while we're talking? Sure. So we'll start off with this first question from at vorthosmike on Twitter. What is the German art scene like and how does it compare to Australia's? What compelled you about it to move to Europe?
Speaker: So, well, let me start with Australia's art scene, because I guess part of the reason I came here was because I wanted to get away from there. I think Australia, generally speaking, is on the one hand young and really free to kind of do whatever it wants. It's not burdened by its own art history.
Speaker: But that's obviously a double -edged sword because it doesn't have its own art history. So what I felt in Australia was a lot of enthusiasm in the art scene and a lot of freedom.
Speaker: But I was always hungry for deeper discussion and a more serious approach to work. And I felt like I always ended up sharing studios with street artists and illustrators and people that were really hardworking and very talented, but didn't have that love of old painting and the complexity that I was after. And that was obviously just my, happened to be my experience. Those people are obviously there as well.
Speaker: I can't speak to the art scene in Germany so much as in Berlin but Berlin as a city is very very focused on music and things related to music so dance and club culture and all of that kind of stuff so that wasn't definitely wasn't the reason that I moved here but it was something that I fell in love with really quickly and
Speaker: Has been the central focus of my work my personal work for the last three years here. So I'm interested in In the club culture here in the sense that it's doesn't allow photography and it's it's a very intense very with a very strong identity and Fascinating in many many ways
Speaker: So I'm exploring what does it mean to document those spaces where photography is not allowed through drawing and so opening up the permission to be in those spaces that wouldn't normally be given to recording those experiences.
Speaker: The art scene here in terms of what is displayed and exhibited is ultra -contemporary and kind of minimal. A lot of it is based around and it's good work. I mean it's stuff that maybe 10 years ago I would have smirked at but now I love it and it's
Speaker: It's conceptual, but it's also experiential. A lot of it is installation work in a room with a single piece and it really forces you into an atmosphere and it forces you to feel that. It's not conceptual in the sense that it floats off and it's ungrounded and it's kind of purely intellectual.
Speaker: It's, there's a beautiful, the artist was Julian Chárier, I think is his name. And he did this investigation of the cenotes in Mexico, I believe, which are these kind of like circular caves where you can dive down into the water and at a certain level of depth that changes from freshwater to saltwater or the reverse, I'm not sure.
Speaker: And so he had these photos that he'd taken of people floating at that point where the water changed. So you can see these kind of two different materials and they're kind of floating in between them. And then in the middle of the room, he had this pool of water that was just on the ground and somehow a smoke machine that the smoke was just laying right on the water. And somehow there was like a dappled light
Speaker: coming into the wall there was projector or light door so didn't really know where it was coming from how that was happening and the feeling in the room was that you were between these two worlds. So stuff like that is really impressive and is leading my work in a different direction and I've always questioned
Speaker: is painting the only outcome that I can come up with for this stuff. My ideas extend so far beyond just picture making and Berlin is a really fertile place to experiment with that. So stuff that I'm doing at the moment is moving into transferring my pen drawings onto stone and playing with
Speaker: with arranging those stones in a space sculpturally. So it's always going to connect back to my work as a realist painter and my drawing ability. I'm not going to go off and start hanging neon lights and stuff like that. But the Berlin scene is dynamic. It's not very wealthy, so people that are working hard here are doing it for the love of it, not because there's a financial scene here to be a part of.
Speaker: Um, so in answer to Mike's question, you know, it wasn't the reason that I chose to move here, but it was definitely the reason that I chose to stay. And, um, yeah, I'm fascinated by the photography piece. Cause I mean, that that's the one medium that I do engage with. And so trying to come into that and be like, I'm not allowed to, or basically that that is, it's just very interesting to see how you would approach that world where it's not being represented in that, that medium. Yeah. I mean, the, the,
Speaker: I never was into partying or clubbing or even electronic music in all my life. When I moved to Berlin, it is a
Speaker: absolutely central part of the city for everyone even the people that hate it or don't participate in it at all like it's shaped the the tourism economy it's shaped the the geography of the city like the landmarks by which people orient are often these these clubs and they their institutions in the city um and the the scene the the people involved in that it's it's not uh it's just radically different to anything i'd seen before
Speaker: And, you know, the no photography thing is about protecting, like on one hand, protecting people's privacy, but also protecting we are all here to really be in this moment and to dance and to hear this music. And the last thing we're interested in is taking selfies or taking photos of the DJ or this kind of thing. And, you know, so I was drawn into that world
Speaker: not because of the music and not because of the partying, but because of I'd never seen a scene that had protected itself and created such a strong identity before. And so kind of immersive experience, the idea that you do want to be mindful of it. I mean, I'm thinking of photography, I guess that didn't even occur to me. I'm thinking you're the selfie culture photos of the DJ recordings. I and I'm thinking of kind of more of photography from coming in and capturing the scene frozen.
Speaker: And part of that protection is to be immersive. It's to be mindful. It's to actually be engaged and not take yourself away from that scene. It was amazing. It was funny. A week ago, I saw a tool. They played live here at the Mercedes -Benz Arena. And if you know, they have a really strict policy on people taking photos at their performances. And they usually have one song where they say, OK, you can take your cameras out now and take a photo.
Speaker: And so they played the whole concert. No one got their phone out and then they got to the last song and they're like, all right, you know, pull your phones out, do what you guys do. And like five people pulled their phones out. That is so Berlin. Like everyone's like, no, I'm good. Play the song, you know, just here for the music. And, and it's really deep in the culture here. And, and, you know, if you do get your phone out, it's not like, oh, look at that guy. Like you can do whatever you want to do, but, but after a while you're like,
Speaker: I'm never going to look at this. I'm never going to just be here, just be a part of it. What I'm doing with that work is going in and
Speaker: Sketching, drawing, interviewing people, talking about the reasons that they're there, about their experience, and that stuff can get super personal and super intense. And it's fascinating to play with being given permission to do that because I'm an artist, because I'm drawing, because they trust... I think there's a trust in drawing that isn't there with a camera, that it's filtering through you as an individual. It's not this kind of cold, objective camera that's capturing every little...
Speaker: piece of you indiscriminately and then I'm taking those drawings and working them up as big paintings in the studio and exploring like
Speaker: How do I create a six foot oil painting when my only reference is a 15 second ballpoint pen scribble that I did in a dark room with strobe lights and loud music? What can I remember? What can I recall from that experience to reimagine this painting and bring it back to life as something that can be related to by people outside of that environment?
Speaker: So in some respects, that's it's kind of a an experimentation with both the external space of the club, but also your own internal space of the of your perception. And that's that's really cool. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think in the first episode I touched briefly on.
Speaker: the fact that it all kind of revolves around light and you know so I've put myself in a space that is intentionally like very intentionally designed around how light operates and you know when is it dark when do the lights come on because you know electronic music in in Berlin is is
Speaker: You know i mean this is this is like landmine territory but what you would call proper techno and so you're talking about i mean you're talking about a party that goes for seventy two hours and you know djs that are playing like six -hour sets so it's like very long progressively building music it's not like you know dropping the beat every every minute and
Speaker: So you've got like, you know, light that will go away for like half an hour and then slowly come back in with like a single spotlight on and off and then like slowly build up to like full bright strobe light. So there's this environment that is designed around the balance between
Speaker: you know, coming out of daylight, going into this dark space and then coming out 24 hours later and it's daylight again. What's that journey all about? You know, it's incredible. Well, I hope that answered your question, Vortos, Mike. Yeah. Yeah. Next question, please.
Speaker: So this question comes from at Wobbles, which is also a great handle. But what are your favorite pieces of art in alpha and why? And so you in the previous episode, you talked a little bit about you don't have as much of that foundation in magic originally, but I'm sure you've done, you know, your your background work on stuff. And what's caught your eye from those old sets?
Speaker: Yeah, as a non -player, usually, first of all, I don't know what set the art comes from. So I was like, well, I know some old pieces, but I'm going to have to do my homework and make sure they're actually from Alpha. I think the ones that I picked were Timewalk, Webber's Timewalk.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. It's an amazing piece. So yeah. Like, like the other one that stands out to me, not from, from Alpha obviously is Adam Rex's Terra. And this somehow like it has that same feeling of like, well, how did this one sneak into magic? Like this is such a trippy, like kind of symbolic spiritual, like, what is that Stonehenge? What's going on? Like,
Speaker: I love it. Like stuff like that, that gives me hope for, you know, being able to plug a painting like that of my own into magic someday. So that one, um, Latoir Elves by, uh, who was that? Maddox, Anson Maddox. Um,
Speaker: like I don't know it's just weird like what's going on like is that an eye patch is that a tattoo is like what's the hairstyle like I like all of it and I think that's the one that that's probably the one card that I remember seeing
Speaker: In fact, you know, like I'm talking about like back in primary school when I was, when I was like on my way to the library and people were playing magic, I guess it would have been high school. Like I think maybe someone gave me that card. Like I was like, Oh, what's this magic thing? And I think someone like gave me that and was like, check out magic. And I probably never did, but I remember holding that card in my hand and looking at it and not really knowing what it was yet, but it's stuck in my brain.
Speaker: Um, and the third one was Mark Poole's Island. Cause I just look at that thing and I'm like, those were the days, like the days when they asked you to paint an island and you just painted an island.
Speaker: Like, that looks great. I'd love to do that. I mean, it's one of the things I love about the original set of dual lands. Like, Volcanic Island is a volcanic island. There's no doubt about it. And I really think that magic's at the point now where you get a brief and they paint an island and you're like,
Speaker: All right, how do I make the most interesting, unique island that's ever been done in this 20 years of magic? You can't not do that because everyone's done the simple stuff. But they're so beautiful and so iconic and simple and honest to what it is.
Speaker: It would be really cool to one day just be asked to paint an island and they're like, don't worry, you can just paint an island. Give us the most boring island you've ever seen. Clump of green in the water. I'll just paint like a satellite photo of Australia. There I did it.
Speaker: I really like the discussion of Timewalk and Land War Elves because it was different at that point where they were commissioning artists to not necessarily have the same cohesive style. I think we've seen a little bit more flexibility with some of the supplemental sets to allow some of the more
Speaker: surreal or kind of odd art creep in. And I'm actually very thankful for that. I see the benefit of having that cohesive style. And I know Mike talks about this. There still is a lot of variation. It's not that there isn't. It's just not the variation that people think of when they think of old magic sets where we had completely wildly different styles stuck together into a set. I mean, it was just art for art in the set. It wasn't a story necessarily at that point. Yeah.
Speaker: And it also came from the variety of mediums and the methods in which people worked as well. So you had, you know, even Java's doing watercolour stuff and then you had oil painters and you had acrylic painters and then digital came in and that was more variety and then it became overwhelmingly digital because of the nature of the industry kind of moving into that.
Speaker: But I understand, I think there's a really nice balance between, you know, does this art look like magic or does this art look like this artist? And it's like, let's keep it like 51 % magic, 49 % this artist. You know, like when someone looks at this, they should see it and identify it as part of that broader world of magic.
Speaker: and then get that kick on effect of like, you know, that their favorite artist or how does this differ from someone else's work? So I think from a from a business and brand perspective, I think it's handled super, super well. I think that was sort of the interesting thing about the community's response to Seb McKinnon's latest, one of his latest pieces in Modern Horizon. The Angel's Blessing. Yeah, the very photorealistic thing. But but it it.
Speaker: a part of it doesn't look exactly like what we know as magic and so it does push it away you know it pushes the edges of of what we know as magic and that is nice to see those expanding but yeah you're right that it has that's been it's been more the 49 % in the past
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. You mentioned on the last episode the sagas and that was a space where I saw that we got to see art in magic more horizontal. No, vertical. And it looked like scrolls and it allowed for different art styles because it was supposed to be how a culture would represent their history. Yeah. I actually like when I got the brief to do because I did the amending of Dominaria one and
Speaker: I regret looking back on it now because what they asked for was a wooden carving of this tree that represented the history and had the characters on there.
Speaker: but essentially I painted it realistically as if I was a camera looking at this sculpture sitting in a field of grass. I forget what they asked for in a field or something like that. It wasn't until all the other ones came out that I saw how different those could be. And you know, one of them was like a texture weaving style thing. And there was one that was like a Sumi ink Japanese ink drawing. And like had I known, I would have,
Speaker: pushed it much further and really kind of made it look like an actual wooden kind of relief sculpture rather than a painting of a wooden relief sculpture sitting in an environment. So I feel like I'm happy with the piece of art but I think it looks kind of like my other magic cards and I missed an opportunity to try something left field so I'm gonna keep an eye out for that next time. You're not gonna trick me again, Wizards.
Speaker: So that kind of brings us to the next question we have from at Morgan Rightworth. And she asks, well, what is an art style that is outside of magic's current look, but would be neat to add, whether by you or an artist who specializes in it?
Speaker: a couple of things come to mind. I think, I think if I was to think about other artists, like it would be really cool to see the artists that I'm most influenced by do a magic card, like someone like Odnerdrum, for example, just to see how someone with that depth of experience as a painter and as an artist in the
Speaker: completely unrelated to this field, how they would perceive magic and what it represents and what they would draw out of that symbolism and put in a painting. Or like someone else would be Alex Gray, the guy that does all the artwork for Tool and whatnot. You know, this kind of like...
Speaker: he kind of draws like the inside of the body with all of the chakras and the energy moving around and this kind of stuff, kind of like diagrammatic. So it'd be really cool to see him do like a plane's walk up but showing like the inside of their body and their anatomy and chakras and like how the power. Sorry, can you imagine that for like Tezzeret? Because we do see his internal bits and the ethereum and stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Like, or even like, I don't know, a villain like Bolas or something like that, like seeing like what makes him tick inside. Like, what does his soul look like? What does that, you know, what's, what's running through his body? Something like that would be super cool. Well, I mean, I don't know if you know this, but we actually know that it's a library. I thought it was going to be a longer diatribe than you, you know, it usually is. I got to do that recent whole basically Bolas episode, so I'm good for a while. Great. Yeah. And, and, and other than that, um,
Speaker: I would love to see the boundaries pushed of what is considered accepted as an art style, kicking on from the last question.
Speaker: But I don't know how far you could take that. Could you somehow use pure photography as an illustration for a Magikarp? Would that break the immersion of a fantasy world if you had an illustrator who actually did the costumes, set everything up, took it out into nature, and did a photograph and was like, bam, there it is. That's my illustration. Or someone that
Speaker: I don't know left like if there was a card that thematically worked for you to leave the process showing so it was a painting that like had hot was like half pencil sketch and turned into an oil painting or showed like a raw wireframe 3d in the background like obviously those things begin to push into like to sci -fi to read in a fantasy world but
Speaker: something like that, something really like on the edge of the aesthetic. And I'm wondering if there's space for that. And if we open that a little bit with this, the Japanese alt art planes walkers. Right, definitely. That kind of broke the fourth wall of the universe a little bit there. So it'd be more kind of do we do this as special or supplemental pro or supplemental things. I was thinking of our cosplayers and we've seen some of them go out into nature and take the exact photos that you're talking about.
Speaker: Could we see that on cards? Yeah, the Japanese set was impressive to me. We got an artist like the artist who did the Liliana, and I am not even going to attempt to say the name because I will butcher it. It's something you can't say.
Speaker: uh sure but i mean but somebody that is so famous for their art in a very different medium being allowed to take one of our iconic magics iconic planeswalkers yeah was just beautiful to me that whole series was just to have an artist of that caliber do magic was great
Speaker: Yeah, so from at J Gray 248 says talk a bit about your landscape, specifically the island from cons of Tarkir and the MTGO command tower. Those two are some of my personal favorites and feel so adventurous to me. Cool, and that command tower also was used believe as the judge promo at first. I think it was. Yeah, I believe that one is actually in print, correct?
Speaker: Not sure. Okay. I'm just trying. I'm going to look real quick. Let me see that because I did a couple of islands for the Khan's block. Joe linked the one I think in the show notes. If you want to pull up, it looks like it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool.
Speaker: Yeah, this, I mean, that one was similar to the, in the last episode, I talked a bit about the, um, um, swamp from Kaladesh that had those rice fields. Uh, and that came, that actually came out of, I lived in Bali for a while. And so I don't know if I was in Bali when I was doing cons. I don't think I was. Um, but I was definitely super influenced by the rice field thing. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of,
Speaker: nature around the world when you travel you see different stuff but I love like it was just such a natural looking man -made thing these rice terraces you know like they were they were obviously geometrically human looking but completely green and covered in vegetation so
Speaker: I mean, we're standing right in the middle of one, in the foreground, and then, you know, just stacking back with scale and then establishing that temple in the background. I believe for dragons of Tarkir, I did a re -shot of this.
Speaker: and it's from a really close -up angle on that temple. On that little leftmost outcropping of the temple in the background, I think I was positioning myself there looking back the other way, because from memory, there's that little arch in the middle. You can see a dragon sitting on it in the DTK version. The other one? Just real quick, I'm curious, with revisiting that island from a different point in our story, we have this
Speaker: basically time travel storyline How I mean, were you given any guidance that yeah, we want this to be basically did they say like take your old art give it a different perspective or That's kind of what they were asking for. Yeah. Yeah, definitely like and and at the time I remember being like, oh I wish they'd told us this when they commissioned the first block so I could have not like could have like set that up but actually like I think it was more fun to not know because then it was like
Speaker: Oh right, I have to go back and look at this old thing I did and actually ask what's the most interesting place that I would want to
Speaker: move around, or what do I want to change? So in some of the other ones I did, like the forest cards, I kept the angle the same. And it was more about what has happened in this timeline and how can I represent those changes in an interesting way. For this one, I really remember looking at that original island card and being like, if I was in a video game, where would I walk to in this scene to get a look from somewhere else? And I thought it would be really nice to be up close on that temple and look back the other way.
Speaker: Also from the sense of like, okay, there's dragons here now, like what's the angle that's going to give the best sense of like, I'm a dragon, I'm a launch off from here, like that sense of movement and dynamic that comes with having those creatures in there. And that was obviously, I want to be up on that temple looking down over the valley.
Speaker: Just so, as we move on to the Command Tower, it actually is in print. It is the Command Arsenal set is where it is from. The Judge Promo, it is interesting, and I guess I want to ask, I don't know if you've seen, so I think that is the, that art, your art reminded me of it, and I'm curious if you had kind of seen the other art beforehand, before doing yours,
Speaker: Or the other command tower art? The Ryan Yi one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. There was something, what did they ask for? They asked for something in relation to that one. I think it was probably just like, we need it, we need the lower angle to show it more clearly, as is like silhouetted tower or something like that. But I do remember that they referenced that and were like, we need something different in some way.
Speaker: So the command tower one, there's not really a lot of personal background. I think maybe I'd hiked around Switzerland a bit before I did that one. So that was kind of in the back of my mind. But to me, it was just like a really pure, it's kind of actually the one that I joke about when I tell people who don't play magic what I do. And I'm sort of like, yeah, I do castles on the hill.
Speaker: They're like, oh, is that just like a way you describe it? I'm like, nope, check it out. I painted a castle on a hill. Here it is. With an aurora borealis looking flow into it. Yeah, so that's actually a painting that, because as a digital painter with this surge in interest in the oil paintings,
Speaker: I've done a couple of back paintings. I guess you could call them for collectors who really wanted work that was digital. I do one -off recreations of those pieces.
Speaker: But now that I'm doing them from scratch in oils, it feels a bit odd to go back and keep repainting old work when there's so much new stuff in front of me. So I've narrowed down just a couple that I've always really wanted to repaint the originals of. And then I'm going to do those over the summer and then I shall do no more.
Speaker: And the Command Tower is one of them. I think it's just a really fun piece to think about painting. It's simple in a way and really complex in a way with that colorful light. Getting that to work in oils is going to be tricky. Yeah, yeah. So that's ahead of me over the next couple months.
Speaker: So you guys should be keeping the eye out looking for that because that, that piece I can just, there's going to be interest. I will guarantee you. Yeah. That one's that one is about, I've got it set up already at about, it's like about 30 inches, something like that. I'm going to do it. So it'll be another relatively big one. Yeah. Let's get a little bit lighter at Kyle C. Carson wants to know, how do you take your caffeinated beverage of choice in my mouth?
Speaker: straight into the veins. How do I take it? How does how do you guys take it? So I think so, you know, like, I can give you an example. I can call. Yeah, I go. I tend to bring when I go to events, I know that I know that a lot of artists function off of caffeine. And somebody that I kind of have a little bit of a relationship with is RK post who seems to be at every event ever, but has an incredible memory also for like everything that's ever happened. Like, how's your daughter doing? Like,
Speaker: How do you know that? He takes the most sickly sweet drinks I have ever seen in my life. I mean, it's like he wants a chocolate drink with some caffeine in it and like six extra pumps of the chocolate. I think that's more what we're asking is do you just have like a nice cup of tea? Do you have coffee? No, I like I had a there was a when I was starting out in this in this business. There was years ago.
Speaker: There was a cafe that I used to go to like every morning to sketch and it was like my thumbnailing cafe. And there was this guy, what was his name? Gavin.
Speaker: who ran the cafe and he would terrorize the customers. He would ask them provocative questions and be a smart ass. There's a bit of an Australian cultural thing in there because we don't have that service culture where everyone's working for tips and being polite is super important. When you run a cafe, you can be a bit of a dick. He was. I would come in every day and do my drawings and have a cappuccino.
Speaker: One day he was like, do you actually like the taste of coffee? And I was like, yeah, I do. And he's like, then you can't drink cappuccinos. Good one, Gavin, get my cappuccino. And he's like, nope, you're not having cappuccinos anymore. You're going to drink black coffee.
Speaker: And so he just refused to serve me anything other than black coffee. And so I became a black coffee drinker and I'm still scared to step out of my comfort zone. So I just stick to varieties of black coffee. Like I'll do an iced coffee or a cold brew or an espresso, but no sugar, no milk, nothing like that. Just like a long black, like a double shot long black in winter and a cold brew in summer. That's it. Nice.
Speaker: Now do you make your own at all then? Or do you always get it out? No, I'm a lazy. I'm lazy. I don't even cook at home. I'm too busy painting. Deliveroo me up. I don't know what you guys have there, that delivery app stuff. We have Deliveroo and I'm super lazy with that kind of thing. Nice. So is there a cafe close then?
Speaker: Actually, the front of our studio is a cafe. So I have a door next to my painting area behind me that connects through to the cafe. Cafe and at night it's a cocktail bar, so good for schmoozing the clients. I really wish you could have arranged for somebody to just be bringing you a cup of coffee in, right? Gasol.
Speaker: That's our show. You can find the podcast at Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter or email any questions, comments, or concerns to goblinlorepodcastatgmail .com.
Speaker: If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobslugs, you can do so at patreon .com slash GobletMorePod. This episode of Goblet More was hosted by Hobbs Q, where you can find on Twitter at Hobbs Q. This episode was written and co -hosted by Alex Newman, where you can find on Twitter at Alexander New M. Engineering, editing, and production for this episode by Joe Redemann, where you can find on Twitter at Findhorn, that's F -Y -N -D, Ornn.
Speaker: Our music is by Wintergatan, where you can find at vintergatan .com. That's wintergatan .com. Logo by Steven Raphael on Twitter at stevenraffle. Goblin lore is a presentation of Hipsters of the Coast, which you can find at hipstersofthecoast .com or at hipsters MTG on Twitter. Thank you all for listening. And remember, goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.
