e've done a lot of Arcanas showing the sketches that artists send to the Magic Creative Team before working on the finished card art. And it's neat to see the artistic process in action.
But the truth is that these sketches usually aren't the first thing the artist works on. They're just the thing that they've sent in for approval. To demonstrate this, artist Noah Bradley has kindly shared a few pictures of the notebook (one of which may have been previous seen on Reddit, which is where the idea for this Arcana came from) where he does a lot of preliminary sketches before getting to the stage we've been calling "sketches." Let's look!
Giant Growth and Mizzium Mortars
Giant Growth and Mizzium Mortars | Preliminary Sketches by Noah Bradley
Giant Growth | Art by Noah Bradley
Mizzium Mortars | Art by Noah Bradley
Boros Guildgate
Boros Guildgate | Preliminary Sketches by Noah Bradley
Boros Guildgate | Art by Noah Bradley
Izzet Guildgate
Izzet Guildgate | Preliminary Sketches by Noah Bradley
Izzet Guildgate | Art by Noah Bradley
Thanks, Noah!