Behind The Art: Minor Explosion

Mattias Frisk's "Minor Explosion" painting has elements that hearken back to Anson Maddock's (another Sorcery: contested Ream Artist and original MTG Artist) famous MTG Alpha artwork "Disintegrate".  Although unintended and coincidental, this gives Minor Explosion an iconic vibe.

Anson explained in an interview that he made Disintegrate in about 30 minutes with a sponge and paint. At the time he was under the gun to produce a large amount of card art in about a month’s time, and ended up doing 30 alpha cards; a full 10% of the 295 cards for the set.

This was typical in the early days of MTG, when a few artists had to produce artwork very quickly for the initial Alpha release. Since Wizards of the Coast wanted to pay artists with a royalties-based compensation structure, several artists withdrew from the project.  This left several original artists with both the pressure and the opportunity to produce paintings very quickly under aggressive deadlines.

Mattias' approach to "Minor Explosion" was quite different. In an interview with Mike at Collector Arthouse, Mattias described his technique for this painting:

"I did, as most often do, a grisaille (grayscale) underpainting. I started by sketching up the composition in acrylics and then I splattered paint all over it. I continued by working out details and small adjustments. Then I used oil paint in transparent glazes, coloring the underpainting and fading in some shades. On top of that I worked in opaque oil paint, making the fire and other details and added some final splatter."