Sacrifice!

Sacrifice! Illustration for Mana Rocks an upcoming online card game.

All I was given was the name of the card and I went first with a literal idea of a warrior sacrificing himself for something. I guess initially my idea was like to seal a demon away or something. But I didn't like it so I decided to bring more storytelling to it, which I like a lot more, so I figured something like a last stand, an old and battered warrior giving it all for the last time. Then I got the second sketch and from there the painting worked much better.

Both sketches were done digitally in Photoshop as was the final painting.