Augury Raven

I love painting birds. I started out as an artist copying the drawings in my field books, then started drawing the birds I observed in the field. Over the years I have added so many different birds into the background of my magic paintings, to show movement and scale, but also to honor my childhood passion.
Getting to do the image for this specific magic card (Kaldheim, Magic the Gathering ) was a special treat for me, since I did not have to hide the bird away in the background. I was asked to deliver a raven on top of a Viking shield with the Aurora in the background, hinting at the bird as a kind of seer, predicting the future. An omen of bad things are about to happen… I think scavenging birds have gotten a bad reputation from eating the fallen at the battleground.

I went back and forth in my head to try and come up with an interesting pose, that wasn't too straight forward. I ended up showing the bird in 3/4 angle from the back. This more untraditional angle made the image more interesting, giving it a bit of mystery. Something spicy to challenge me and keep me focused.

I scanned my pencil sketch and added the aurora background digitally to see if it would work. Painting a dark feathered main figure against a somewhat darker night sky could end up being very difficult. Also in the digital version I tried to add shields and spears and weapons as if he had just landed next to the armory of people getting ready to fight. But I abandoned the idea again, because I thought the surrounding silhouettes would distract from the Raven.
In my submitted sketch I had the idea that the raven was holding an eyeball in the beak and that it was somehow also missing an eye. As if he, like Odin, had given up one eye to see better into the future. But it ended up looking too grim and too much like a carrion bird and not a smart one bringing news and foretelling the future. So I got rid of the eyeball.

I tried 2 different versions in my color comp. One was with turquoise aurora and one with a more purple pink one. I do like my purple, but I was afraid it would read too much like flames and less like a night scene, so I ended up following the turquoise rough. Before coloring the painting, I tried the color out digitally on my preliminary grey tone image so I could make sure that it would be light enough to keep the silhouette of the raven clear and readable.

For this image I, for once, had a perfect reference at the studio for the shield; namely a battle worn shield I got from one of my Viking enactor friends.
One of the things I like best about this painting is that it is almost monochromatic. Almost, but not quite. I hinted at a warm light source somewhere in the purple/reddish light in the shadow side of the rocks and the rim and ball of the shield. The slightly different temperature shift in the colors make it seem less flat and “dead” in the colors, as I think is often the case with pure monochromatic palettes.