u/404HopeRecompile

This is a completely useless post. It's not even a rant. It's just the product of a frustrated player.

I started collecting (yes, collecting, not playing. Yes, Magic is for playing, I know - sue me) MtG about four months ago. My main interest was, simply, the lore and the art.

Slowly, I started to put together some of LotR scenes, and I also put some binder pages together with story spotlights from different expansions. Then, I got into some very nice flavor text - my favorite ones, right now, is the set of the "Dynasty of Winter Kings", which form a very nice little poem.

That was my jam. Lore, flavor, art. Slowly, some tribal groups started to form on my binder too: a few pages for the elves, another for dwarves. Perhaps I'd buy a binder just for that and try to get me all the angels, too. Maybe put them together with all the cards with an excerpt from the Song of All.

During all that, I kept buying a few singles from LoTR every month. My plan was to get every single card from that collection... Well, maybe not every single one, since I don't have a few million bucks just laying around, but you catch my drift.

However... I think I'm just too old, too conservative, and too christian for this hobby, man. I can't keep giving money to a company that is so thoroughly woke that everything needs to be ugly, gay or race-swapped. I just can't take pleasure from my collection anymore, and I also can't find any joy in browsing for new cards, trying to keep in with new releases, and being constantly frustrated by how they manage to make everything ideological.

Maybe if I had a group of friends to play with, I'd stay in this hobby. I don't, so I won't.

I know people here aren't familiar with me and my leaving changes absolutely nothing about the hobby, but I really enjoy this subreddit as a community, and I just felt like venting.

I got into this, at the start of everything, because I felt nostalgia for my old magic collection. Well, Wizards took all the magic out of Magic for me. Funny how things work out.

See ya.

Fiquei curioso com o sub. Que vibes o quarto passa?

Pergunta bonus: tô sem lugar pra mais livros e sem espaço no quarto. Sugestões?

PS: repost porque não postei certo da primeira vez.

Since I'm not a part of any artist's community and I have decided to learn how to draw about two weeks ago, I decided that I will spam you all daily with my practice sketches for my daily dose of humiliation and in hopes of getting some feedback.

Today was the first day I tried to sketch some human faces. I've been mostly drawing trees and, for the last three days, badgers.

The pictures that go with this post are: the original face I was trying to use as a reference, my catastrophic drawings, and then my attempt to apply Loomis proportions to the face to see what I was doing wrong.

I added a bun to the top of her head because I trying to give the impression that she's a girl, but it was to no avail. I tried the circle + shield for the face's format before (not in the drawing), but all faces became rather masculine. In this one I tried to make it more round, but her face became a ball... Which is curious, because she has kind of a square jaw... but I could not capture her face, nor her hair, nor her facial expression... nothing, nothing!

Learning to draw really is an extremely humbling process.

Back to tutorials and to practice more and more.

Any feedback is always appreciated.

The last one, more stylized, used as reference a piece from Hollie Ballard.

Tips appreciated, I've started to draw like one and a half weeks ago

I'm aware it's not very good, but I got into this a week and a half ago. Please be kind.

This is the Heart of the Woods. One of my characters will have to return to it the life that was stolen.

I have started drawing about one week and a half ago.

I don't think the drawing is particularly good, but it is the first time I finish a drawing and don't feel like it sucks completely, as opposed to the first version, also in the attached pictures.

I'm posting this for three main reasons:

1. I am happy and I wanted to share it.

2. I want feedback on how to improve

3. I wanted to share all the iterations and versions of this drawing until I arrived at this "final" version. It really surprised me, and I think that seeing how many different versions and ideas you go through before actually finishing something might be of help to someone out there that feels like they're doing it wrong because they're iterating.

It really is quite a ride, though. I notice a lot of limitations on my skill (decent roots, for instance), and also on my brain - the cave beneath the tree was awesome, but no matter what I did, it kept looking like.. err... female genitalia to me.

Anyway, just wanted to share. Any tips are appreciated.

PS: the photos are ordered like this: first one is the finished piece, second is the first time I tried to create the scene with the big tree, and then the many many many iterations.

For context, I've recently (about a week ago) started drawing. After posting my first "composition", I got some feedback about focus point and chaos, so I'm trying to study and see if I can create a better scene. The pictures are just a bunch of sketches, studies and thumbnails as I try to wrap my head (and hand) around the idea. Tbh, I'm nearly giving up on this specific idea for the time being - I think maybe the perspective I want is just beyond my skill level rn.

One person said I keep the "down-up" perspective on the massive tree, but I can't for the life of me justify how could I be looking up at a massive tree and still have the cave-entrance, in the far back, in the field of view...

Any and all feedbacks, tips or critique are appreciated.

For context, I've recently started drawing. After posting my first "composition", I got some feedback about focus point and chaos, so I'm trying to study and see if I can create a better scene. The pictures are just a bunch of sketches, studies and thumbnails as I try to wrap my head (and hand) around the idea.

Any feedback is appreciated.

For context, I have just started drawing a week ago. I've made a post showing a few pictures of my exercises and asking for feedback on what should I do to improve, and a fellow redditor suggested that I try a composition and then ask for feedback... So I did it, since I'm on vacation.

This took me around four hours.

I think the tree trunk is pretty good, although I dislike how weirdly it tapers toward the top. The tree silhouettes to the left got weird - I could not really figure out how to do proper silhouettes for the leaves, although I'm reasonably satisfied with the scale of values.

I absolutely despise, though, the wall on the back. It was supposed to be a small cave entrance on a natural rock wall or mountainside, but I couldn't really figure out how to make it seem stony without the top showing, so it became a brick wall, and not only the perspective seems off, but I also don't like the texture. I was afraid of doing too much and it getting messy, so I think it didn't do enough.

Anyway, this is my after-work review. Please, spare me no criticism. I want to get better.

Thank you for your time.

Hello.

I have just started drawing with pen and ink. Actually, I just started drawing at all - I never really got into it as a kid, and started to practice a little now because I plan to use my pen and ink drawings to support a worldbuilding project I have.

I would like some general feedback. Since I'm not a visual artist in any way, I don't really have a teacher or an experienced friend to provide constructive criticism. I'm looking at a lot of YouTube videos (especially Zack Feldman, who is the one that actually got me to start this), and I know I have A LOT of challenges ahead, but without criticism it is kind of hard to actually put my own criticism against the reality of the craft.

Mainly, I think my main problems (as you can see in the pages of my recently bought sketchbook) is excessive and/or irregular hatching, because I am extremely confused on how to differentiate shadow from texture.

Anyway, I'll be thankful for any tips or criticism you can spare. Thanks in advance for your time.

Normal boosters (not to mention collector boosters) are prohibitively expensive in Brazil, where I live.

Since I'm not really hunting for a single card (I buy singles for those) and I just wanted some booster opening fun, I bought these for about half the price of a normal booster each.

Each contained 10 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 mythic, 1 guaranteed foil, 1 art series and 1 token.

Obviously there were no hits. The biggest hit was valued at 1,1BBs (brazilian bucks). However, it was fun and I got some new stuff for my tribal and flavor texts collections.

Bellow, the full list. Just wanted to share.

___

I'm doing some lore-archaeology. It's fun. Very fun.

However, I have the sense that there is a lot of lazy writing going on. I'm a complete beginner to MtG lore, so I might be missing some info, or maybe even I'm failing to see how things connect, but... I'm mainly "studying" Serra's arc, and although the arc is very, very interesting, cohesive and overall makes sense from a symbolic and thematic point of view, when you go down to the micro aspects it really starts to fall apart.

For example:

• Wizards' official summary says that "Feroz and Serra decided to become Ulgrotha's caretakers," and that Feroz created "Feroz's Ban" to "protect the plane from interlopers," which is a very cool macro idea. But the older lore summary says "Feroz died in a lab accident while studying a fire elemental trapped in ice." I mean... what?
• The whole Onella episode. Onella is described as "the capital city of the Citizenship of Aysen," a "Serra worshiping state" on Ulgrotha. After Feroz's death, Serra "wandered the streets of Onella" and tried to save a man from "a heavy cartwheeling out of control," but failed. Why can't she stop a cart? She's nearly a goddess. She created a whole plane of existence. She's the mother of angels (much cooler than mother of dragons, Daenerys).. And she can't stop a CART? (https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Onella)
• Sengir then uses that failed rescue to guilt her into leaving. The summary says that, with his "poisonous words," he reprimanded her for having "interfered, just as Feroz did." Hm.. What? Bad guy says bad words and our girl just... abandons everything? Again? Is that the whole point? That she's a perfectionist coward who just runs away when things stop being perfect? (https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Sengir)
• Then, after that, Serra flees to Sursi, is attacked by "an unnamed black planeswalker disguised as a thief," and although "she could have healed herself easily," her "will to live had been shattered." So she wastes away and spends her last strength to "sanctify the land around Sursi." The official Dominaria guide also says Serra died when she "dispersed her essence into the land of Sursi." Again, thematically beautiful. I do love this. However... random planeswalker disguised a thief? What? (https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Serra; https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/planeswalkers-guide-dominaria-2022-08-31)

What I am asking is: am I missing something? Is there something I don't understand? Or old-lore is just macro-good-but-don't-look-too-close?