Come, sit, before you ale gets warm. Today I want to share the work concept artist, illustrator and art director, Paul Scott Canavan. He was one of the artists in the last First Friday Five MtG edition but I wanted to show more in a dedicated post.
Hailing from Edinburgh, Scotland, Canavan has also done work for Dungeons & Dragons, Games Workshop, and Valve. With Axis Animation he has art directed cinematic projects for AAA studios such as Blizzard, ArenaNet, and Riot Games.
Enjoy this very brief look at his work, how you can get more of it, and learn from him too.
Magic the Gathering
He’s done a whole lot of Magic the Gathering cards which you can view here.
Art Directing – Guild Wars 2 cinematic (Icebrood Saga)
Now, as an ArenaNet official Creative Partner so you can look forward to seeing more GW2 work going up on his socials soon.
I found this interview over on MuddyColors about colourblindness in art between him and Ben Sweifel really interesting. If you happen to struggle with colourblindness and not sure whether you’ll be able to get far in the entertainment arts because of it, be sure to give this a read.
Gumroad tutorials
Canavan has a couple of old tutorials on his Gumroad store that you can pick up for a dollar each. Peanuts. The opening of the Traditional Feels instantly exceeds that in entertainment value alone. If you want to try get more of a traditional feel in your digital paintings, then definitely grab this to see how he goes about it.
You can find his brush packs there too.
His latest one is all about creating Magic The Gathering cards. He’s painted over fifty of them so he’s got a pretty solid sense of what the art directors are looking for. You can pick the tutorial up for 10 pounds on Gumroad but if you happen to be a Patreon subscriber, you get it for freeeeee.
Twitch
Over on Twitch, you can join Paul for his study buddies sessions every Monday and Friday. He puts up a couple of images before each session, usually themed, that you can access and paint together with him. The community over there seems really cool as well.
For a chuckle, you might even catch him reading some hilarious Harry Potter fan fiction.
Other ways you can support the artist…
Supporting over on Patreon gets you some really nice rewards, such as members-only channel access on Discord, and an extra private streaming session in the week. It’s an ideal way to keep this guy filled with the coffee and whiskey needed to make great content for us.
If you want to get some prints up on your walls, here is where to get them.
Wrapping up…
Most of the images here are grabbed from his website and Artstation page, so if you want to see more of art from Paul Scott Canavan be sure to give them a visit. You can also follow him on Instagram and Twitter.
Hey, thank you so much for this lovely feature!! It was a lovely surprise to wake up to – really appreciate the kind words ❤
My pleasure, dude! I really enjoyed going through your work to put this little piece together. That GW2 cinematic is great!