Typically, for odd-sized cards or promo cards, Wizards of the Coast does not issue white-backed artist proofs. Therefore, I did not expect to receive any for the double-sided flip card Grizzled Outcasts / Krallenhorde Wantons. So I was surprised to see that they did indeed issue them--as two separate white-backed cards!Therefore I've linked up the cards here. As usual, you can add a drawing to the back of any card(s) you order for a few bucks more, if you're willing to wait about a month to receive them.
By making the ball very large, it became something that in reality would probably be immoveable by a single person, unless it was slowly rolled perhaps. So, to make the whole thing a bit nastier, I added giant curved spikes to it. Now it wouldn't roll easily, and would have to be pulled again. I tossed aside the reality of the likely weight of this ball, but loved the idea of dragging this thing, and it clawing tracks in the dirt of the dungeon or whatever.
I'm not sure what the setting is exactly, but it seems to be some sort of building that has long been abandoned, or just outside of one. While living in Italy a few years ago, I loved seeing some walls on really old buildings with multiple and deep layers of differently-colored plaster, which were cracked away revealing deeper strata, all the way down to the core stonework underneath. I wasn't at this stage particularly keen on the dirt path or road. I 
I've talked in past posts about some things which are very easy to do digitally versus by hand, and I hope I didn't come off as dismissive. This is illustration, and both traditional and digital illustration result in printed dots on a product. My painting is not on display in the end, only the image created in it, and if an illustrator wants to use digital shortcuts to help speed up his work, who am I to complain really? I can choose to use them, too. And quite frequently I do employ them. Especially at this early stage, I frequently do use digital tools to fix, tweak or alter studies a bit. In this case, I hunted out images of this kind of stonework I'm talking about, posterized portions a bit to just dark and light shapes, then used the distortion tools in Photoshop to map it to the perspective being shown. I then blended it with my drawing such that the layer of dirt was irregularly obscuring the walkway beneath (above), which helped considerably. It did save considerable time versus drawing out the pattern by hand. Cheating? Absolutely. However, to spend half a day or more mapping out the perspective to draw that detail was not feasible. Without digital tools, I likely would have either done the image as the charcoal study, or would have used a stonework in a typical grid at most. It's a difficult equation, but balancing time spent against a flat fee paid is always an issue.
Our captive is meant to look as if he was fairly well-to-do. In styling him, I gave him a bit of the look of 19c art critic and thinker John Ruskin (right, by Millais). I don't think I'm trying to actually, you know, place Ruskin as the character. I'm not that conniving. But I wouldn't have given him that hair without referencing this image. I'm sure Ruskin had enough detractors who would've loved him locked up. He was an art critic, after all.
