Issue 01: July 2024

Welcome to the first newsletter!

I’ve put this thing together because the tumult of other online channels these days makes communication spotty and complicated. My hope is this can be a nice direct source of updates and extra stuff for those who want it. Some of you probably found your way here because of Lorcana, or picture books, or maybe you're artists yourselves, so I’ll try to make the various sections pretty clear (you can skip the sections you don’t like, I won’t tell anyone.) I'll keep things simple to start off, and we’ll see where it takes us.

Thanks for joining!

Ursula Major

Lorcana recently released the Deep Trouble cooperative game, which includes a boatload of Ursula artwork that I painted last year. Ursula is such a great character, and her tentacles allow for extra fun variety with each composition. At this point, I think I’ve painted her more than any other character for the game!? Good luck defeating her!

There’s also another Enchanted Ursula card I painted with Nicholas Kole in the new main set, Ursula's Return (Someday we'll do a whole newsletter about Nicholas.) For this piece we were following the lead of artist noc4urne, who set the very cool style for this enchanted lineup.

The Q&A Returns

Some folks may recall I used to answer questions on Instagram. It was great, but difficult to go into much detail. I’d love to bring that back in this format, so email me your questions and I’ll get this section underway next time.

Shelf-Discovery

I have a lot of neat books of/about art. Some of them I love, some of them I haven't even read yet. What better excuse to check them all out. Here we go:

No one who's asked me for book recommendations before will be surprised that first up is... Picture This by Molly Bang This excellent book explains composition through simple, bare-bones examples of those common-sense visual relationships that we think we know… but then we wonder why we weren’t paying attention to them already. Using the story of Little Red Riding Hood (the triangle on the cover) as a starting point, it explores the various dials we can turn (shape, color, etc.) to create impact and clarity in an image. This book wisely points out that when it comes to story, our very basic experiences of being human (things as simple as our experience of gravity) color our interpretation of images in a big way. Super accessible and very quick. Read it in a day and level-up forever!

Other Stuff

-There are now Hearthstone illustrations starting to appear in my INPRNT print shop. These are probably my two favorite Hearthstone pieces so far, the art directors Ryan and Jim know my tastes well and gave me a lot of room to have fun.

-I have a brand new page on the Cara app, which is a social media and portfolio platform focusing on artists. I haven't dug into it yet, but if you have an account I'll see you there soon!

-Kind folks sometimes ask when my next picture book is coming out. I don’t have an answer for them yet, but I’m currently putting the finishing touches on a new spooky manuscript. Same goes for card signings and mentorships, no news yet but stay tuned.

I'll leave you with this excellent mouse my son made recently. An abstract triumph. That's it for now! If you have questions or requests for the newsletter or Q&A, send me an email. See, I told you nice and simple. -John

​www.johnloren.com​