Issue 02: September 2024

Welcome to the second newsletter! If you missed the first, you can read it here.​

Summer was a kinda rough art season, I spent a lot of it dealing with tendonitis problems that have messed up my whole schedule. I'm glad to be getting back to painting finally, and luckily there are some neat things to talk about in the meantime... the newsletter must go on! I also finished the last page of my new picture book manuscript, which is a small but symbolic victory. Here we go!

CDQ 29

The new issue (29) of Character Design Quarterly includes a little interview with me and some of my favorite pieces of artwork over the years. I think I last showed up in Issue 5, so it's been quite a while. The Issue 29 cover art is by Ben Eblen. You can get a copy of this or past issues here.​

Some interior pages from the article.

A Signature Hamm

Last month was the debut of Hamm, the Hungry, a signature card I painted a while back for the Hearthstone expansion Perils in Paradise. Hamm was right up my alley, I just love drawing precarious stacks of food.

Winners and Winnies

The Lorcana Set Championships for Ursula's Return were held this summer, and the Ursula champion cards and playmats are out in the world! It's great seeing this stuff, I was a big TCG player and it fills me with vicarious excitement... even if you aren't one of the fortunate souls who got one, I hope you had a good time competing.

AND in the new Organized Play Kit there's also... A Hunny Wizard Lore Counter! (Thanks Inkborn Heroes for this pic)

Project Dra-gone

Recently we learned that a big game project from Phoenix Labs that I helped out with for several years was abruptly cancelled. While my own concept portion ended last year, the game was extremely close to official release this summer.

Everhaven (codenamed Project Dragon) was overflowing with unique and thoughtful designs. This is unfortunately a pretty common tale in video games, and while you learn to be ready for anything, it stings to see so much great work go unrealized.

The slim silver lining is we've been given the OK to share concept work from the project. I'll be spelunking into my art archives in the coming months so I can share some of the development work.

In Issue 03...

-This newsletter ended up pretty full, so I'm bumping the Q&A kickoff... Email me your questions for next issue, I need a few more.

-Shimmering Skies, the fifth Lorcana installment, is now available in stores. I'll put some new cards in the next issue. (Yes, that will also be the Halloween issue!)

Thanks for reading :)

-John

​www.johnloren.com​