Elliott Lang assumed Magic: The Gathering players might not like his work. Despite his enthusiasm for fantasy illustration, he’d mostly worked in literary circles before. Instead, not long after his art debuted in Secrets of Strixhaven, a friend sent him a link to a Reddit thread called “Elliott Lang art appreciation post.” It featured all four of Lang’s debut Magic cards and praised Wizards of the Coast for continuing to “seek out new artists that can keep the game weird.”
“Weird” is definitely one word for it.
When I first started opening Secrets of Strixhaven packs, a common black removal spell called Wander Off immediately caught my eye. The card depicts a lone Witherbloom student wandering through Titan’s Grave beneath the towering ribs of a long-dead giant, surrounded by bioluminescent fungi and alien vegetation. The composition feels less like traditional fantasy card art and more like something pulled from an illustrated storybook or a work of literary horror. The same could be said for Lang’s other cards in the set, which lean heavily on intricate linework, surreal organic textures, and stark contrasts that make them stand apart from much of Magic’s modern house style.
For longtime Magic players, that “house style” is easy to recognize. Much of the game’s modern art direction leans toward dramatic realism and highly rendered digital fantasy paintings built for immediate readability at card size. Lang’s work takes a different approach. His illustrations emphasize expressive linework and composition first, often using sparse backgrounds, heavy shadows, and surreal textures to create mood before clarity.
That philosophy comes less from traditional fantasy card games and more from classic illustration. Lang cites artists like Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, and the legendary French cartoonist Moebius among his biggest inspirations. Before working with Wizards of the Coast, Lang built much of his career in editorial illustration, working for outlets like The Wall Street Journal before gradually pivoting toward darker fantasy imagery.
“I didn’t really pursue fantasy art,” Lang told Polygon during a phone call. “It wasn’t really encouraged.”
That changed around 2009, when Lang began building a separate portfolio focused on “dark strange things,” including creatures, knights, dragons, and gloomy landscapes. Years later, that body of work led to commissions for publishers like Folio Society, including illustrations for the first illustrated edition of Walter M. Miller Jr.’s classic science-fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Even then, Lang still didn’t think Magic would ever come calling.
“I was looking at someone like Donato or Brom, and I was like, well, that’s not something I can do,” Lang said, referencing longtime Magic illustrators Donato Giancola and Brom. Instead, it took encouragement from fellow illustrator Jeremy Wilson — along with Magic’s increasingly eclectic art direction — to finally push Lang toward contacting Wizards of the Coast directly.
“I emailed like 12 different art directors,” Lang said. “And I reached out and I got 12 responses, which was absurd.” According to Lang, Wizards had already been looking for opportunities to broaden the visual range of Magic’s art.
“They’re starting to expand their offerings,” Lang said.
That openness became apparent once Lang started receiving assignments for Secrets of Strixhaven. Unlike what you might assume, Magic artists don’t typically receive completed cards or deep gameplay explanations. Instead, they’re given relatively simple prompts describing characters, locations, and the general tone of a scene.
“Here’s the scene, here’s the character,” Lang explained. “Make it in your style. You’re trusted to do your job and deliver something that we hired you for based on your portfolio.”
Curiously, Lang believes his lack of familiarity with Magic may have actually helped.
“Do I need to know the game or the mechanics?” Lang recalled asking Wizards art director Zack Stella years earlier. “And he said no, not necessarily. In some cases, it helps if you don’t know how to play it, because you’ll have this preconceived notion.”
That outsider perspective is especially visible in cards like Mind Roots, an illustration Lang said is his favorite from the set. It transforms a relatively simple discard spell into a sprawling vision of vines, roots, books, and vegetation erupting from a sleeping student, like a Witherbloom scholar’s dreams are growing directly out of their mind. Lang said the prompt intentionally left room for interpretation, but his art director did provide a reference to a previous printing of Mind Rot.
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“What if this is kind of really coming out of these books or her mind?” Lang said. “That’s way more interesting than just imagining it.”
The same instinct shaped Essence Scatter, a two-cost instant that counters a creature spell. On a black background, we see some kind of insectoid creature literally having its essence scattered. Lang clarified that it depicts a Mage Hunter — horrifying monstrosities created to snuff out the arcane — being violently ripped apart by blue magic.
“I like painting on these black simple backgrounds, because you can really make things kind of glow,” Lang said. That’s certainly the case in Essence Scatter, where blue magic circles, almost like portals, rip apart the Mage Hunter at various parts of its body. There’s something beautiful and goreless in the way the magical violence is depicted here.
While the other cards exist mostly in a vacuum, Oracle’s Restoration shows a moment fairly important to the greater Secrets of Strixhaven story. It depicts Oracle Jadzi attempting to soothe an enormous Archaic. Lang said Wizards provided specific visual references for Jadzi and encouraged him to emphasize her blue robes, so she’d remain recognizable to players even though she occupies a tiny part of the card.
The final result feels almost mournful. Jadzi appears dwarfed by the creature’s massive face but still cradles the titanic being with a great deal of tenderness. Like much of Lang’s work in Secrets of Strixhaven, the piece prioritizes mood and texture over spectacle, turning what could have been a standard fantasy scene into something quieter.
Despite being new to Magic, Lang has already discovered one of the stranger realities of becoming a successful card illustrator: players want more than just the cards themselves. Since Secrets of Strixhaven released, fans have already started asking about artist proofs, signed cards, and even playmats featuring his work.
“I didn’t know anyone cared,” Lang said of the Reddit thread praising his art. “The comments blew me away.”
For Lang, the response has been both surprising and validating, not just because players embraced his style, but because they embraced something different. And it’s left him eager to try his hand at illustrating more Magic cards in the future.
“That was a nice affirmation that I had made something really unique and offered something different for the game,” he said.
