#celestial mantle

Celestial Mantle

Upon such armor, even a mountain would break.

“Celestial Mantle”

Jesse Mason is back.  Let’s all take a moment to reflect on this “journalist” and his unique anti-Steve Argyle crusade.  I’ve mentioned this person in the past and the very existence of this blog owes something to the articles of his I had the misfortune of reading.

For those of you that are new here let me recount that it was my interest in finding more intelligent reviews of Steve’s work from trained eyes and even minds... and my general lack of finding any positive critiques other than “OMFG AWESOME!” that convinced me that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.

The Ascended Minion Project followed... and owes a similar debt to this misled individual who is entitled to his opinions but seems to have fallen victim to that amusing logical fallacy where the louder you are, the righter you are.

Now I will concede that even I have my own reservations about the relative success of Lavalanche but I would never descend into “it sucks” territory.  This piece suffers from the same unfortunate fate as Deathreap Ritual.  If you put the Sistine Chapel ceiling painting on a postage stamp it’s gonna lose some of its appeal.

For like the millionth time Liliana of the Veil has brought about more debate about every facet of artistic integrity than I can stand.  Art directors, artists, art fans, feminists, you name it... they’ve dissected this piece with every tool from every angle but none of that stops it from being one of the most popular pieces of artwork in Magic’s history... or Steve having the unendingest lines at his public appearances.

Somebody out there likes his “fucking awful” stuff.  The fact that there is so much debate and it still stands tall nearly four years later is a testament to the success of the work.

I feel like I’m in the ring with this guy sometimes.  I spend much of my time considering his work from as many viewpoints as I can imagine and am rarely disappointed.  I have critiqued his many pieces over the years (and no I don’t just praise his stuff blindly no-matter-what-because-Argyle) trying to educate the people who wander over here about exactly why I am so impressed and then this guy is trying to rally a crowd of torch-wielding rioters to storm the WotC fortress and demand Steve’s head be delivered them.

I’m not too worried though.  I doubt he will ever reach my numbers in the race for like-minded people.  It’s relatively easy to pick on Lavalanche, but I would love to hear him explain what he thinks is wrong with Steve’s Thalia painting... go ahead... you can’t see her breasts, dude, you may need to actually think.

There is a sliding scale of reactions to art and one needs to try and separate those from the art quality itself.  The quality usually reinforces the reaction in either direction but they can be inversely related or unrelated as well depending on the viewer.

He had four pieces shown in the article and Liliana of the Veil is above reproach no matter how strongly he feels about it, Lavalanche needs to be seen at full resolution to appreciate properly which even I have not had the pleasure of seeing, Lotus Path Djinn is a wonderful piece which is hurt in my eyes, only slightly, by the design of the male Tarkir Djinn which isn’t Steve’s fault.  The rest of the piece is amazing.  (I invite you to read my discussion of the artwork from five months ago.)

That leaves Celestial Mantle.

Why pick on this?  What’s the problem?

“I don’t care in the slightest how someone makes their work, if their end product is good. But Argyle is an artist whose work I can look at, and at a glance, tell that it looks digital. It looks digital in a bad way. Everything is glowing, there’s DETAILS DETAILS everywhere that there don’t need to be, there’s no compositional focus because he’s playing around with filters and textures and shit.”

First let me point you to a hi-rez copy.  Second, if you like, you can find my two-year old brief discussion of the piece.

The whole concept of “looks digital in a bad way” is a point of interest and charged with a great deal of subjectivity.  My concession here is that the piece focuses on the armor (what a shock... it’s the representation of the card effect) and the armor is “perfect.”  The design of the armor is built around the inspiration of a flawless gem.  Precise.  Symmetrical.  Those words lend themselves to the craft of digitally created art like none other.  It is very possible that the art direction that came about from the inspiration for the card led them to requesting Steve’s work in the first place.

Yes.  the artwork looks obviously digital because we expect that the perfection of the armor would be impossible to create otherwise.  (Spoiler - it’s not... but really, why bother.)

”No compositional focus” is another phrase worth investigating.  Is it because there is a lot to look at?  Are the sun in the background and the fabric distracting you, perhaps?  It’s deliberate.  It creates balance so there aren’t unwelcome voids in the space.  It creates movement.  Perhaps he wants to look at a piece and be compelled to focus only on a single element.  No thanks, I’d rather be compelled to have my eyes track around all the different textures and lines.  That’s really a lot of the point... to get them to (gasp) look. at. the. piece.

Pictured - Balance.  The piece has comparable “weight” on either side of the red line, mostly due to the addition of the oversized sun in the background.  Whether Steve did this on-purpose or not speaks to his abilities either way.  He either did it by accident because he innately understands the concepts and does this sort of thing without thinking about it or he did it on purpose because he understood it was needed.  That goes for every other trait the piece has.

Pictured - Movement.  The eyes will instinctively track around the presented lines.  The more a piece can encourage you to do this, the better.

Pictured - Focus.  The bright values keep trying to convince your eyes to return their attention to the armor.

Not Pictured - “titmonster”  There is no instinctive “male gaze” driving the attention toward the female figure for its own sake.

This is exactly the sort of thing I am trying to get Steve’s more casual fans to pay attention to.  That way maybe they can try to understand a piece instead of just see it.  They can learn to look at it as the answer to a question or the solution to a problem.  The can find the psychology in themselves that was tapped into from afar by someone who understands how art is viewed.  Don’t feel exploited, feel honored... someone understands how you see the world.

You can start by understanding your own basic questions.  When you look at art you are usually qualifying it right away on many different sets of metrics.  Some of the things you consider are objective, some are subjective.  Asking yourself these questions is subconscious and probably follows a reasonably predictable hierarchy.

“Is it attractive?” should be first.  This is why it is called the first impression.  This is entirely subjective but requisite to most audiences continuing to look at the piece.  If you think “yes” there are further, related considerations, but if you have a powerful aversion to something about the artwork this is where you will crash into it (such as finding Markov’s Servant’s breasts too distracting to consider anything else.)  It is worth noting that this is not purely positive.  You can be “attracted” (as in - it attracts your attention) to negative images, sort of like being unable to look away from a car accident.  This counts and if it moves you to consider the next stage so be it, but I prefer the positive aspect.

“Is it crafted well?” may be next.  As you look at the piece for a little longer you will likely begin to judge its quality.  This is two-fold.  You can judge the tools - wonderful works of art can be made with crayons but if you don’t respect certain tools of the trade (like Photoshop for example) you will simply dismiss the piece around now.  Some baggage may be in your head with this.  If you’ve never seen good work in a particular media you won’t have any reason to respect it.  Digital art had a bad reputation for a very long time and this still affects some peoples’ perceptions.  You can also judge the user of the tools - let’s face it, some people are better at making tattoos than others and a poorly crafted tattoo will rarely look good to anyone, but a well crafted one will usually bring about praise both for the art and the artist.  This step will likely always trip Mr. Mason up as he appears to have firmly made up his mind about the artist and may be unable to move past it.

“Do I like it?” hopefully is something you differentiate.  This is closely tied to your first impression and since these first three considerations are so rapid and interlaced they may be difficult to interpret separately.  The subject of the piece will be important here.  For instance I don’t like dogs so I am not likely to continue to appreciate a painting of a dog beyond appreciating its craft.  Here, my being able to discern that although I think dogs are unattractive a painting of a dog can be an attractive painting of something unattractive.  Note that if your first impression was that car accident type most viewers will usually stop considering the piece around now.

This next critical question is generally only for people who are honestly interested in art.

“Why?”

If you can dismantle a piece of art in your mind and determine what about it got your attention?, what kept your attention?, and what did you see that you did not notice at first glace that made you look deeper? than you can count yourself as “interested in art.”

Welcome to the Ascended Minion Project Game Show, the totally random post from time to time where you can win some Steve Argyle thing or another... but this one is a little different.

WELCOME TO THE SPEED ROUND!

Hands on the buzzers folks!  The first eligible minion to reblog this post scores that card up there.  GO!

The lifelink would happen first.

Anything beginning with the words "When," "Whenever" or “At” — such as the Mantle’s ability — is a triggered ability. This means it will trigger and go on the stack, and then players will have the opportunity to respond before it resolves and takes effect.

Lifelink, on the other hand, happens automatically as soon as the damage is dealt, before players can respond. In other words, it’s already taken effect long before Celestial Mantle’s trigger resolves.