Illustration

In the context of Magic, Illustration refers to the picture on a card.

Dimensions
The standard art box originally measured 2" x 1.5". The Magic 2015 decreases the border size and allows for a slightly bigger picture. The illustration usually fills the top half of the card, but it may fill the full card on full-art and textless versions.

Art direction
The predominant look of the art has changed from set to set, but never more noticeably than when a new art director takes the reins. Since Magic 's initial release, art directors have included Jesper Myrfors (from Alpha through The Dark), Sandra Everingham (from Fallen Empires through Alliances), Sue Ann Harkey (Alliances through Weatherlight), Matt Wilson (Tempest up to Urza's Saga, and Jesper Myrfors again. Nowadays, there are multple art directors; different sets have different art directors. Magic art may be digital. Creative has moved away from showing pieces of a sequential story on cards. Instead, starting with Magic Origins, some cards show pivotal moments.

Concepting
Each set has two "waves" of concepting art. One of them happens at the beginning of development, and the other happens later on. When a card concept is thought up, it is further refined in an art description. Cards have to be concepted early to give the flavor team and especially the artists enough lead time to work on them.

The palette of the illustration — the artist's selection of colors — isn't required to match the colors of the card on which the art appears, i.e. a blue card doesn't have to have an illustration that is mainly blue.

Altered art
The original art in Unholy Strength featured a flaming pentagram. As of 4th Edition and subsequent reprinted versions, it was removed. It was the result of pressure from various groups against demonic and satanic themes. Unholy Strength is by no means the only card in Magic where the art has been changed due to public outcry; other cards, including Crusade and Demonic Tutor, have been given alternate art for the same reason.

The Peoples Republic of China does not allow the public display of human or humanoid skeletons and Magic cards are no exception. For this reason the artwork of many Chinese-language cards depicting skeletons have to be altered to make it possible to sell the product.

Key art
Since Rise of the Eldrazi, Magic set often feature “key art”. This is a singular, iconographic image that is the foundation which a set's marketing campaign is built upon. Key art images appear on products like posters, booster boxes and fat packs/booster bundles but not on the cards themselves.

Art as creature type
The silver-bordered Abstract Iguanart from Unsanctioned introduces the Art creature type.