Last Sunday, June 6, 2021, Sidharth Chaturverdi’s original Magic: The Gathering painting for Dauthi Voidwalker sold on the MTG Art Market for $17,000, a record price for a work by the artist.
Chaturvedi’s Dauthi Voidwalker is a work of oils on unstretched canvas measuring 16 inches by 20 inches, and it was commissioned for the brand new straight-to-Modern Magic set, Modern Horizons 2.
Vorthos Mike, the acting agent for the artist, ran the auction for Dauthi Voidwalker on the MTG Art Market, and the opening bid was set to $5,000. After a series of bids that exceeded expectations, the original art was sold for $17,000.
“We’d like an updated look for a Dauthi rogue, a creature who is partially made of shadows and is forced to exist in shadows at all time,” Chaturvedi said. “Start with the inspiration but design a rogue with a leaner face, hood, and more shadows incorporated into his design. We like to see him peering out from behind a tree or rock as a callback to the reference.”
This is not the first Modern Horizons 2 art that was sold for more than $15,000; Steven Argyle’s original art for Squirrel Sanctuary was recently sold for $19,000.
“The part I jumped on was ‘made of shadows,’” the artist said. “I’ve seen Dauthi that are dark, spooky, spiky, smoky, full-on eldritch horrors, but not one that really leaned into this idea in a visual way. And that’s for obvious reasons. How do you paint the absence of light and still make it a visible creature? I used the line ‘forced to exist in the shadows’ as a clue.”
“I thought a real, solid form might be visible in the dark-just barely-but that they turn thin and transparent when in bright light,” he added. “I had the idea of him sneaking up on you in a swamp, of you suddenly turning your light on the rustling noise so that arm of his that’s reaching around the tree turns to just a cast shadow. And, of course, you see the bright moon through his head.”
“The transparent parts were directly painted as they would look through a shadow. No glazing or anything fancy.”
Related: The Best Magic: the Gathering Cards to Play in Modern Horizons 2 Limited
Modern Horizons 2 is scheduled to release for tabletop on June 18, 2021. The official preview season for Modern Horizons 2 is set to begin, and you can check out the list of outlets where you can find them here. You can check out spoiler section here.
