List of illustrators
Here is a list of illustrators of Dominion cards and box covers. See Gallery of illustrations for the original art, all on one page.
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Trivia
Artist notes
I will single out Marcel-Andre Casasola-Merkle and Claus Stephan as favorite artists. As an example of really nailing a tricky concept, I will single out Ill-Gotten Gains.
In general I leave as much as possible up to the artist. The whole point to the notes is just that some early cards had the wrong thing illustrated. The image on Goons was submitted for Pawn; Steward showed a guy with a serving dish. Not everyone was going to know the terms and sometimes they're ambiguous. Not everyone was going to feel like doing any research. So I started typing up notes.
Treasures often say "no people" because some of the Prosperity ones showed people and I didn't like that as much. A few times I've pointed out things not to do like "no New World crops" or "no gore." Sometimes I've noted the frame color or that something is an attack; I stopped doing that eventually but probably should have kept it up. In rare cases there has been something special to communicate, like the Ruins being ruined versions of things, or the Hermit/Madman connection.
There is an opening paragraph that probably they all get, that notes that the game is medieval, and says the expansion theme. It says that buildings can be shown from inside or outside, that people can be non-European. I used to say could be male or female, then I added, we don't get many females and would like more. Even female artists mostly drew men. For Adventures I just specified male or female on all of the cards that were a person. There will be some women in this art.Race
The artist notes usually make no mention of race. Four expansions have themes that push race and so some cards specify. Empires is Roman and a lot of cards specify Romans, a few Gauls or Celts (e.g. Dominate); Nocturne has a Celtic mythology theme, so Druid and Exorcist are specified Celtic; Renaissance has some specific Italian things, e.g. Patron says to show Lorenzo de' Medici, Priest says Roman Catholic, Recruiter says condottieri (Italian mercenaries); Hinterlands specifically has non-European places, so the titles imply race for a few cards - Mandarin, Nomad Camp - though the artist notes don't specify. And then, a few cards illustrate specific real-life people connected to Dominion somehow, and so are that race - 10 people I know for the Knights, Dale Yu on Navigator, Valerie Putman on Harem, Wei-Hwa Huang on Pearl Diver, RTT on Captain. Beyond that I think there's only one card where I specified race: for Diplomat, I specified Spanish, trying to think of what would be most plausible for a female medieval diplomat.
That was a bunch really but still for most cards there is no specification, it's just whatever the artist drew.
I've floated the idea of doing a medieval Japan expansion. And someone immediately said, oh but you have to get a Japanese person to make sure that everything is respectful. And then other people chimed in to say, yes absolutely, so important. I can't stop the artist from turning in the art for Mandarin though. The only way to make sure there's no horrendously offensive Japanese stuff is to not do Japan. I've also floated the idea of a Vikings expansion; there is no such issue there. That's the sad way of the world. Which hasn't just ruled out Japan, but you know. Last time out I went with animals; maximally inoffensive. No-one minds which breed of dog it is.
Errata
- ↑ The Ambassador art was mistakenly credited to Alexander Jung.
- ↑ Claus Stephan is sometimes credited as "Claus Stefan".
- ↑ Garret DeChellis was mistakenly credited as "Garrett" for Dark Ages.
- ↑ Prior to Empires, Jessi J was credited as "Jessica Cox".
- ↑ The Peddler art was mistakenly credited to Joshua Balvin on the first edition of the card.
- ↑ Since the Second Editions of Dominion and Intrigue and prior to Nocturne, Marcel-André Casasola Merkle's last name is mistakenly hyphenated.
- ↑ The Exploration art was mistakenly credited to Eric J Carter.
- ↑ Prior to Alchemy, Simon Jannerland was credited as Simon Samuelsson.