5 Simple Tricks Will Make You Better at Altering Cards

Hiya, Glad to have you here! Today I want to tell you about five simple things you can be doing right now to improve your altering skills. It really is the little things that make the magic, isn’t it? I want to jump right into it, so here we go…!

1 – (the golden rule) Water Your Paint Down

Yes, yes, I know. It’s the first thing everybody says when they give altering advice, but that’s because it’s literally central to creating clean work. Your art concept can be phenomenal and the work itself, gorgeous… except it’s been done on a Magic card, and that means that there’s something even more important than being creative or beautiful — being flat and thin.

Tournament legality should always be your primary goal, even if you know that this is a card being done strictly as part of a collection. For one, because most people will expect to be able to actually use the card they shelled money for, even if they don’t plan on it. For another, because you don’t want to be sharing messy work with the world if you intend to land jobs from players that require legality. And finally, at the end of the day it really is a bare minimum expectation when somebody is looking at card alters and judgement of your work will always suffer from this error.

Maybe you’re not completely sure whether or not your work needs, well, work. There are a few things you can use to test your cards:

• Make sure that you can’t tell the difference in weight or touch between a regular card and your artwork when they’re both sleeved.
• Take a picture with lots of light — any ridges will be caught and easily visible. (Both helpful and annoying, depending on whether or not you already thought you were done…)

So a few pointers now on what exactly is watered down enough. You want your paint thin enough that it doesn’t clump on your brush or “blob” when you drop it onto your palette or card. As a reference, if you ever spring for citadel paints, their consistency is generally pretty good although I add water when I’m doing fine linework (you want your paint to be much thinner for tiny jobs). I also like to add a few drops of water to the actual paint pot and shake it til it’s all blended (and re-use the pots for my basic, cheaper paints that really do need watering down).

A few other things that might cause messy paintwork: Your paintbrush will absolutely affect how easy it is to avoid ridges and blobs. I don’t spring for an expensive brush (four to five dollars apiece), but I don’t exactly use the ones that came in a child’s watercolor palette, either. The other thing is that you want to control how much paint you’re picking up for each area. I’m not going to glob paint onto my brush to paint hair the way I would if I were doing my base coat, you know?

Below: A gradient from right to left showing smooth vs. thick paint.

2 – Tape your work down

The reason is pretty straightforward, actually. It keeps the back of the card from becoming a basecoat-streaked mess. And sometimes, infuriatingly, extremely thin bits of paint are actually harder to remove than thicker bits. For this, I use blue housepainter’s tape but an even better idea is to spring for artist’s tape because I’ve noticed that the blue tape does have a habit of taking just a tiny bit of the ink underneath it when you pull it off. Nothing you can’t paint over, but it does become annoying (and is noticeable if you’re looking for it).

There are two basic ways to do this, based on the job you’re doing. For full-arts that keep their borders, I like to tape right over the entire border, at least while I’m getting the basecoat down. For border extensions, you can make a little “O” of tape and stick one side to the work surface and the other to the back of the card. I almost always prefer the former method because if ink gets pulled when you take the tape off, it’s far easier to patch up a black border than color-match and patch the back of the card… and if your sleeves aren’t opaque on the back, a noticeable paint job will disqualify a card in tournaments (and it is noticeable).

3 – Clean your edges

After the paint being too thick, this is the very next thing I notice when I’m looking at alters. Going back to having clean work – lines that are meant to be straight need to be straight. If you’re going for a cloudy or jagged look, that’s totally cool (really) as long as you make it obvious that it’s the look you were going for. I cannot overstate what a big difference clean edges make in your end product.

Cleaning the edges is definitely a little time consuming, but to me it’s literally one of the most satisfying parts of the job. It’s really simple as well, and all you need is a toothpick and possibly water (toothpicks are seriously the best tool I’ve found for altering after the actual paintbrush). Using your new best friend, you want to gently gently scrape away at the offending area. I prefer using a dry toothpick, but sometimes wet is the only way that paint is coming off without a fight.

4 – Flatten paint bumps

Despite how much you work on your paint consistency and control, little bumps are just going to happen, especially in really busy and detail-intense areas. Your new BFF toothpick can solve the problem quite nicely, however. And this tip is done basically the way you’d assume it is — by using the flat of the toothpick to press the ridges down. You can also use this while the paint is wet to pull the paint further along the line, which saves you from the bumps-and-ridges problem before it happens. Be warned, it does move the paint sometimes (I mean, you’re displacing it from being vertical to horizontal so it makes sense) so do be mindful of the possibility.

5 – Stop painting your signature – use a pen

Your signature is your mark, it’s how you identify yourself to the entire world wherever your work is, it’s you. And nothing screams novice like a sloppy signature — and if you’re doing this, then you already know how absolutely difficult it is to paint writing. You can use gel pens or very fine-tip sharpies to great effect here, and it will make a world of difference. On top of looking better, it’ll also probably take up a lot less space now too. Write gently so as not to disrupt your beautiful paint job of course, but go get yourself a gel pen and marvel in the wonder that is your new and improved signature!

Level up! Look, and be amazed at your handiwork!

Thanks for sticking it out to the end! I like to think it’s because there was something you found at least a little useful, and if that’s the case, why stop here? I’m going to be dropping lots of new posts about all kinds of different ways you can up your game and push your work to greater heights and I’d love it if you tagged along! Find me on Instagram and I’d love to follow you back!

Thanks again and remember! Follow your heart, chase those dreams and remember to drink your water~