Talk about a glow up from how he looked in the 90's
(yes I'm playing around with mtg again on forge)
They also don't give artists enough time. John Blanche was given three months to paint this, for example:
It's not even cover art. Just something tossed into the 3rd. Edition rulebook.
Nowadays? Magic artists get a 6 week deadline. And they get roughly $1k per piece. To make a modest $4,000 per month, you have to crank out a new painting each week. And like you said, then there's the corporate approval where a committee nitpicks everything into compliance. Copyright shit doesn't help either.
And you just know these companies will switch to AI slop once they think they can get away with it.