Peter Mohrbacher is a concept artist whose work can be found in many Magic the Gathering cards, a feat in and on its own. Mohrbacher’s passion project, “Angelarium” begun as his fascination for the lore behind many mythical angels from different cultures. Angelarium is a collection of digital illustrations of mythical angels as interpreted by Mohrbacher. I have been a big fan of these amazing illustrations for several years now. The mood that the color palettes, painting style and setting create have been incredibly influential in my taste and aspirations in terms of concept art. The piece I’ve chosen to review is Tamiel, The Sight Unseen by Goni Montes and ironically, for Angelarium.

This piece stood out to me more than any other for a couple of reasons. I’m a big fan of digital art, and I completely suck with color. The feeling of an overwhelming deity reminded me a lot of Angelarium, and to my surprise, this is a piece of a work created specifically for it. After doing some research on it, I couldn’t find anything related to the design process involved in creating this illustration. But thankfully, Mohrbacher himself stated in a reddit post “Normally I’m self posting around here, but this time it’s for my buddy Goni Montes who created this awesome fallen angel painting for me.” As I was wondering why the style of his other pieces in the collection was so different from this one.

This is Tamiel, Angel of the Unseen as illustrated by Peter Mohrbacher himself. All of his illustration sport this same eerie and mystical feeling to them. From what I could gather, Montes’ illustration was some form of fan art or collaboration created for his friend’s collection.

From the two, I’d personally lean more towards Mohrbacher’s version. Montes’ use of perspective successfully creates a feeling of omnipotence. It makes the viewer feel smaller, lesser-than this deity. But Mohrbacher’s mastery of color is such an amazing sight (ha). The focus lying so heavily on the angel design itself, and how well it blends with its surroundings… I just can’t help but love how mythical it all feels.