Creating "Dawnbringer Aurelia"

First, there was a pose—I knew that I wanted to show Aurelia being somewhat triumphant, but the setting and mood were still to be decided on. Aurelia was pretty neatly sketched out, whereas the background was less detailed. Somewhere along the process I took a liking to a peaceful sunrise environment and went with it. As you can imagine, I went with coloring the character first, and then started to worry about her surroundings, which resulted in a few alterations of colors and light adjustments on Aurelia.

You can read more in an interview between me and fantastic Kristen Gregory from Hipsters of the Coast, where I talk about this specific MtG fanart and related artistic-stuff :)