Artist: Kev Walker

Next up on the artists of Magic, today I look at Kev Walker.

Kev Walker holds the distinction of illustrating the most Magic cards- by a lot (almost 200 cards ahead of Pete Venters). As usual, we use Scryfall to look up Maddocks' work:

artist:“Kev Walker” not:digital

And find that he illustrated 465 unique cards. Wikipedia claims he was active from 1996-2020, but this is inaccurate- he is still active. And his work has been reprinted quite a bit.

To look at how frequently his work has been reprinted, we add unique prints to the syntax in Scryfall:

artist:“Kev Walker” unique:prints not:digital

You can peruse all of the reprints here. From this, it appears that his 465 unique pieces of art have been reprinted across 1034 cards (this includes tokens). The top cards reprinted the most times with a Kev Walker illustration appear to be:

- Rancor and Sengir Vampire (15 times),

- Krosan Tusker (12 times),

- Lightning Elemental, Llanowar Elves, Wrath of God (10 times)

I am not skilled in art . . . though so prolific, I have trouble identifying a Kev Walker card on sight. That either means his style/abilities are impressively varied, or I'm just missing something obvious. Either way, below are a handful of cards that are either iconic or personal favorites.