Where Magic Cards and Silly Onion Sketches Meet

Do you know, dear reader, what the world really needs?

Onion Magic cards!

behold the Colossal Onion!

I am aware that this statement raises a lot of questions, namely why that is and what mad mind could possibly think up something so bizarre. Well, let me enlighten you!

It all started with the ball-point pen sketch of a slightly confused looking onion from one of my first blog posts:

The confusion is strong with this one

While nothing more than a quick work sketch at the time, its cartoonish style and miffed expression was somehow very amusing to me. This little onion sowed a seed (or more accurately, an onion I guess) in the back of my mind that manifested as a growing desire to explore this oniony art form more and fill the world with more horticultural cartoon wonders.

The catalyst for this progress came from a very unlikely place, namely the channel dedicated to the card game Magic: the Gathering of a Discord server I frequent. Magic cards used to be my hobby of choice back in high school and while the game has changed considerably since then, I still knew the basics and could somewhat follow the strategy discussions and enjoy the MTG Arena LP’s posted in the channel. One thing that did catch my eye especially were the custom decks and cards some of the other users had created on MTG Cardsmith. Having dabbled in creating custom magic cards for fun before, this piqued my interest as a possible creative outlet, and that’s when I remembered my little onion. Anybody who has played Magic knows that it is a world populated by elves, goblins, angels and dragons, but onions were still unexplored territory, and thus a silly sketch of a confused onion transformed into a silly idea that manifested itself as a silly project: Onion Magic cards, or as I call it Onions: The Gardening

Initially, I stared out with creating ball-point pen sketches very similar to the original onion albeit scaled up and in greater detail:

From left to right: The Angry Onion, The Decaying Onion, The Celestial Onion and The Confused Onion

This, however, did not go well with the garish card borders that are found of modern Magic cards, so for the final product I decided to go for a more colorful and cartoonish style using solid black for the edges and solid coloration using acrylic colors and pitt pens where applicable:

The Colossal Onion towering over the Spunkywood forest

A Tiny Onion Seedling

Onion Island

The style is very reminiscent of what you could call my natural drawing style, e.g. the style that my sketches and doodles naturally takes, and which reminds me a lot of the endless doodles I did during my school years. I stuck to a relatively simple color palette to keep the style cartoonish and light-hearted, because it suits the art style and because Magic cards containing onions would most likely not be taken seriously anyway. The sketches are quite small and quick to make, making it a fun side hobby when taking a break from bigger, more serious art pieces.

As to why the world needs onion Magic cards, all I can say is that not everything needs a reason to exist. Sometimes you just simply need an outlet for your weird ideas!

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Thank you for reading! If you like my silly onion artwork, please leave a like and a comment!


I have created an MTG Cardsmith account where you can see the cards I have created using the artwork above. Please feel free to both like and share them if you find them amusing. If some of the wording on the cards seem a bit odd compared to contemporary Magic cards, please bear in mind that I have been out of Magic for at least ten years.


Suggestions to new and exciting onion Magic cards are of course welcome in the comments!