It's finally time to paint another card. Rattleclaw Mystic is on many a speculator's radar come rotation, but why wait until autumn to turn a profit?

I was fairly surprised to find how easily this card was completed. It took me forty minutes to finish this thing up. That means if I charge $12 dollars for this altered card I will have made around $15/hour for my time (assuming the card is worth $2 to begin with) on a creature that is played in both competitive and casual formats.

Fortunately for some lucky Twitter follower I won't be charging a dime, I'll just be giving it away! The rest of you will have to create your own, so let's get started on that.

Starting Off

After mounting your card you'll want to take a good look at what we are painting. The background on this card appears to be a minty green color at first look, but closer inspection reveals small amounts of purple and pink breaking through. We'll need five colors to complete this card, Red, blue, yellow, black, and white.

Go ahead a prime the edges, and also where the horns would cross over the nameplate on the card.

We'll want to lay the purple and pink out first. It's a very light shade so the mixture will be mostly made of white paint. Apply a nice solid coat of this hue to the card using a wet brush. It doesnt have to be a solid color, in fact some variation will help. This first layer will show through the next couple of layers sporadically.

Add some yellow paint and a touch more blue to your pink color mixture and you should come up with muted grey-green. For this next layer we want to use a dry brush. Doing so will cause the paint to spread in an uneven manner giving us the illusion of texture that matches the background. This technique is aptly named "dry brushing".

As you go along the edges add white and/or small amounts of black to get the varied shades of green that are used in the background. Remember to carry the original art over here and there to help blend your color and that of the picture. Also do not forget that the snowy background features mountains--remember to continue this pattern all the way to the edge of the card. To help finish these patterns and the background as a whole, lightly apply white paint to the areas that need highlighting by using the dry brush technique.

Horning In

On a card with a simple background like this one, it is often helpful to find some other object within the art to exaggerate. These details will help make your art more unique and therefore more sellable. In this case I've chosen the simple procedure of extending the character's horns over the name plate.

To do this we first lay down a grey made only of black and white. This darker base coat will bring out the tone of the thinner, lighter layers we are about to put on top of it.

Using a wet brush, paint some of the green (used on the background) over the grey of the horns. You'll also want a darker shade of this grey to continue the shadow in the center of the right horn. From here, keep adding white to your mixture and gradually blending the color on the horns to match the lighting effects on the horns.

The finest details on the horns are of no consequence to us so don't spend too long seeking perfection here. The horns are very small in comparison to the rest of the art so we need only suggest detail and the viewer will see detail. After that, just black out the bottom, clean up your edges with a toothpick and sign it!

As I mentioned before, I will be giving this card away to one of my tens of Twitter followers. The drawing will occur on Thursday and the card will be mailed as soon as I get your address.

In the meantime, I'd love if you took the time to leave a comment in the forums or in the comments section below. This will be the sixth article of the series and I'm looking for your feedback. Are you having trouble following the guides? Am I writing enough finance related material? Is there a topic you'd like to see covered? Any comments, or constructive criticism are welcome.