Elwira Pawlikowska is a Polish-born illustrator and concept designer based in Sweden. She holds a Master's degree from the Warsaw Faculty of Architecture but chose the books-and-games industry over a practice in buildings, and that training is the through-line in everything she makes. Her specialty is architectural subjects inside fantasy settings — particularly the historical-fantasy genre — and her commercial work spans fantasy maps, technical drawings, book and game illustration, and architectural designs for tabletop miniatures. She traces the start of it to high school, drawn in by fantasy literature and RPGs.
That background is unusually legible on her Sorcery cards. Where a lot of TCG illustration leads with figures and creatures, Pawlikowska leads with places — the cities, structures, and built environments that an architect-by-training notices first.
Style
The medium is the signature. "All my Sorcery artworks were created with ink (for outlines) and watercolors (for everything else)," she says — ink for the structural line, watercolor for tone, light, and atmosphere. The result is the highly detailed, technical look Collector Arthouse flags in her profile: intricate compositions with the precision of a draftsman and the softness of a watercolorist, rather than the slick digital-airbrush finish common to the format.
Her own two favorite Sorcery pieces map the range. Windmill — her first illustration for the game — she painted in homage to Alan Lee's fantasy art, the loose, atmospheric Tolkien-illustration tradition. Lord of the Void runs the other direction: dark, mysterious, slightly surreal, built around Gothic architecture in a near-monochromatic palette. Between the two sits the bulk of her work: legible structures, controlled color, a cartographer's eye for how a place is laid out.
Across the table, a Pawlikowska card reads as architecture first. The ink linework holds the form at card scale; the watercolor carries the mood.
Cards on Sorcery
Collector Arthouse lists her as appearing across Alpha, Beta, Arthurian Legends, and Gothic — every set the game has shipped so far. There is no single fully published index of her complete card list, but the Collector Arthouse gallery documents a substantial sample, and the run is consistent with her architectural focus: structures, sites, and built environments dominate.
Documented pieces include Alabaster Box, All-terrain Vestments, Altar of Malachai, Annual Fair, Avenging Angel, Battering Ram, Black Cat, Blaze of Glory, Broomstick Witch, Browse, Buried Alive, Carrion Beetles, Castle Servants, City of Glass, and Cloud City.
The standout is Cloud City, a Unique-rarity Atlas Site from the Alpha debut and one of her most popular pieces in the game. It also has the best-documented backstory of her catalog. In January 2023, art director Erik Olofsson commissioned an alternate version — a starry-night-sky take on the same city. His brief asked for "a starry sky similar to what you had on the River Styx card," with the note that "it would also be good if clouds still could be seen even if it is a night scene." Pawlikowska built the alternate in her usual watercolor, drawing on her own River Styx illustration, and delivered what Collector Arthouse calls "the other side of the same city" — the same architecture at night, clouds still visible. That night-sky alternate became a prize when the Sorcery "Dust Store" opened in May 2024.
Her two stated favorites — Windmill (the Alan Lee homage, her first piece for the game) and Lord of the Void (the monochromatic Gothic-architecture piece) — round out the documented highlights.
Where to see more Elwira
- Instagram — @elwirapawlikowska — her main public feed, linked from the official Sorcery artist page.
- Her Sorcery cards — the structure-and-site spread across Alpha, Beta, Arthurian Legends, and Gothic, with Cloud City the marquee.
- Collector Arthouse — Elwira Pawlikowska — the gallery and artist-proof program this piece draws on.
Sources
- Elwira Pawlikowska — official Sorcery TCG artist page — "a Polish-born illustrator and concept designer currently based in Sweden"; Master's from the Warsaw Faculty of Architecture; historical-fantasy specialty; the ink-and-watercolor medium quote; Windmill (first piece, Alan Lee homage) and Lord of the Void as her favorites.
- Elwira Pawlikowska — Collector Arthouse artist page — "Appears In: Alpha, Beta, Arthurian Legends, Gothic"; "specializes in ink and watercolor, creating highly detailed and technical images"; environmental-concepts and cartography focus; the documented gallery card list.
- Behind The Art: Cloud City — Collector Arthouse — the January 2023 alternate-artwork commission, Erik Olofsson's starry-sky brief, the River Styx inspiration, and the May 2024 Dust Store release.