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Article Last reviewed By Gothic Frog

Gadu Duaso on Sorcery

A Filipino oil painter on 48-by-36-inch canvas, ten Alpha paintings, and the only contemporary monster cluster on the roster painted at gallery scale.

artists duaso alpha beta gothic
Portrait of Gadu Duaso
Photo via Collector Arthouse

Gadu Duaso is a Cebuano oil painter based in Cebu City, on the island of Cebu in the central Philippines — what locals call the "Queen City of the South." He grew up there, and the body of his career is still rooted there. His first art mentor was his father, in childhood. The formal training started in high school under Emar Lacorte, the Filipino realist painter, where Duaso learned the classical fundamentals — elements and principles of composition, traditional painting technique, the discipline of working from observation. From there he enrolled in the Fine Arts programme at the University of the Philippines — Cebu, where he completed his degree.

The medium is oil. Has been since high school. He stuck with it across the full arc from student work into freelance because he likes "the versatility, the color vibrancy, and the extended blending time without time pressure constraints" — the working-painter's reason. Oil stays workable for hours, which is how you build the dense overpainting and surface depth his work is identifiable by. His commercial focus, in his own framing, is "designing characters and creatures in the form of fantasy and surrealism, mostly for book covers, card games, and film."

Style

The Duaso look is bold colour at scale. His Sorcery paintings — and the personal work that surrounds them on ArtStation — are saturated, dense, oil-handled rather than digitally smoothed, with the kind of high-chroma palette that survives a 4× reduction onto a card frame. The figures are heavy and grounded, the creatures muscled and weighty rather than wispy, the compositions multi-figure rather than single-portrait. He calls the Sorcery cluster his "multi-figure" pieces — humanoids and creatures sharing the frame, several subjects at once, the eye routed around the composition rather than parked on a single hero.

The influences he names are a useful triangulation. From the Filipino tradition: Camille Dela Rosa, the Cebu-based surrealist, and his own mentor Emar Lacorte, the realist. From the Western fantasy tradition discovered through the Spectrum: Contemporary Fantastic Art annual: Paul Bonner, Ralph Horsley, and Adrian Smith — three of the long-running Games Workshop / Warhammer / tabletop-RPG illustrators of the 1990s–2000s. The classical training is doing the underpainting and the anatomy; the Spectrum fantasy lineage is doing the subject matter; the Cebu surrealism is doing the colour boldness.

The scale is the half of the style that's invisible on the printed card and load-bearing on the original. Most Sorcery cards are painted at roughly A3 size — about 11.7 by 16.5 inches — because that's what the publisher's brief asked for. Duaso painted his at 48 by 36 inches. Roughly four times the surface area, in oil, on canvas, in his Cebu studio. He negotiated the size change with Erik Olofsson before he started: painting that large lets him "render and capture the details very well." The detail density that survives on the card is detail he could afford to put in because the canvas was big enough to carry it.

Cards on Sorcery

Duaso painted ten oil paintings for the Alpha set, nine of which the publisher used as the basis for cards that have been printed since. The Collector Arthouse artist index lists him under Alpha, Beta, and Gothic, and the verified card list breaks into three groups: the Alpha bestiary cluster, the Beta reprint footprint, and the one Gothic carry-over. Most of his cards are Minion — Monster or Minion — Demon / Beast, sitting in the same design slot inside the Alpha set. Duaso is the publisher's choice for the multi-figure monster card.

Sirian Templar — the Beta Curio printing of Duaso's Alpha box-topper painting, the foil-hybrid construction that pairs with Easley's Critical Strike

Sirian Templar by Gadu Duaso — via Collector Arthouse

Sirian Templar (Alpha Exceptional Minion — Mortal). The marquee. Sirian Templar takes no damage from Demon, Spirit, or Undead minions — a defensive Mortal that exists specifically to anchor against the kind of monster cluster Duaso's other cards populate. The Alpha printing is the standard Exceptional rarity. The card then appeared again as a Beta Curio in a foil-hybrid construction first surfaced as an Alpha box topper: a Beta-symbol card carrying the Alpha-set artwork, printed in foil, with the alternate back. Documented in full in Every Curio in Beta, alongside the Critical Strike companion piece by Jeff Easley which was built the same way.

Karkemish Chimera (Alpha Elite Minion — Beast). A three-target attacker — "Can simultaneously attack up to three units at the same location." The composition is multi-figure by design (the chimera carries three heads). One of Duaso's personal favourites.

Maze Minotaur (Alpha Elite Minion — Monster). The card that locked Duaso into the teaching example slot for the Sorcery community: enemy minions can't move themselves out of the nine-location box surrounding the minotaur. Tactical-puzzle Minion design.

Bull Demons of Adum (Alpha Elite Minion — Demon). A three-step move-and-strike that hits every untapped unit it passes through. Multi-figure painting — more than one bull demon, in motion. On his favourites shortlist.

Escyllion Cyclops (Alpha Exceptional Minion — Monster). "Doesn't strike back while defending" — a one-way Monster that the opponent can chip at without retaliation. On his favourites list.

Gyre Hippogriffs (Alpha Exceptional Minion — Beast). Airborne and Charge — flying with the ability to attack the turn it lands. Multi-figure by design.

Yokai Kappas (Alpha Elite Minion — Water tribal). The Japanese folk-creature card in the cluster — green river-spirits with the carapace shells and the depression of water on the crown.

Leap Attack (Alpha Exceptional Magic). The one non-Minion in the cluster. Leap Attack lets an ally take a step and then strike each enemy at its new location — a tempo magic for moving and clearing.

Lord of Lies (Gothic Elite Minion). The one Duaso card outside the Alpha / Beta block. Lord of Lies is a Gothic Elite — once per turn, you may have two target units at a nearby location fight each other. His only commission for a current-era set, and one of his five favourite Sorcery paintings alongside Sirian Templar, Karkemish Chimera, Escyllion Cyclops, and Bull Demons of Adum.

Where to see more Duaso

Sources

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