sorceryguide.com
Article Last reviewed By Gothic Frog

Séverine Pineaux on Sorcery

The French illustrator who painted all four base Avatars, lives near the real Brocéliande Forest, and got an Arthurian Curio named in her honour.

artists pineaux avatars alpha beta arthurian-legends
Portrait of Séverine Pineaux
Photo by Édouard Hue — via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Séverine Pineaux is a French fantasy illustrator based in Brittany, near the Brocéliande Forest — the medieval Arthurian-romance forest the Roman de Rou names and the Vulgate Cycle uses as the stage for half its enchantments, today the Forêt de Paimpont. Born in Paris on 1 November 1960, she studied plastic arts at Université Paris VIII, then co-founded a multimedia communications studio called Outline Vidéo that ran from 1985 to 1994 — a decade of commercial work before the move into illustration full-time.

Her early commissions were the kind of jobbing fantasy work a generation of French illustrators built careers on: book covers for Pocket and Fleuve Noir in the SF and horror lines, and interior illustration for tabletop roleplaying publishers including the French edition of Dragon magazine and the long-running French RPG magazine Graal. She returned to oil painting in 1996 and won the Visions du Futur prize in Paris three years later. By the mid-2000s her own illustrated books had started shipping: the Ysambre series (2004–2008, which won at the Printemps des Légendes festival in Bécherel), Les dragons, petit traité de sciences naturelles (2006), Le Grand Bestiaire des Légendes (2008), Gothic Faërie (2011). She has illustrated Le Tarot des Chats (with author Céline Guillaume) and the Oracle des Créatures Légendaires. Her work has appeared in the American art annuals Spectrum and Infected By Art.

Style

Pineaux paints in oil and watercolour, with pen, pastel and occasional gold leaf. Her compositions sit inside a recognisable French illuminated-manuscript tradition: warm palettes, tight linework, an aesthetic vocabulary lifted from medieval Breton and Celtic sources rather than from the American sword-and-sorcery pulp lineage that dominates most fantasy card-game art. The fairies, dryads, and bestiary creatures that populate her own books recur across the Sorcery roster — her Bestiaire habits transfer directly to the card frame.

Two of her own statements about the work are useful. "I have been drawing since childhood, and my theme has always been fantasy and wonder," she told the publisher in 2025. "I believe the real world is profoundly fantastic, and representing dreams is my way of painting reality." And on composition: "First, I try to create a form of beauty, a pleasure for the eye through colours and rhythm." She works from imagination first and reference second. The references are anatomical (hands from medical documentation, drapery from photographs of ancient statues), and they exist to discipline an imagination she says "often works faster than my hand."

Cards on Sorcery

Pineaux joined Sorcery in 2018 — early enough that Erik's Curiosa describes her as one of the reference artists for the project. She's been continuously productive across every set since, with the largest cumulative footprint of any single artist on the roster.

Avatar of Earth

Avatar of Earth by Séverine Pineaux — via Curiosa

The four base elemental Avatars (Alpha). Avatar of Earth, Avatar of Air, Avatar of Fire, Avatar of Water — the cards that ship inside every Beta preconstructed deck and define the visual register of starter-tier Sorcery. There is no other artist on the roster with a comparable Avatar count. The four together are the face of the game in every photograph of a precon box, every shelf placement, every onboarding tutorial. Their composition logic is consistent — a single elemental figure centred against a colour-keyed landscape, the kind of devotional-portrait setup her manuscript training carries over from her book-illustration work.

Witch (Alpha retail Avatar). A colourless pure-disruption Avatar — flexible turn-by-turn curses on the opposing Avatar, no resource cost. The retail Alpha printing is Pineaux's; the Alpha Investments foil promo features alternate art by Frank Frazetta, the only Witch printing where she's not the painter.

Philosopher's Stone (Alpha). The Unique Relic that sits at #3 on the public price ladder (details) — a soft elemental ramp engine that every multi-colour deck wants. Pineaux talks about the commission directly: "I drew some of my inspiration from drawings published in my book Ysambre for the strange manuscript look, from Gothic Faërie for the Ouroboros snake, and from a 16th-century engraving for the alchemist and the demon." The card carries her two most established illustrated books inside one Alpha frame.

Fire Maiden (Alpha Curio). One of four pre-Alpha elemental Avatars Pineaux painted before the rebrand to the current four-Avatar set. Her original oil painting shipped with the top-tier "Avatar of the Realm" Kickstarter pledges — a literal one-of-one artwork going to a single backer. The card itself was rebranded as a "Dragon" type in Alpha, where it appears foil-only in retail boosters and as a Curio variant.

Avatar of Fire Sketch — the Beta Curio printing of Pineaux's pre-paint line drawing

Avatar of Fire (Sketch) by Séverine Pineaux — via Collector Arthouse

Four Beta Avatar Sketches (Curios). The uncoloured pencil-and-line versions of the four base elemental Avatars, printed as Beta Curios after the finished paintings shipped in Alpha. These are the closest thing the publisher has come to publishing studio process material — the line work before paint, on the four most-printed Avatars in the game. The full Beta walkthrough is in Every Curio in Beta.

Far East Assassin (Beta Curio). The original commission for a card that ended up shipping in retail with a different artist's painting (Elvira Shakirova's). The Pineaux version exists only as a Beta Curio — a what-might-have-been, sitting alongside the Avatar sketches as a piece of design history that didn't make the final cut.

Wizard's Den (Arthurian Curio). Originally titled Crystal Cave — Pineaux's painting was renamed Wizard's Den as part of a tribute to a Japanese collaborator, and the Japanese-language Curio printing of her painting is the second half of that tribute, honouring the recipient's heritage.

Broceliande — the French-language Arthurian Curio painted as a tribute to Pineaux

Broceliande by Séverine Pineaux — via Collector Arthouse

Broceliande (Arthurian Curio). A new card invented for the Arthurian Curio pool as a tribute to her — the only Curio in the catalogue whose stated purpose is to honour a single named artist. Erik's Curiosa printed the card in French — the language is the entire variant — and the Collector Arthouse archive catalogues it as the only Curio where the publisher has explicitly named the tributed artist: "Broceliande is a beautiful tribute to one of Sorcery's most beloved artists, Severine Pineaux. In French language to honour Severine's heritage." The tribute lands because the geography is real — she lives next to Brocéliande.

Ring of Morrigan (Arthurian Legends). The most expensive Arthurian Legends card by foil price, and one of the few Arthurian foils with a non-foil printing also clearing $200. Painted by Pineaux.

Imposter (Gothic Avatar). A colourless adaptive Avatar with a mask-borrowing ability — Pineaux returned for one of the thirteen new Avatars in the December 2025 Gothic expansion.

Consecrate (Gothic, 2025). A November 2025 publisher article — "A Hymn in Color: Séverine Pineaux and Consecrate" — documents her process for the card in detail. "I immediately wanted to use light, to create a 'glory' — the sun breaking through clouds," she said. "I wanted to create an atmosphere of renewed peace, like the sun reappearing after a storm."

Bower of Bliss (Arthurian). Listed on the publisher's artist-profile page alongside Philosopher's Stone, Ring of Morrigan, and Broceliande as one of her iconic Sorcery commissions.

That list — three top-10-by-price cards (Avatar of Earth at #1, Philosopher's Stone at #3, Avatar of Water at #5), one Arthurian price-leader (Ring of Morrigan), four base Avatars, four Beta Avatar sketches, a Gothic-set Avatar, a posthumously-revealed pre-Alpha Avatar (Fire Maiden), a Japanese-language tribute Curio, and a card named after her hometown forest — is the largest cumulative Sorcery footprint of any single artist on the roster.

In 2024, when the community was racing to catalogue Arthurian Curios on release, a half-finished sketch of a Witch surfaced — formatted to look like the Unseelie Court Sketch Curio by Liz Danforth — and attributed to Pineaux. It was eventually revealed to be a fake Curio: somebody had constructed a forgery in her style. Erik's Curiosa, whose default policy is to never acknowledge Curios in any direction, broke their standing silence and publicly denounced the fake. The publisher who won't confirm that Curios exist will, apparently, defend a specific artist's work when somebody forges in her name.

Where to see more Pineaux

  • pineaux.com — her personal site. Galleries, biography, and the canonical record of her published work.
  • Her books — Le Tarot des Chats (with Céline Guillaume, Editions Ouest-France) is the most accessible. Le Grand Bestiaire des Légendes and Les dragons, petit traité de sciences naturelles showcase the bestiary work that her Sorcery commissions draw on most heavily. Gothic Faërie is the source she cited directly in her Philosopher's Stone artist statement.
  • Instagram — @severinepineaux — recent paintings and process shots.
  • Erik's Curiosa — Séverine Pineaux artist page — the most up-to-date list of her Sorcery commissions, plus the November 2025 A Hymn in Color feature on Consecrate.
  • Spectrum Fantastic Art and Infected By Art — the American annuals where her work has appeared.

Sources

Related reading