Vasiliy Ermolaev is a Russian illustrator trained in Moscow, with a background that runs through book illustration, children's publishing, monumental work, and — the detail that matters most for a card game — years spent painting miniatures for wargames. He studied at the Moscow Academic Art Lyceum and then the Moscow State University of Printing, where he specialized in book illustration. Sorcery: Contested Realm is his first venture into trading card game art, and he arrived on the roster already fluent in the discipline a TCG demands: making a small image read clearly and carry weight.
That wargame-miniature history is the part of the resume that separates him from most illustrators who come to cards from a fine-art or concept-art track. Painting a 28mm figure teaches you to push contrast and define form at a scale where nothing reads unless you make it read — exactly the problem a 2.5-by-3.5-inch card poses. He came to Sorcery with that instinct already wired in.
Style
The phrase the publisher uses for him is "signature gothic line work," and it's accurate. Where a lot of the Sorcery roster leans on atmosphere and soft rendering, Ermolaev's hand is graphic and linear — the structure of the drawing stays visible under the paint. That's the book-illustration training showing through: a tradition that prizes a confident, descriptive line, where the contour does as much work as the color.
It's a look that suits the darker end of the game. His pieces tend toward the gothic and the grotesque — trolls, reapers, roadside inns, chapels on hillsides — and the linework gives them a woodcut-adjacent edge, something carved rather than airbrushed. Across the table his cards have a recognizable density: heavily worked, high-contrast, the kind of image that holds its shape at card scale because it was built on drawing first and finished in paint second.
Cards on Sorcery
Collector Arthouse lists Ermolaev across Alpha, Beta, Arthurian Legends, and Gothic — a four-set spread that puts him among the more prolific artists on the roster, present since the game's first printing.
The bio singles out three pieces as his signatures: Grim Reaper, Donnybrook Inn, and Bosk Troll. Bosk Troll in particular has a collector footprint — it's one of the cards an Artist Proof has surfaced for, which is how some of his original-art provenance has come to light.
Beyond those three, the Collector Arthouse index credits him on a wider spread across the four sets: Abyssal Assault, Archangel Gabriel, Assorted Animals, Briar Patch, Bridge Troll, Crossroads, Divine Intervention, Fae City, Fields of Camlann, Gneissgnath Gnomes, Hillside Chapel, and Lake Afanc. The Arthurian-Legends pieces — Fields of Camlann, Lake Afanc — lean into the Matter-of-Britain material, while the troll-heavy entries (Bosk Troll, Bridge Troll) and the gothic builds (Grim Reaper, Hillside Chapel, Donnybrook Inn) are where the line-work signature is most visible.
That list is the documented footprint as it stands on the public artist index. A complete, set-by-set card count for Ermolaev isn't published in one authoritative place the way a Magic veteran's Scryfall page would be, so treat the gallery above as the confirmed set rather than an exhaustive one — more of his cards may be uncredited in the public databases.
Where to see more Vasiliy
- artstation.com/itm_fff — his ArtStation portfolio, the fullest public view of his illustration and miniature work.
- instagram.com/itm_fff — the feed the official Sorcery artist page points to for his complete portfolio.
- His Sorcery cards — the gothic and Arthurian builds across Alpha, Beta, Arthurian Legends, and Gothic; Bosk Troll, Grim Reaper, and Donnybrook Inn are the ones to start with.
- Collector Arthouse — Vasiliy Ermolaev — the full Sorcery card index this piece draws on.
Sources
- Vasiliy Ermolaev — official Sorcery artist page — Russian; trained at the Moscow Academic Art Lyceum and Moscow State University of Printing (book illustration); career across children's books, monumental/mosaic work, and years painting wargame miniatures; Sorcery is his first card-game work; portfolio at instagram.com/itm_fff
- Vasiliy Ermolaev — Collector Arthouse artist page — "signature gothic line work"; "Appears In: Alpha, Beta, Arthurian Legends, Gothic"; signature pieces Grim Reaper, Donnybrook Inn, Bosk Troll; card index (Abyssal Assault, Archangel Gabriel, Assorted Animals, Bosk Troll, Briar Patch, Bridge Troll, Crossroads, Divine Intervention, Donnybrook Inn, Fae City, Fields of Camlann, Gneissgnath Gnomes, Grim Reaper, Hillside Chapel, Lake Afanc)
- Vasily Ermolaev — ArtStation portfolio — the artist's own portfolio, handle itm_fff, confirming the Instagram/ArtStation identity