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Vincent Pompetti on Sorcery

A Belgian-trained, France-based graphic-novel painter brought into the original Alpha pool, with a watercolor-ink signature unlike anything else on the roster.

artists pompetti curios alpha
Portrait of Vincent Pompetti
Photo by Georges Seguin (Okki) — via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Vincent Pompetti is a comics painter and illustrator — Italian by nationality, Belgian by birth, French by residence. He graduated from the Fine Arts School of St. Luc in Belgium in 2001, then moved through Italy to France to keep working on graphic novels and exhibitions as an illustrator and painter. He laid it out in his Collector Arthouse interview: "I'm Italian but I have lived in France for many years, and I studied in a fine art school in Belgium, the country where I was born."

His comics career anchors the rest. After meeting French scriptwriter Tarek, he illustrated several graphic novels: The Corsair (Le Corsaire du Roy), Conquest: Julius Caesar's Gallic War, and Ancient Astronauts. He produced King Arthur and the Ladies of the Lake (Avalon: Les Dames du Lac) and an Atlantis book — Le Sage d'Atlantide — under the Tartamudo imprint, and English-language editions of several titles ship through Black Panel Press. From 2016 onwards he started taking RPG commissions, primarily with the French publisher Mnemos — Nephilim, Tregor, Fire Wolf (a Viking RPG), and a forthcoming Flemish-market game named Mythe.

He's been an art teacher at French fine art schools since 2010, and runs workshops in Rennes through a programme called Terre & Feu covering drawing, painting, and studio practice. He exhibits across Switzerland, Italy, and France, has shown several times at Montreal Comic-Con, and the 2026 schedule covers Rennes (Angello restaurant, April-May), Sanary-sur-mer (Librairie Lune & Toile, March), and the Angoulême Comic Festival in January. He's also been on the road for Sorcery itself — Brussels in December 2025, SorceryCon Indianapolis in February 2026.

Style

Pompetti doesn't paint like the people he sits next to in the catalogue. Most of the Alpha-veteran cohort — Frazetta, Easley, Brom, Drew Tucker, Anson Maddocks — work in oil, on board, with a thick-paint finish. Pompetti's medium is watercolor ink, the brushwork is fluid and gestural, and the colour register sits much closer to European bande dessinée than to American sword-and-sorcery pulp. The line betrays the comics background — there's a tighter draughtsman's underpinning to his compositions than the oil painters tend to leave visible.

In his own framing:

"I prefer to work with watercolored inks (the classical 'Ecoline' is my favorite) because they combine the watercolor technique with effects similar to oil painting. This versatile medium responds well to special effects like water spraying, bleach, and other techniques. It is also ideal for printing, with no color loss."

"At the end, I often add highlights with acrylic or gouache paint. All my Sorcery works have been done this way ... my answer would have been oil painting, which I love and still do, but these inks have a final advantage: speed."

That's a working comics painter's answer. Print-friendly medium, fast enough to keep a graphic-novel page count moving, and versatile enough to take colour-and-highlight passes without rebuilding the surface. His influences, named in the same interview, are the early-20th-century American illustrators and the golden-era magazine artists — Alex Raymond and Harold Foster for line, Bernie Wrightson and Frank Frazetta for the fantasy register.

The Alpha 9-Piece Collage Curio card — three of nine panels are Pompetti commissions

9-Piece Collage (multi-artist, three Pompetti panels) — via Collector Arthouse

Cards on Sorcery

Collector Arthouse lists him as appearing across Alpha, Beta, and Arthurian Legends — three of the game's first four expansions. He took the role of concept artist for the project in addition to finished illustration.

The three 9-Piece Collage panels (Alpha Curio). The single richest concentration of Pompetti's pre-production work in the game. Storied Sharpshooter keeps the early "Ranged" effect; its "Warcry" mechanic was replaced by Genesis (the enter-play trigger that powers most of the current Alpha Minions). Ormfjord Holmganger references the medieval Scandinavian dueling tradition — Olofsson's own Path of Exile registry handle was "Holmganger," and the card was a Kickstarter "innkeeper" prize tier before being renamed The Champion and pulled from the playable pool. Furious Storm became Alpha's Stormy Seas; its "Enduring" mechanic evolved into the Submerge keyword. Three windows into the game's mechanical pre-history, all by the same hand. Full nine-panel walkthrough in Every Curio in Alpha.

Alpha and Beta retail spread. The Collector Arthouse artist gallery shows Pompetti on a wide spread of standard cards across Alpha and Beta: Abundance, Accursed Albatross, Arc Lightning, Attack by Night, Azuridge Caravan, Backstab, Blacksmith Family, Call to War, Captain Baldassare, Critical Strike, Dalcean Phalanx, Degradation, Dodge Roll, Dome of Osiros. Read as a group, the pieces lean martial — sieges, raids, weapon strikes, formations — which is the historical-comics terrain Pompetti's Conquest: Julius Caesar's Gallic War spent years working through.

Lance — Pompetti's medieval weapon, central to the Beta-era combat rules

Lance by Vincent Pompetti — via Curiosa

Lance (Beta). The medieval weapon Artifact at the heart of one of Sorcery's tidier rules cases: a Lance's first attack deals +1 damage and strikes first, then the Lance breaks. Per the July 2025 rulebook update, "Lances are made for dueling, not demolition" — attack a site with one and it shatters on impact.

Caerleon-Upon-Usk (Arthurian Legends). A direct collision between the day job and the commission. Caerleon-Upon-Usk is the Welsh town the medieval Arthurian romances place King Arthur's court at. Pompetti had already painted an Avalon graphic novel before this commission landed, and the published King Arthur and the Ladies of the Lake tells you the Site Card was effectively handed to the painter on the roster with the deepest existing Arthurian portfolio.

Helpful Hob (Arthurian Legends). The single Sorcery card the publisher has spotlighted Pompetti's process on directly, in the March 2025 "Artist Spotlight" piece on the official site. The Helpful Hob is a low-power utility Minion. Pompetti's own framing:

"For me, Sorcery is synonymous with freedom."

"I just adore these creatures, but I don't often have the occasion to paint them, so I was very happy when I discovered this character."

"I wanted to assume the classic aspect of the Hob; he had to be very sympathetic. I started almost immediately, without documentation — I was very trustful."

"I wanted a bit of green, then cold gray, and brown of the woods, to create a kind of faerie atmosphere."

He also describes the working relationship with Olofsson directly: "My email communication with Erik gives me a lot of motivation because he makes me feel his passion through how he gives precise feedback, but always with a lot of respect."

Personal favorites. Asked in his Collector Arthouse interview which of his own Sorcery commissions he was happiest with, Pompetti named four: Pirate Ship, Shield Maiden, Sanctuary, and Highland Princess. He singled out Highland Princess as "one of the fastest paintings I did," a function of the unusually clear art direction he got on it.

Where to see more Pompetti

  • pompetti.wordpress.com — the source of record. The site indexes the full graphic-novel backlist — The Corsair, Conquest: Julius Caesar's Gallic War, Ancient Astronauts, Constellation, Avalon: Les Dames du Lac, Le Sage d'Atlantide, the Pineto Dolce Vita documentary series on the Abruzzo region of Italy — and tracks exhibitions and signings.
  • Instagram — @vincentpompetti — the most active channel for new work: sketchbook pages, exhibition shots, and the occasional in-progress Sorcery commission.
  • English-language editions of several titles ship through Black Panel Press; the French originals via Tartamudo.
  • Erik's Curiosa — Vincent Pompetti artist page — the most current statement of what he's painted to date. The March 2025 Artist Spotlight on Helpful Hob is the most candid recent interview about his process.

Sources

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