I was looking up art for this week's Kyren Game, and came upon the art for Erase. Except... it wasn't Erase as we know it:



This is from Richard Wright's website (http://richard-wright.com/photo/erase/) so I'm assuming it's the original version... is there a story behind this? Was it commissioned as a dark spooky tower and then reworked as enchantment hate due to Development cutting a card?

That, my dear friend, is the castle Esare,
Where dangerous drakes float like leaves in the air,
The commission was made for the dark and perverse,
But a typo had made that commission reverse...

I am suddenly absolutely sure this is what happened

You can talk about voting and rules of majority,
But speaking in verse confers instant authority...

"The poets lie."
-Homer

There's truth within the words you heard him say:
I find it easier to sleep that way!
-Raven

My guess Is that he worked in stages, creating the entire enchanted castle before adding the erase effect on it, as this is basically the background of the finished card art. And it is not hard to imagine that he would have liked this version better than the finished one outside of the context of the card. After all, the version on the card would be really hard to grok without the context the card provides.

The exact same thing happened with Burst Lightning.

Elements are added as cards change purpose, but it's already after the artist submits their work so WotC does it in house. The artist might get a ping that the named changed so they can correctly list the images they do have. Not the most common thing and these are the only two cases immediately jumping to mind.

I am almost positive I saw a html hover-over graphic with the before/after art for that Erase.