Columns and Features

The time is 7:46 in the morning, as the people of Iri mark the time. The sun is rising over the leeward horizon when the Kasitor Bay ripples with a wave that is not quite a wave (fine, it's a bit late for a sunrise, but your memory of the event has painted it with a bit of an artistic license). From the illusory water rises a spren with a body like a jet of water, a hundred feet tall (your memory embellishes the sight a bit again), four arms sprouting from the main body, landing on pillars carefully constructed in the exact locations the arms' hands land every morning. Cusicesh the Protector has arrived, just like it does every morning.

Follow us after the break for the full illustration!

We are extremely excited that at long, long last, we are starting a new podcast series where we reread various Brandon works and talk about our thoughts! This show will be both on our YouTube channel and our podcast feed, and will be weekly! We'll be starting with Mistborn: The Final Empire starting May 7th, so if you want to read along with us, get started on that! We'll be doing a Mistborn book a month until the end of October, right before The Lost Metal's release!

Frequent visitors of our Discord server might be familiar with user betweenskyandsea, known on Instagram as heatherly.draws. She is not only talented and versatile in her art, but also incredibly helpful to other artists in our community, and an overall great person to have around. So it goes without saying that we've been looking for an excuse to have her work on something. Well, it turns out that she had a great idea for how to depict the Pantheon archipelago from Sixth of the Dusk (several ideas, actually), and we love what she's done with the place!

Follow us after the break for the full illustration!

The vibrant blues of the water, the variety of Aviar flying over the myriad of islands overgrown with vegetation, and - for the eagle-eyed viewer - a hint of something special hidden deep within the Father, Patji. Make sure you send her your love, friends!

Chapter 1 and 2 of the Lost Metal was read last November at the Dragonsteel Mini-Con, and was posted online in February. It took a bit to record this episode due to sickness and Brandon's recent bombshell, but enjoy! We don't know when future sample chapters will be coming out, but I imagine this will be our last Lost Previews for a while until sample chapters come in earnest.

Hey, everyone!

It's been a little while since we had one of these for you, but between scheduling and post-holidays food comas, art has been taking just a little bit longer than usual. Nothing to fret about, but we wanted to give you a heads up. Both the (last) December and (this) February are in progress, and they are both looking great - just, you know, not ready.

But you are not here for status updates, you are here for witty commentary and pretty art, and this post is going to deliver at least one of those!

Follow us after the break for the complete illustration!

We're getting back to some previews for Lost Metal, this time covering Lost Metal's Prologue! We'll also be covering the reading of chapter 1 and 2 later this week, so even though this is a bit of a late one, we thought it'd be weird to not have Danielle and Marvin talk about the prologue as well! 

So, turns out we have an extra art commission for you all, because the other September piece left us with too much money in our art budget. No real connection between the two, we just grabbed the runner-up from that month and did... well, not quite that, but something similar. Art once again brought to you by Shuravf. 

Okay, that should be enough words to fill up this article's blurb, let's go take a look at Phendorana after the break!

Our preview show with Danielle and Marvin is back, this time talking about The Lost Metal, the fourth Mistborn Era 2 novel that comes out November 15th, 2022! Preview chapters have not begun yet, and we don't know when they will, but we do have an extremely spicy blurb/synopsis for the book, and that's what we're talking about today!

Oh, friends, what a glorious day it is for us to have eyes! 2021's Coppermind art commission for September came in not too long ago, and it's a looker. It comes to you from the skilled hand of Shuravf whose work you've seen before, and will continue seeing in the future. But you don't come here to read read words, you come here to see all the beautiful and horrible things we pay people to paint, so follow us after the break for the full illustration!

 Spoilers for Dawnshard 

There's been a lot of interest in the Wheel of Time show amongst our viewers and our staff, so we thought we would do a stream talking about it! About half of the stream will be show spoilers without any book spoilers, and then the second half of the stream will be show spoilers with all book spoilers! Stream will begin Sunday, January 9th, at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern.

Cosmere Inktober is an annual month-long art challenge, much like NaNoWriMo for writers. During the month of October, Cosmere fans complete illustrations for the 31 daily prompts. Because the 2021 run is now over and this article has been sitting in the backlog for like 2 months, forgotten, we can all go back and look at some of the wonderful art (plus a handful of cursed pieces :P) this talented fandom has produced. We wanted to take a little bit of time and highlight a few artists who completed all 31 Cosmere Inktober 2021 prompts, and also showcase a few of our favorite pieces to come out of this month.

Spooky month is now over, but our patrons voted for their favorite spooky piece back in October, and we come to deliver. Come feast your eyes on this absolutely disgusting depiction of a Cryptic having been pulled into the Physical Realm (and the back of Dalinar's body). This illustration comes to you courtesy to the ever-excellent Nozomi.

Full illustration below the break

If you haven't heard, this is a particularly special month: it's NaCoWriMo! You heard me, it's National Novel Coppermind Writing Month! That's a thing, right? Read on for more details! We've also overhauled our Coppermind Claims spreadsheet. It's now easier than ever for you to hop over and claim an article (or just a section) that you want to help out with!

Never helped edit the Coppermind wiki before? Have no fear! Your contributions are invaluable to us, and the best way to learn is through experience!

Welcome to the second Guess the Sanderson challenge on the channel! This time, it's Ben and L doing the guessing and the sandersoning.

Let us know how you guys get on down in the comments below. We intentionally hid the books before the guesses so you guys can play along! Enjoy!

Hello, hello!

As the last rays of the Scadr-- er, Northern Hemisphere's summer touch down upon the land, and fall's rains and mists come to conquer the land, we have a (mostly)... somber piece for you. Our patrons wanted to see Wax's breakdown from the end of Shadows of Self, and that's what we have here.

August's art commission comes to you from the ever-amazing-to-work-with Eli Gardor, who not only did a fantastic job at capturing Wax and Steris, but managed to sneak a bunch of little details in the background too, for the thorough observer. See how many you can spot

On this stream, we will be answering questions from our patrons over on Patreon! We probably won't be able to answer many questions in chat, but hopefully you find this Q&A stream fun! Our patrons have sent in some pretty good questions so far. But everyone can watch this, and it'll start Sunday September 19th at 10am Pacific.

Round up, round up! Come one, come all to the amazing Two-Armed Brits Chouta stand!

This time, we'll be going through the lovely menu of chouta flavours that we were provided from the Way of Kings Leatherbound Kickstarter exclusive drinks coaster. We decided we could definitely give making these a go. Let us know how you think we did! Leave a comment down below on what you'd do differently!

It feels like it's been some time since we did a bigger piece here, with the May one taking a while (while we'll stop bringing up; it's shaping up to be as good as many of the paintings you see inside the leatherbounds, so it'll take as long as it needs to), and the June one being a series of small subjects. So why don't we slingshot in the other direction and go big?

Our patrons voted for New Seran in the July art poll, and New Seran we deliver! The city is not awfully important for the plot of The Bands of Mourning, and is usually mostly known as the location of The Hotel Scene (though it is also where Wax meets with Kelesina Shores), but it is a visually stunning location, with its tiers of rocky plateaus and cascading waterfalls. We've wanted to get Lyraina (Twitter) to paint an environment for us for a long time, and this was as good of an opportunity as we were ever going to get - especially since she graciously gave us a massive discount for this one piece. So, enjoy the city whose people think that Harmony must've been showing off when he was shaping it.

All good things must come to an end, friends, and - since the June commissions have definitely been good - we must bring this art reveal season to a close.

So feast your eyes upon the Bands of Mourning, which are definitely bands that were definitely worn by the Lord Ruler, everything about the legends is true, don't worry about-- hey, what are you doing with that statue's spearhead?! Oh well. Wayne broke it, sorry. No Bands, I guess, but have this nifty definitely aluminum spearhead - plus one of ReLuur's photographs evanotypes, as a bonus over on our public Patreon post.

This final June commission is brought to you by a fan artist who needs no introduction, it's Shuravf (Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr), whose work already graces many a Coppermind page. You know the deal, go give her thumbs ups and hearts and stuff.

Another week goes by (not that we are committing to a weekly schedule!), and another June illustration rises over the horizon. Like a moon. On planets that have one. Of which Sel is one.

Anyway, no one comes to these posts for the witty commentary, so as you’ve likely cleverly deduced, this piece is the Moon Scepter of the Rose Empire - a subject we absolutely had to give to Botanica (Twitter, Tumblr) whose iconic work has been in the fandom since its very early days, and you can most recently find in the Kaladin album (digital) art book. They are present on pretty much every art-related website, so go give them a thumbs up and a heart!

I (Jessie) went to JordanCon 2021 this July, with a bunch of other Sharders! Join in on my adventures and experiences, such as talking to Brandon, getting people to try Vegemite, and some silliness too! There are some big Rhythm of War spoilers in here, just so you know!

Those June art pieces just keep on coming, don't they? Let us know if you'd like us to do more of these simpler but more numerous art commissions in the future - we were thinking we'd those maybe once or twice a year, but art reveal season is fun season!

And speaking of, this week we've got the King's Drop for you all! Paintweaver (Instagram, Tumblr) is another artist we've wanted to work with for a long time, and the relative simplicity of this illustration (plus scheduling luck) finally gave us this opportunity. The illustration is absolutely gorgeous, and the shifting smoky images inside it are an amazing representation of the captured Thrill. Fingers crossed that the Kholins keep this safe and don't go and, I don't know, throw it in the ocean or something!

Friends, this week we have a treat for you! Nozomi Matsuoka (Instagram, DeviantArt) might not have the largest of Cosmere fanart portfolios, but the quality of her work speaks for itself. You might have seen the commissions she’s done for Argent (Jasnah, because of course he is going to commission a Jasnah, but also this excellent Maya from a critical Rhythm of War scene), and this time we wanted to see what painterly wonders she will come up with if we gave her what was arguably the most challenging June commission - the gems and spheres from Roshar.

It’s but a few days until JordanCon, and with a lot of the Staff going, we thought the time was right to treat you to another one of our June art commissions. We’ve been fans of Elisgardor’s art (Instagram, Twitter), and have wanted to commission her for an illustration (i.e. Argent has been itching to get his greedy grubby grabby hands on some of her art), but she’s been busy… until recently. When we approached her with the list of winners, she immediately gravitated towards the idea of painting Vindication on a backdrop that looks like her blueprints, and friends, she blew our socks off! Not only was her artwork incredible and timely, she was also a joy to work with, so make sure you press all the Internet buttons on her socials.