Isaac Stewart

Isaac Stewart
Education	Brigham Young University
Occupation	Artist
Website	http://www.isaacstewart.com/

Isaac Stewart is a native of Idaho Falls, Idaho. He is a longtime artistic collaborator of Brandon's, and is Brandon's Art Director of Dragonsteel Entertainment. He is also the creator of one of The Stormlight Archive's fan favorite characters, Nazh.

Characteristics

Isaac and his wife Kara joined Dragonsteel Entertainment prior to the publication of Words of Radiance.

Artwork

His work includes the interior art of Brandon's Mistborn novels, including the symbols, and much of the interior art in The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, and Rhythm of War, including the chapter icons, maps, and Navani's Notebook pages, plus the endpapers, star charts and symbols for Arcanum Unbounded, the cover art for the novella, Edgedancer, and the cover art for the novella, Dawnshard, along with Ben McSweeney.

His favorite piece of art he's done for the cosmere is the oil painting of the Roshar map, with the Shadesmar map and Surgebinding charts as close seconds.

Isaac offers merchandise designed on his artwork for Sanderson's books through InkWing.

Writing

“	"I have told Isaac Stewart he is welcome to write, in the cosmere, anything he would like to, and I will coauthor it with him. I will work on it to make sure. Because Isaac was there from almost the beginning. Peter was the person who was working with me before the cosmere was released, but I met Isaac in 2004, and Isaac started working with me on Mistborn art right then in 2004. I've told Isaac he can do whatever he wants; he's got a blank slate to be involved in the cosmere in any way he would like."	”
–Brandon Sanderson

He also co-writes a webcomic, Rocket Road Trip, with Shawn Boyles.

Knights Radiant

When asked which Radiant order with which he most identifies, Isaac replied that he identifies with bits and pieces of most of them. His gut reaction was to say Dustbringers because he loves their glyph, but he identifies with their relationship to responsibility, learning to keep the passion and rage at bay because that is the responsible thing to do. On the other side of the coin, he's said he might identify more with the Edgedancers like Lift, who focus on helping and caring for other people, because that's also a huge part of his personality.

All that said, he took the unofficial test, and it said he's a Bondsmith.

Cosmere Characters

When asked who his favorite cosmere characters are, Isaac replied "Dalinar, Nazh, Khriss, Hoid, [Nicki] Savage, Vin, Kaladin, Vasher and Baon, exactly in that order. But honestly, I love them all. Brandon has created such a wonderful universe of characters, and I pinch myself every day that I get to assist in the workings of these worlds."

When asked, even Moash, Isaac replied that "Moash has become a great tragic character, in my opinion. Yes, people love to hate him, but that still makes a great character. And it's the tragedy of his choices that pulls the emotions from us."

Notes

About maps, Isaac usually thinks about who would be drawing a given map, and for whom. In the new maps that were done for the Elantris Tenth Anniversary Edition, those maps done for the Fjordell Empire, were created by cartographers who were worried that if they didn't do it right, they might lose their heads or be thrown in prison or something like that, and so they artificially inflate, maybe, the landmass of the empire, those sorts of things.

So, he thinks about that, and then does fun things.

“	"Cause throughout history ... I mean, maps have started wars. You draw a line on a map and you say 'this is where one thing starts and another thing begins' and people dispute it. There was a whole thing about when Pakistan was separated from India, and somebody drew a line on a map and set a date and said 'this is the time when Pakistan will be Pakistan and India will be India' and then, like, a million people died in the war that came after that. So I'm thinking about these things when I make the maps, because it's a relic of history on the worlds. It's a way to really flesh out more of the worldbuilding."	”
–Isaac Stewart

External Links

He can be found on Facebook here and Twitter here.

His website is here.

Q&A with Isaac

Q. How did you meet Brandon?

A. Kind of in a roundabout way. We were both at a magazine at BYU called The Leading Edge. I didn't go as often. He was the editor; I met him once or twice. He didn't remember me, but I met a lot of other people that worked at the magazine who, now, some of them are my coworkers here at Dragonsteel. But I stopped going to the magazine at some point, finished my schooling, went on to start working, and decided that I needed to go back to school for optometry. I just didn't know if there was going to be a future in art for me, so I went back to school for optometry. I already had a lot of the prerequisites because I had tried a stint at dentistry for a few years before going into animation.

So I went back to school, decided to take the science fiction writing class again at BYU. By this time, Brandon was teaching it. He and I were closer in age than the other students there. This was, like, his second year teaching it. And we just clicked. We became friends. One night at dinner (because we would go out after the class and eat on those nights), I was drawing on the tablecloth at a Macaroni Grill (where they give you the crayons and things), and he said, "Oh, I didn't know you were an artist." 'Cause I was going to school for optometry at the time, I wasn't really advertising that I was an artist. So, doodling on the tablecloth, he said, "Hey, wanna do maps for my next book?" By this time, Elantris wasn't out yet, but it was about to come out. So I said, "Sure, I'll do your maps." He didn't know that I'd been doing fantasy maps on the side just for fun for quite a while, so it was kind of serendipitous.