David Petersen's Blog

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Caledon Spargan: Daggerheart RPG Character

It has been years (decades) since I've properly played an RPG. My friends and I all lament not rolling dice together, but getting our schedules to synch up, the distance we live apart, and the age old 'who'd going to run it?' have been hurdles we've not yet gotten past. But recently my friend Jesse Glenn got inspired to run a newer RPG from the folks at Critical Role called Daggerheart.

So-far our group (which happen to be the same friends I made into The Gilkey Warlocks) have gotten together to make our characters. Here is mine Caledon Spargan. And below I'll break down the character art for him.

The character is a Fungril (mushroom person) Ranger (specifically one who specializes with an animal companion). I struggled a bit to find the balance between humanoid and fungus in the face especially, and while searching mushroom types I found turkey tail mushrooms a great inspiration and used them to inform a beard as well as the feet of Caledon.

I drew his body on one sheet of copy paper, and then on a Huion lightpad, I placed another sheet of paper over that one to draw his clothing. The owl was drawn last and was done using reference of a great horned owl photo. The drawings were assembled in Photoshop and I added in a grappling hook (listed as my secondary weapon on my character sheet) with a photo and some quick digital rope drawing.

When I was happy with the layout drawing, I printed it out and taped it to the back of a sheet of Stathmore 300 series bristol. On my lightpad I was able to use the printout below as a guide while I inked on the surface of the bristol. I used a 0.7 nib Copic Multiliner SP pen for the whole thing.

There was a lot of little detail that I probably should have used a smaller nib for, but I wanted the challenge of using a light touch with the 0.7 on the face and lichen details on his clothes.

The other trick was to add just enough texture to each garment or his skin to make it a different material without overwhelming the piece and focusing the heavier handed ink to the feet.

I scanned the inked art into Photoshop and started the color flatting. This is just to separate the different parts of the drawing as different colors, a professional coloring-in-the-lines. To the left side I just used whatever fake colors I quickly selected to get the flats established.

Then on the right you can see where I landed with my final base color choices. There were many variations in between (going with red/orange for the mushroom bits and green for the armor. Then back to green mushrooms with warmer brown leather...until I got to this blue and green combo I was pleased with. At this stage I also established color holds (areas where I want the inkwork to be a color other than black) for the mushroom spots on his skin and for the outlines of the armor lichen.

I got from the pencils to the end of the flatting stage after one sitting––it reminded me of back when I used to do Discovering Dragons, and it felt good. But I waited till the next day to render the final colors. I did so using the Dodge and Burn tools with a stock textured brush.

Drawing your RPG character (as well as the other players in your party, if you happen to be the 'artist' of the group, is one of the real pleasures of playing an RPG and part that I certainly missed. I hope to draw the other two player's for this adventure: a Drakon (Dragon person) Seraph and a Halfling War Wizard.

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Wind in the Willows 2nd edition Cover

I am thrilled to announced that after being out of print for many years, my illustrated edition of Wind in the Willows is be re-released by IDW October 7th 2025!

Back when I first illustrated the book about a decade ago, it was a bucket list project for me. Getting to return to the book and create a new cover for the new edition was a delight and offered me a chance to update the cover. Here you see the cover with title, spine treatment and back blurb, but below I'll go into the process of revisiting these riverbankers and wild wooders.

One of the troubles I had with the first edition cover (which will be included as a 2 page spread illustration in this edition) was a scene that included all four characters. I see this book as a true ensemble cast, but the number of times they are all together are very limited and mostly occur at the end of the book. So for this cover I went with circular portraits of them over a scenic view of the river with drapes of willow branches hanging down.

I'd already drawn versions of these portraits for bookplates that were never produced for the first release, I cobbled those together with branches in one of the existing interior illustration, redrew Rat and Mole messing-about-in-boats for the back cover...and drew a new version of Toad Hall...which I heavily based on this photo of the back of Mapledurham House, a location long used by other Willows adapters as reference and what I used my first go-around.

With the above layout assembled using old and new drawings with digitally blocked in color, I set about inking the new version. I know I could have kept the old portraits, but for the sake of the new piece being a complete work of art and to keep the line quality consistent through the whole piece, I inked the whole thing from scratch.

The original is roughly 24" x 16" and even at that large scale it was difficult to ink the details of Toad Hall as well as I wanted.

I scanned the art (in several passes since something that large won't fit on my scanner bed) and started the coloring process. The first step, called flatting' is about establishing all the color areas with flat colors (though there are a few quickly painted gradients I put down quickly to map out what my plan was. This step also includes doing color holds (areas where I want the inkwork to be a color other than black) and pretty much everything is a color hold here...the portraits are a dark brown the frames are a warmer brown the water, the clouds, the willows, and the distance all get some tone to soften this image so there are no harsh black lines.

The last step was to render the final colors. I mostly used the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop while using a stock textured brush––but I also used the paintbrush with another soft textured brush for some of the more subtle color transitions. Here you can see the full cover art with no trade dress.

Wind in the Willows will be in stores October 7th 2025 published by IDW

And you can pre-order it here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/796673/the-wind-in-the-willows-with-illustrations-by-david-petersen-by-kenneth-grahame-david-petersen/

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Saxon & Kenzie

This is a colored version of an inked piece I did (long enough ago I can't remember if it was just for fun or a commission).

I enjoy getting a chance to go back and color these to add some more depth and clarity while also hopefully making some new process blogposts for you all to see and eventually to be included in a new sketchbook (though I just released on this summer: Axe Wielders which is still available for sale)

Below is the process for creating the illustration as well as coloring the artwork.

Pencils:
The start of this was done as two separate drawings on different sheets of copy paper of both Saxon and Kenzie. Those were scanned and tinted different colors in photoshop as I digitally blocked in a tree and some leaves (and digitally added some bark detail to the tree). The grass was it's own layer where I had an outline so that each blade of grass I drew already had a hard line around it for clarity. Oh! and I dropped in a 3D model of a sword because I didn't draw one beyond a directional line in the pencils

Working like this allows me to still draw some on paper while also getting the resizing and editing benefits of digital.

Inks:
With the layout complete, I printed it out and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my huion lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use as a guide as I inked. I inked this with Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.3 & 0.7 nibs).

Most of the 'work' in this piece was in the texture of that bark and trying be sure it wasn't overwhelming and had some depth while leaving the forms of the characters clear.

Color Flats:
The first step of digitally coloring a piece is do establish the color areas with flat colors (a professional version of coloring-in-the-lines). Most of my color choices were already established with the characters themselves and the layout, but I adjusted them at this stage to make the piece more cohesive.

I also established color holds (areas where I want the inked line art to be a color other than black) on the background grass and the leaf veins.

Final Render:
The rendering was all done with the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop with a stock textured brush.

Here my trickiest part was getting a sense the light was coming in from the right on the character as well as a the leaves and the highlights on the bark.

This piece will be included in the next sketchbook out sometime in 2026!

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Mouse & Magpie Illustration

This is a colored version of an inked commission I did for a fan a long while back. The idea was a mouse horder/collector (insert pack-rat joke here) along with a magpie companion.

I enjoy getting a chance to go back and color these to add some more depth and clarity while also hopefully making some new process blogposts for you all to see and eventually to be included in a new sketchbook (though I just released on this summer: Axe Wielders which is still available for sale)

Below is the process for creating the commission as well as coloring the artwork.

Pencils:
The start of this was done as three separate drawings on different sheets of copy paper. The mouse was drawn first and the magpie was drawn using photo reference. On top of those sheets on a lightpad I drew the mouse's collection of goods. Those elements were all scanned and tinted different color in photoshop and moved and re-sized until it fit well inside the square border of the piece. A quick amount of tan digital painting was done to imply the areas of the tree background and the rocks and stick debris in the foreground

Inks:
With the layout complete, I printed it out and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my huion lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use as a guide as I inked. I inked this with Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.3 & 0.7 nibs). Since this original art is what the fan who commissioned this piece will own, I always want the art to be crisp, clean, and detailed enough to stand on it's own without color.

The original was then shipped off to be with it's owner, but not before I got a good scan of it.

Color Flats:
The first step of digitally coloring a piece is do establish the color areas with flat colors (a professional version of coloring-in-the-lines). Here the final color palate isn't as important as being able to easily isolate any part of the piece when it comes time to render it (like being able to grab just the mouse's fur or just the cooking pot, or the sword in the magpie's beak, etc)..so while I got the backgound and figure colors close to final in this step, with all the bits of the mouse's collection overlapping each other, I needed to abstract that and just do vibrantly wrong colors to be sure I got everything and enough separation between them all.

Final Render:
I'll admit, this piece was hard to manage so the viewer could still focus on the characters while being able to get lost in the objects. The rendering was all done with the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop with a stock textured brush. I forgot to mention on the step above, I added a color hold (where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) to the trees in the background as well as the ground as it recedes into the background on the left.

This piece will be included in the next sketchbook out sometime in 2026!

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Dawn of the Black Axe Hardcover

Dawn of the Black Axe, the three issue Mouse Guard mini series about the first wielder of the Black Axe is coming out in hardcover in early 2026. The miniseries was written and colored by me and drawn by Gabriel Rodriguez (Locke & Key).

To Pre-Order: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/813486/mouse-guard-dawn-of-the-black-axe-by-david-petersen/

For the hardcover collection, I did all of the book design and asked Gabe to do a new illustration for the cover. Here you can see the final cover design, but below I'll walk you though the process Gabe & I went through to create it.

I sent Gabe some reference and a sketch of the type of image I though the cover needed. Specifically Bardrick with the Black Axe (referencing an old print of mine and a panel of Gabe's from the book) along with the concept of some kind of knot of the five snakes behind him.

Gabe was worried about making the background too chaotic and unreadable and opted for a more geometric and stylized version of the snakes (he told me he was inspire by Thulsa Doom's symbol from the Conan movie). Here are his pencils:

Gabe then inked the artwork in his expert way of knowing how to play with line weight and pattern. And he sent over a high-res scan.

I then did the color flatting on the piece establishing flat colors for everything and also creating color holds (areas where I want the linework to be a color other than black) on the snake circle and then on all of their eyes. Most of the color choices were established in the issues already I needed just to sample them.

The final colors were done using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop to render shadows and highlights and add some texture with a stock brush.

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Dawn of the Black Axe Cover Roundup

With all issues of Mouse Guard: Dawn of the Black Axe now released (and a hardcover due out early next year) I wanted to look back at all the covers and share the process art posts about each of them and celebrate the work Gabriel, Goni, Derek, Walter, Kevin, Matt and I did for this mini series.

ISSUE #1