Back again with another look at the process for creating the cover for a Legends of the Guard Volume 2 issue. For this cover, I wanted to feature a lot of species of animal and one mouse. Originally the concept was for the mouse to be a musician...but I saved that idea for a different cover...
So instead of the mouse being a musician, I decided the should be a great speaker...such a great speaker, that with only words they can keep predatory animals at bay. I turned to the Mouse Guard RPG again for a list of animals that are in the mouse territories, but that I may not have drawn before. My final grouping consisted of a coyote, a badger, a bullfrog and a kestral (though I'd also toyed with a drawing of an opossum before scrapping it).
Scanning the several pages & pieces of paper I drew roughs on, I assembled this digital composite of the cover. The ease of digital process to allow me to scoot and shrink and bump each drawing a bit until I have the composition just the way that works (with the animals in proportion to one another). I tinted each animal to help me as I was making adjustments (and also later for inking) so that I could see where one animal began and the next ended.
For the inks, I printed out the digital layout on standard copy paper, but taped that to the back of a sheet of 300 series Strathmore bristol. On a lightbox I was able to see the guide printout through the bristol and then ink on the surface of the bristol with Copic Multi-Liner pens (I like the 0.7 nib best). I tried to play a bit with line weight sand line texture to make each area or critter a bit different, but without overly relying on the inks to tell the story so I had some open space to color.
The colors started with flatting the areas out with base colors. Most of the color choices for each animal were fairly straight forward, except for the coyote, who I made a little more yellow-brown than normal...but did so to avoid the confusion that it was a wolf. The colors for the mouse's attire were meant to echo some of the tones in the animals he was addressing.
Here is another look at the final rendered cover for issue 2 sans-text & logo:
Watercolor Wednesday: Last week's watercolor pieces were D&D style elementals. I started with the tree-guy, but then decided some of the branches looked more like roots...and thought it would be fun to do a series of elementals.
2013 Appearances:
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
Albuquerque Comic Expo June 21-23
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21
*more 2013 dates coming*
Looks great! Thanks for sharing the process.
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