Last weekend at the Boston Comic Con, I offered up this piece for their annual auction. Part of the proceeds this year went to Savannah College of Art & Design’s Mike Wieringo Fund for aspiring comic book artists, and The Canadian Cancer Society in memory of Darwyn Cooke.To the left you can see the finished 15" x 20" watercolor piece, but below are the process shots as I worked on it in preparation for flying to Boston the week before.
The first step was to come up with a design. I chose a Mouse who's been on the covers of the RPG boxed set and Legends of the Guard Volume 3: Sextus. After a small drawing of him on copy paper, I scanned the result and put it together with a border design and a grid. The grid is there to help me register the various sheets of paper when I tape together the printout at-szie.
Once the printout is taped together, I rub graphite over the back over all the lines. This allows me to trace over the drawing on the front while the printout is taped to my final mat board. Wherever my pen pushes down on the printout the graphite on the back transfers over to the mat board.
Here is the drawing all transferred over onto the mat board and ready for watercolor.
Supplies: cup of water, a cheap tray of student watercolors, and various brushes (though I mostly used the large flat, the large sable round, and the scrubbiest of the small brushes.
With Watercolor it's all about building up slowly and either utelizing wet-on-wet blends and effects, or being patient and waiting to do wet-on-dry. First washes were the green forest background:
More buildup for some subtle pine bows in the background before starting the figure
The brown fur and light inner ear, paws and tail. In Watercolor you generally work from lightest to darkest.
I skipped a photo here. Obviosuly I did some more building up of the fur, and then here I've just put down the base for Sextus' cloak.
While waiting for the big cloak area of red to dry, I worked on some details: the eye, sword, and inner ear.
More cloak buildup, and the belt. This is the last step with the watercolor...
And then to 'ink' the piece and add some definition and line back into the fray, I used a brown prismacolor color pencil to outline Sextus.
The original sold at the auction but, if you didn't get a chance to bid, I'll be doing another piece like this for New York Comic Con.
2016 Appearances:
3 comments:
What was the winning price for the piece? :)
Fantastic work of art, I really like it :)
By the way, on the Mouseguard online shop it says that the 2015 Baltimore Yearbook: Celebrating Mouse Guard is sold out. Does that mean that there aren't anymore for sale or that it just needs stocked?
Mayhem: I was there, but I've forgotten. It went to Anthony (art dealer) who I wouldn't be surprised if he re-sold it.
Anonymous: That means my personal stock of them is sold out...but you can check with the Baltimore Comic Con or Comics Cards & Collectables in Baltimore...they probably still have some.
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