Black Axe #5 Creator Commentary

I've made a Creator Commentary video for the fifth issue/chapter of Mouse Guard: The Black Axe!  Please feel free to follow along in your copy of the story in either issue form of from the hardcover as I talk about the behind the scenes details, art notes, and my head-space as I go page by page and panel by panel. Enjoy!

Direct YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/h-AwQHgv368

ONLINECON: Aug 19-23 on TWITCH

August 19-23 I'll be running a special event on my Twitch Stream (twitch.tv/davidpetersen). Over the course of those 5 days I'll be streaming 8 hours per day, spending half the time drawing, and the other half with guests for panels, interviews, and programming! I'l also be running a sale in my online store and adding new original artwork and merchandise to the store.
August 19-23rd I'll be running an ONLINECON on my


To the left you can see the promo for the event and I'll go into more details below!

The Guest list is pretty fantastic! And almost every other hour of the ONLINECON features one of them. An incomplete list of those joining me: Tony DiTerlizzi, Meredith Salenger, Jesse Glenn, Jeremy Bastian, Justin Gerard, Annie Stegg-Gerard, Gabriel Rodriguez, Mark Smylie, Gary Whitta, Johnny Frazier Allen, Chris Schweizer, Kishore Hari, James Wojtal, Gordon Smuder, Jamier Bressler, Julia Petersen, Darek Zabrocki, Didier Konings, and Luke Crane.

To see which guests are appearing when, check the full schedule below:

But in addition to guests, there will be several new items going into my Online Store during ONLINECON:

A new 11" x 11" print titled 'PREVAIL'

A new 24 page full color sketchbook collection titled 'Dawn, Daye, & Dusk'

While not 'for sale' a new Mouse Guard short story will be shown and read aloud by Meredith Salenger! The original art for the pages will be available for purchase in the store once the story has been read on Friday.

New original inked art from the Mouse Guard sketchbook

My hardwood Vidad Treepen's carved wands

Signed Mouse Guard books

(Fall, Winter & Black Axe)

And I've opened up commission slots so that I'll be working on those live on stream while the event goes on.

Since doing conventions in real-life is not an option right now, I wanted to offer up the closest alternative I could--a FREE convention, where I offer up new merchandise for sale, but beyond that, where we can get a chance to hang out and visit, where I can offer panel content and guests...where we can still enjoy our community of people who make and/or enjoy illustrative art that tells a story.

BONUS!
If you'd like to print out your own ONLINECON badge to wear as you watch, I've made 16 different ones (all 5 day passes--of course). Download, print, & enjoy! 

Mouse Guard 'Snapping Turtle' Process

Later this month I'll be releasing a new Mouse Guard sketchbook titled 'Dawn, Daye, & Dusk'. I've created new pieces for almost the entire contents of the collection––mostly themed on trying to get certain lighting effects in to show time of day.

This Snapping Turtle piece to the left is a finished piece for that collection. And below I'm going to go through the process steps to create the art.



Reference:
I started with wanting to be sure I had a few pieces for this collection with some kind of predator or threat. And it had been a while since I'd drawn a turtle that way in Mouse Guard (not since the 2011 Free Comic Book Day story that was later collected as the prologue for Black Axe). I found this photo of a snapping turtle and pretty faithfully used it as my jumping off point.


Pencils:
And using a lightpad I pretty literally drew the snapping turtle with the photo underneath to use for details & proportions. I did have to make some adjustments and line decisions, especially interpreting the back shell and repositioning the legs and feet. And since this is a Mouse Guard piece, I also had to draw some mice. I did that on separate sheets of paper––one a Guardmouse protecting the other, a mouse drawing water.



Layout:
With those drawing scanned into photoshop, I could make edits and adjustments until I found the positions I liked for each character. To help me see each form, as well as help define the landscape I'd neglected to draw in the pencils drawings, I did a quick digital color job to rough in the shapes of water and grass.

I may have gone a bit overboard on the 'quick' digital coloring mock up--but having the landscape defined this way helped me in the next step defining the inking values.

Inks:
I printed out the above digital layout on standard copy paper and taped that to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series Bristol. On my lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use as a guide to ink from. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (I think I only used the 0.7 and 0.3 nibs on this one).

As I said above, having the digital color reference for the light and dark areas on the stones helped me as I stippled all that rock and stone texture.


Flat Colors:
With the inks completed and scanned back into Photoshop, I started on the coloring process. I used my colors from the mock-up as a starting point as I flatted in the base colors. This process is called 'flatting since all the colors are just that––flat colors with no texture or shading. It's just a way to establish where the various colors start and stop.

I also added a color hold at this stage on the grass and the water and some of the turtle's details. A color hold is where I want the ink work to be isolated and painted a color other than black.

Final colors:
The last step was to do all the rendering and adding light and shadow and texture to the piece. I do this almost entirely with the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop while using a stock texture brush.
I like that this piece has a narrative to it. When doing the layout I opted to rough in a clutch of eggs to show the turtle's motivations, and at the inking stage I put in a broken bow and a few arrows in the turtle's face. With just those little elements this single image tells several moments from before this tense snapshot of a Guardmouse's life.

ONLINECON info

Twitch Stream (twitch.tv/davidpetersen). Over the course of those 5 days I'll be streaming 8 hours per day, spending half the time drawing, and the other half with guests for panels, interviews, and programming! I'l also be running a sale in my online store and adding new original artwork and merchandise to the store.
August 19-23rd I'll be running an ONLINECON on my



To the left you can see the promo for the event and I'll go into more details below!

The Guest list is pretty fantastic! And almost every other hour of the ONLINECON features one of them. An incomplete list of those joining me: Tony DiTerlizzi, Meredith Salenger, Jesse Glenn, Jeremy Bastian, Gallery Gerard, Gabriel Rodriguez, Mark Smylie, Chris Schweizer, Kishore Hari, James Wojtal, Gordon Smuder, Jamier Bressler, Julia Petersen, Darek Zabrocki, Didier Konings, and Luke Crane.

To see which guests are appearing when, check the schedule below:

But in addition to guests, there will be several new items going into my Online Store during ONLINECON:

A new 11" x 11" print titled 'PREVAIL'

A new 24 page full color sketchbook collection titled 'Dawn, Daye, & Dusk'

While not 'for sale' a new Mouse Guard short story will be shown and read aloud by Meredith Salenger! The original art for the pages will be available for purchase in the store once the story has been read on Friday.

New original inked art from the Mouse Guard sketchbook

My hardwood Vidad Treepen's carved wands

Signed Mouse Guard books

(Fall, Winter & Black Axe)

And I'll be opening up commission slots a few days before ONLINECON starts so that I'll be working on them live on stream while the event goes on.

Since doing conventions in real-life is not an option right now, I wanted to offer up the closest alternative I could--a FREE convention, where I offer up new merchandise for sale, but beyond that, where we can get a chance to hang out and visit, where I can offer panel content and guests...where we can still enjoy our community of people who make and/or enjoy illustrative art that tells a story.