Mouse Guard 'Mortimer' Wanted Poster Process

Last year just before everything shut down to COVID, I created a print that was a wanted poster of a mouse named Mortimer. The idea was to lightly poke at Mickey after the Mouse Guard movie was canceled.

I did a very limited run of these, tea staining each one, and sold them at C2E2 in 2020 and the handful that I came home with through my online store. Well, I've reprinted them again (though this is the last batch I'll do) for ONLINECON, and in this week's blogpost I'll run through the process to create the art as well as the tea staining.

You can purchase any remaining prints here: mouseguard.bigcartel.com

The idea started with an inside joke amongst family and friends who, like me, were still raw about the movie cancelation. I penciled out a drawing of a familiar looking black furred mouse with buttons, gloves, and pale face as an executioner with an axe (note the silhouette of the details on the top and bottom of the axe)

Someone in the group that I was texting the image to mentioned what a fun print it would make...and I thought it would be a fun in-world wanted poster.

So I used my pencil drawing as a guide to ink from

The inks though needed to look very specific. I wanted to have them seem like a block print--something the mice of the territories would be able to mass produce to share far and wide.

Even though my degree is in printmaking, I didn't want to carve a print block for it though, and I found a way with brush pen to replicate a convincing enough look of a woodblock print to satisfy myself.

Below is a timelapse video of me inking the piece on my Twitch stream

With the inked artwork done, I scanned it and worked up the type using a font. I then rasterized the text (meaning to make it into graphic pixels instead of editable type) so I could custom destress it so it too had imperfections like a woodblock print.

I had the posters laser printed at 9" x12" at a local print shop on a heavy stock paper.

Jeremy Bastian shared with me his tea staining instructions that he uses for all his Cursed Pirate Girl prints. And I cycled through a rotation of prints on a tray getting stained and brushed with tea while others that had already gone though that process baked in the oven at a low temperature.

This means that every print is unique in some way. Some are lighter, some darker, some splotchier, some with streaks, etc--no two are alike, and every one of them was stained by me.

After the prints come out of the oven, they are pretty warped. I stack heavy books on top of them for a few days to help flatten them out so they are easier for us to bag, board, and ship--and for you to frame or store.

Below again is one of the final Mortimer prints. This is the final run of them and I do not plan to print more. You can purchase any remaining prints here: mouseguard.bigcartel.com

ONLINECON MARCH 2021 INFO!

March 24-28 ONLINECON will be on my Twitch Stream (twitch.tv/davidpetersen) from 2-10 pm east. Over the course of those 5 days I'll be streaming 8 hours each day, spending half the time drawing commissions, and the other half with guests for panels, interviews, and programming!

In my online store everything except commissions will be 25% OFF using ordercode ONLINECON starting on Wednesday at 2pm

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


I'm proud of the guest list we've been able to assemble for this event. I'll be drawing on the even

numbered hours, but on the odd numbered hours of ONLINECON features a panel or presentation by one of our guests. Joining me will be: Stan Sakai, Angela DiTerlizzi, Jesse Glenn, Serena Malyon, Donato Giancola, Tracy Butler, Norman Chan, Meredith Salenger, Karl Kerschl, Jenny Robb, Armand Baltazar, Kevin McTurk, Very Handsome Billy, Noel Macneal, Steve Hamaker, Alex Kain, Erin Godbey, Sanford Greene, and Gene Ha!

Below you can check out the full schedule of dates/times for each guest and a description of what we'll be covering with them:

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

New 11" x 11" Signed & Numbered Limited Print 'Yarrow'

New 2021 Signed & Numbered Bookplate

New 'SERVICE' 8" x 8" Mouse Guard print

Tea Stained 9" x 12" 'Mortimer' Print

Signed Mouse Guard books with a mouse head doodle

Black Axe Black & White edition with a brush-pen sketch 

New Grey Mouse Guard Tee Shirt 
'Mouse must not kill mouse'

New Original inked artwork

Toned Commissions
These are single figure torso commissions with limited backgrounds on toned paper. 

(I'll be opening a list through the online store March 23rd)

Also you can print your own badges!

Looking forward to seeing you at ONLINECON!

twitch.tv/davidpetersen

Hellboy & The Cockatrice Trio! Process

 I'm very pleased to have created a piece for the MIKE MIGNOLA: DRAWING MONSTERS Documentary Kickstarter. My piece will be offered as a print for the campaign and eventually the original inked artwork will be offered as part of the reward tiers. 

Mike & Hellboy mean a lot to me creatively. From understanding what the medium of comics could be do beyond superheroes, to listening to every interview with Mike I could find where he talked about his motivations & history to help me create an unusual path of my own for the type of career in comics I was after

To the left is the finished piece, and below I'll run through the process of creating the artwork.

I thought of several ideas for a Hellboy pinup: Hellboy drinking in a pub with skeletons (some playing cards, a cobwebbed dart board, drinks all around), Hellboy in artifact collector's trophy room, Hellboy fighting a big moster and breaking it's jaw like King Kong fighting a dinosaur...and somehow in all that flurry of writing down ideas, I came up with Hellboy stealing the egg of a cockatrice.

So, I sketched out this version (added the 'EGG' balloon just for fun) and gathered some reference including photos of roosters & the cockatrice bronze window on the transom of the Belvedere Castle in Central Park. Pretty much the only bit of this drawing that survived to the next version are the cockatrices 

I felt like a less action-packed scene was more my lane to be in. So on several sheets of copy paper, I worked out a new unbothered Hellboy holding a clutch of eggs, and worked out two more acceptable cockatrice drawings to go with the one from the last rough. I assembled these in Photoshop, while I blocked in the major forms with color. It helps me to see where the masses are, where color tangents could pop up, and to help me figure out when inking what areas need what textures. I added a weasel perched on Hellboy's right hand to the scene––Weasels are the natural enemy of the cockatrice. And instead of going back to copy paper to tighten up the bits that still needed work, I digitally roughed in some falling feathers, one of the beast's wings, and the pile-of-sticks nest at the bottom.

With the layout all blocked in, I was ready to start inking. With a printout taped to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 bristol, I inked the piece on a Huion lightpad.

I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.7 and 0.3 nibs) to ink everything.
Most of the ink-work was done live on my Twitch stream as fans watched and asked questions.

I tried to vary the density of the ink details, going much darker and more textural on the nest while making the scales of the cockatrices more suggestive and leaving their wing-skin very open.

When the inks were done I scanned the original back into Photoshop and started the coloring process. This part is all just about establishing flat colors. I'd done some of the color selection work when I did my layout, but those colors become affected by the colors around them and had to be adjusted after adding in the nest, background, and window colors.

I also decided to push back the window architecture further into the distance, so I added a color hold over the inks there (an area where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black)

The last step was to render everything with light, texture, and shadow. I do almost all of this work using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop while using a stock texture brush. This one took a lot of fiddling to get just the right blend of tonal values, and a big thank-you to Gene Ha who I showed this to at a mid-stage who had some advice that saved me a lot of struggle,

So, go back the MIKE MIGNOLA: DRAWING MONSTERS Documentary Kickstarter! and get a print of my Hellboy piece on one of the reward tiers!

The Salamalican

Last Friday on my Twitch Stream, we did the third community draw-along event #DrawTheExtinct where I posted an image from an old block print I made with a few animal photo inspiration prompts and the idea to create an imaginary extinct animal. I worked on my piece live on my Twitch stream while viewers worked at home and then on Monday we shared our finished pieces. 

Here is my finished Salamalican. And below are my steps to create it as well as the community submissions.

We started with the prompts of my original linocut print from a piece titled 'Extinct' as well as an Orange Salamander, a Pelican, and a Frog's eye. I named the creature 'The Salamalican'. I told the viewers that they could use any combination of the inspiration prompts––they could make their version as cute and cuddly as a pocket pet stray kitten, as monstrous and deadly as a giant kaiju destroying cities, or anything in between. I also wanted this to be an excuse to get their pencils moving. I invited all skill levels, because I'm a firm believer that you shouldn't have to be good at something or pursuing mastery of it to just simply enjoy the act of it...and art is no exception.

On the Friday stream I started with mechanical pencil on a sheet of copy paper to draw the creature. Then I decided I wanted some minnows in his mouth, and on a separate sheet of copy paper on a light pad I drew his meal as well as one in his hand. The image here is after I'd scanned my pencils and edited the two drawings together (tinting them to help me see the different bits) in Photoshop.

My main pushes for the new design were to make sure the gullet felt like a flexible membrane instead of just a jug-jaw and that the 'S' shape of the body was clear to read and anatomically believable.

With the pencils scanned and adjusted, I printed out the image and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. Using a lightpad, I was able to see through the surface of the bristol as I inked the Salimalican. I used a Copic Multiliner 0.7 SP pen to ink the art. 

Most of the inking was pretty straight forward other than the texture on the gullet. I kept looking to my pelican reference for texture guidance.

On stream, I not only finished the pencils and inks, but was able to scan the inks and proceeded to the color flats.

The color selections were pretty straight forward when looking at the reference photos, it was just a matter of using different layers to establish where those color areas started and stopped: The main skin vs the beak, the gullet vs the minnows, etc.

Below you can again see the final rendered colors with a border and type applied.

But, as this is a community event, I wanted to share all the other entries posted in the Discord (some are works-in-progress I've been told). I awarded a prize and we voted together on a few more (prize winners marked with *) on Monday's Twitch stream and we all enjoyed seeing what each other had done. I hope we get even more participants next month (first Friday!)

Wicked Goblin King*

AU Tiger

Evil Cartoonist

Captain Nemo

Evil Cartoonist

Cortrah

Tefrin

Vern NYC

Bunce

Nate Pride*

Dark

Tyrie

Pagan Celt

Serarel*

Evil Cartoonist

Flannel Wizard

ONLINECON: March 2021!

ONLINECON is BACK! A free online event with 20 guests, an online store sale, and much more...

March 24-28 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 commissions, 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.

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


I'm proud of the guest list we've been able to assemble for this event. I'll be drawing on the even

numbered hours, but on the odd numbered hours of ONLINECON features a panel or presentation by one of our guests. Joining me will be: Stan Sakai, Angela DiTerlizzi, Jesse Glenn, Serena Malyon, Donato Giancola, Tracy Butler, Norman Chan, Meredith Salenger, Karl Kerschl, Jenny Robb, Armand Baltazar, Kevin McTurk, Very Handsome Billy, Noel Macneal, Steve Hamaker, Alex Kain, Erin Godbey, Sanford Greene, and Gene Ha!

Below you can check out the full schedule of dates/times for each guest and a description of what we'll be covering with them:

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

New 11" x 11" Signed & Numbered Limited Print 'Yarrow'

New 2021 Signed & Numbered Bookplate

New 'SERVICE' 8" x 8" Mouse Guard print

Tea Stained 9" x 12" 'Mortimer' Print

Signed Mouse Guard books with a mouse head doodle

Black Axe Black & White edition with a brush-pen sketch 

New Grey Mouse Guard Tee Shirt 
'Mouse must not kill mouse'

New Original inked artwork

Toned Commissions
These are single figure torso commissions with limited backgrounds on toned paper. 

(I'll be opening a list through the online store March 23rd)

Looking forward to seeing you at ONLINECON!

twitch.tv/davidpetersen