David Petersen's Blog: Mouse Guard Portraits for SDCC

In anticipation for SDCC 2023, I painted four Mouse Guard watercolor portraits of Saxon, Kenzie, Sadie, & Lieam.

I had some cut-offs from trimming down the boards from my large HeroesCon watercolors of the Gummi Bears & Ducktales (http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2023/06/heroes-con-2023-paintings.html).

These Mouse portraits are each 7.5" x 10" and will be for sale at my table at SDCC. In this blogpost, I'll go through several stages of the watercolor painting

I started with a pencil drawing of each of the mice. The Saxon drawing was based on a real mouse Photograph I'd planned to use for this year's Bookplate inspiration, which is why I went a little more realistic real-world mouse on the designs for these. I did a quick digital color pass over my pencil drawings to get a sense of value and color choices.

I transferred the drawings to the thicker illustration board (suitable for watercolors) with graphite paper (pressing down while tracing a copy of the drawing on top of the illustration board transfers the image) and started with a light subtle pale wash--and then apparently started laying in fur color on Lieam.

because I knew the backgrounds were going to be more sloppy, blended, and wet, I started on those early.

Lightest tones on the mice went next, ie the bare skin of the hands, noses, ears, tails, and eyes.

more tone and depth to those lighter areas as well as some weapon details.

base fur tones for Saxon and Kenzie while Lieam is getting more definition and Sadie has her front cloak panel lightly blocked in.

Then cloaks for Saxon and Kenzie, fur for Sadie, and a background for Lieam (which I saved because of how dark I knew it was planned to be).

Unfortunately, in the second session of painting, I forgot to take any photos until I was finished––Luckily I did stream that painting session, and so I have a timelapse video that takes us to the end stage.