Milan Gwendolyn

The piece you see to the left is a 12" x 12" inked piece that is up for bid at the Hero Initiative Auction at Baltimore Comic Con (along with pieces by Sanford Greene, Chris Bachalo, Steve Purcell, Stan Sakaim Kevin Nowlan, Paul Smith, Walt Simonson, Kevin Eastman, and many many more). You do not need to be at the auction to bid, you can bid by proxy (as long as you email your high-bid in by Sept. 16th.

More info about the auction on the Hero Initiative Website:
https://www.heroinitiative.org/portfolio-item/2024-baltimore-comic-con-auction/

For this blogpost though, I wanted to walk you through the creation of the piece and its upcoming use...

In the sprint, Julia and I attended Lake Como Comic Art Festival, and on our way there we spent a few days in Milan. There we had a guided tour of the Duomo and saw the statue of the Madonna perched on the tallest spire of the rooftop (we were on the roof when I took this photo). I loved the pose and thought it would be great to do a homage with a Matriarch of the Guard.

And as always I also take photos of various tile floors, grates, and inlays when in other cities...so I opened my Milan photos for inspiration for a background.

In pencil on copy paper I drew a version of Gwendolyn in the Madonna pose (or as closely as I could make that mouse anatomy fit).

I scanned that in and dropped it into a Photoshop file with the correct dimensions for the finished art and resized and positioned my pencil drawing. 

The star circle was created using some Photoshop tools and the brass floor grate photo was dropped in for a pattern in the background.

The above layout was printed out and taped to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion lightpad I can see through the bristol surface to see the printout as a guide while I ink. To ink this I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (I think I only used the 0.7 nib)

Making good clean lines on this piece was imperative for me since I knew the original was getting donated for the Hero Initiative auction.


But I also intend to use it elsewhere...

And the first place this art will be used is for the newest Mouse Guard tee which will make its debut at Baltimore Comic Con and go in my online store shortly afterwards.


Again, to bid on the original inked drawing you can either come to auction at the Baltimore Comic Con or proxy bid by email by Sept. 16th.

More info about the auction on the Hero Initiative Website:
https://www.heroinitiative.org/portfolio-item/2024-baltimore-comic-con-auction/