This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of the first self-published issue of Mouse Guard that I released at Motor City and to help celebrate, I decided to do a new 14" x 20" print of the Guardmouse trio of Saxon, Kenzie, and Lieam on the adventure that started it all.
The signed print on heavy paper stock will be available at Motor City Comic Con and then in my
online store soon afterwards (and perhaps at other summer cons I attend).
Below I'm sharing the steps in creating the artwork for the print...
I wanted the print artwork to be a scene from that first issue (originally published in black and white––because that was all I could afford at the time). There are the panels of the trio walking where we first meet them and learn their names, there's the scene with Lieam facing the black rat snake, and there was this scene with the overturned grain cart (though I also considered the moment where they camp overnight in it as well)
As I posted a few weeks ago, I made a model of the grain cart specifically for this print...and to have a day away from the drawing board and computer to stretch creatively.
Then I went for a walk.
In the woods along nature footpaths I'd place the cart model in the tree roots and base of any tree that inspired me. I took photos of different angles, placed the cart in different positions and looked for that 'right' inspiration. There were several more photos that what I have shown here.
Because I was taking these photos on my phone, I didn't really get to inspect them until I was home and could pull them up on a large screen. I picked the last on the top row of this grid.
Time to start drawing! I did a combination of using smaller scanned pencil drawings of the characters along with a reference drawing of the cart and digital color blocking and re-drawing...all to get this rough that I just wasn't happy with.
I played with sky color, mouse placement, and how tightly cropped in we were...
This version, with Kenzie kneeling was a digitally drawn edit to help the composition, but it still felt off to me. And Julia agreed. Worried I was putting too much pressure on myself to get a print done before the convention she suggested that I could stop and postpone it for a later convention.
The next day I went back in to the file and mirrored the whole thing. I did that just to see if that trick would help me see compositional flaws...and instead, it just became more interesting to my eye. And I realized this direction matched the original panel better. So, I started redrawing the tree and each character (on a light pad overtop of a printout of the rough version) and had to take special steps to get Saxon's food placement to work on the mirrored cart (since I liked him looking out into the open space rather than at the tree trunk (which also more closely matches the original panel.
Here you can see the tightened pencils all placed and color blocked in ready to ink.
The above layout was printed out at size (14" x 20") over several sheets of legal size paper and then taped together. That was then taped with painters tape to the back of a large sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol.
On my Huion lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol to use the prinout as a guide to ink from. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.7 nib mainly, but I think I used a smaller nib for the eyes).
I did the inking in two sessions: the cart, characters, foreground, and tree trunk outline in one go, and then the hatching on the tree and the distant silhouette trees in another.
The art was then scanned (in two passes) on my scanner ready for color.
Then I started color flatting...this is the step all about establishing all the areas of color with flat colors (no rendering, no texture). I use different layers for different color groups (fur, cloaks, ground, sky, etc). The colors don't even need to be accurate––in some cases using entirely the wrong colors helps make the flatting process easier by thinking about shapes rather than color theory and final palates.
This version is in that first stage where are the colors are purposely wrong (including the color hold––an area where I want the ink lines to be something other than black, on the distant trees.
And then what I thought was going to be the final color scheme. Just like the original rough for his piece.
A sunset sky with purples going into oranges. It was a nod to the bit in the first issue where after they find the cart the daylight is dying and they need to camp overnight before continuing their search. I also though making the purple sky helped differentiate it from so many of my other prints with pale yellow skies.
I actually rendered most of it with this color palate in place...and only at the end realized I didn't like it.
So, I swapped out the sky for a more autumn leaf color sunset, tinted the trees and all the base colors warmer so the new sky lighting worked with everything else.
Here are the final colors again, all rendered using the dodge and burn tools and a textured brush in Photoshop.
The 14" x 20" print on heavy paper will be available at Motor City Comic Con this weekend and in
my online store soon afterward
