Dawn of the Black Axe #3: Matt Smith Cover

The final issue of Dawn of the Black Axe will have a variant cover by Matt Smith! I've admired Matt's work on Barbarian Lord, Lake of Fire, and Hellboy for years, so I was grateful when he was able to fit a cover for this Mouse Guard mini series into his schedule (due to other circumstances the turnaround was much shorter than normal)

Matt sent along his process for approvals along the way and I asked him if I could feature them here with some of his commentary. I've added a bit of mine for context too.

Sketches:
Matt –– I was shooting around here in various directions but mostly of a contemplative moment before confrontation. I think of these scenes in books and films, that moment on the castle walls, among the ancient burial mounds, that calm before the storm mood.

David –– I believe that with tight turnaround somehow Matt only got the few sentence overview of the issue's story rather than the full script and so there were moments he was emphasizing in his roughs that don't really feature in the story, even though they are all fantastic and would be great covers. 

Pencils:

David –– Instead of playing telephone through editor channels, Matt and I had a quick message back and forth where I suggested that the seated conteplative version of Bardrick could be better if outdoors in autumn leaves. I also liked the snakes at the top of one of the options, but in a way to better lean into his interests as an artist I suggested they could be the two snakes in the issue, but drawn as norse carvings/knotwork (I also told him he could draw then as real snakes if he preferred)

We  somehow neglected tell him originally that the logo wouldn't feature on his variant, so he didn't need to accommodate that spatially.

Inks:

Matt –– This is the relatively easy, straightforward part. Keeping thought towards a balance of line weight, detail, and readability, but mostly it's a meditative phase.

David –– Matt inked this digitally, and he's one of those digital adopters who I don't see much difference between their traditional work and their digital work. 

And as Matt says, it's that balance that is the trick here, because it would be easy to over texture or leave too much open space or make all the lines/textures the same from those pencils and not get the clean readability of this cover.

Colors:
Matt –– I usually dive in to coloring work without much of a plan, stumbling around until something clicks.  I had an autumnal direction to work with and that gave it a starting point with yellows and oranges and then bringing in purples and greens to work in contrast to those.

I love how muted the oranges get in the leaves, how the white fungus leads our eye through the piece like wonky stair steps, and how perfectly the norse carving pops without looking out of place.

I'd love to have Matt come back for more Mouse Guard at some point...

Matt's cover is a 1:15 variant. The  third and final issue of Dawn of the Black Axe will be in shops June 18th, 2025

Bardrick's quest to protect the Lockhaven and mouse territories from the surrounding serpents comes to a thrilling conclusion! Will the Black Axe's first wielder be able to complete his task before the poison flowing through his veins claims his life? And who shall come to his aid in his hour of need?!

HEROES CON 2025 Paintings

For my return to Heroes Con June 20-22, I've painted two 16" x 20" pieces in watercolor and color pencil. One of them will be put into the Saturday art auction at the convention. The other will be available at my table the next day with a price set from the winning bid of Saturday's auction.

This year's pieces are from Disney Afternoon shows 'Talespin' & 'Rescue Rangers'. (See also 2023's Gummi Bears & Ducktales: https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2023/06/heroes-con-2023-paintings.html

Below are the process steps and photos I took as I worked.

I started with pencil drawings that were assembled in photoshop with some corrections and drawing fill-in done digitally. For both pieces, I wanted to try and draw the characters the way I'd treat them (more like real animals) but balance that with their cartoon likeness. For both aircraft I used online 3D models I found for reference. 

Next step was to use transfer paper to transfer the large printout of the rough onto the thick illustration board. Using a ballpoint pen I traced over the rough's outlines to get the linework on the final surface. I forgot to take photos of that stage, so here are both pieces freshly transferred and with some painting already started.

From here on I'll just post photos with no commentary until the end.

The final pieces below were tightened up by going over the linework with a brown color pencil (almost like how I would ink them if this were an inked piece)

As I said, one of these pieces will go into the art auction at Heroes Con on Saturday––the other will be available at my table on Sunday morning for a price based on the auction's results.

Dawn of the Black Axe #1 Montes Cover Process

Goni Montes provided a variant cover for Mouse Guard: Dawn of the Black Axe #1. His involvement was part of BOOM!'s 20th anniversary program for each month to have #1s all drawn by the same variant artist, and Goni, who has done numerous Power Rangers covers for BOOM! was their artist for March.

To the left you can see his final cover (with logo--though there was also a version released without any trade dress).

Below are images and a video showing Goni's process.

As the cover was being created I somehow only saw the rough options and then the final (which I only had notes with regards to color/brightness for printing complications)

I reached out to Goni to share process images and his thoughts about creating the cover. Here's what he said:

GONI: "I kinda work as if it were gonna get silk screened, which is my background, so that’s why it’s kinda easy to layer things this way and then take a look at every single layer independently.

The linework is drawn digitally. My brushes are my own. I make them by scanning in ink marks that I make on my sketchbooks. The textures in the backgrounds and the cracks and all that stuff are done on analog paper and inks in this case. It’s just faster and a hell of a lot of fun to just ink
grungey stuff on paper and then scan it in at ridiculously huge size"