SDCC 2025!

San Diego Comic Con is next weekend! I'll have a 10' x 10' booth #4606 full of Mouse Guard Hardcovers, RPGs, Sketchbooks, Prints, Tees, Stickers, Single Dawn of the Black Axe issues, Original Art and more. 2025 is the 20th anniversary of Mouse Guard which means this SDCC is the anniversary of where I walked up to the Archaia booth and showed Mark Smylie my self-published issue. 

Signatures are always free (other than on MtG cards–which are $5 per card) on anything you buy from me -or- brought from home.

Julia and I will be joined by our niece Kate and my best friend Jesse (real-life Kenzie) to help with transactions and keeping the booth stocked. 

Below is more info about where to find me and some special things I'll have at the show.

Booth 4606 

Inside lobby F

The BOOM! Booth 2229 will have this SDCC exclusive 
Walter Simonson Dawn of the Black Axe #1 cover
Friday at 12:30PM I'll be doing a signing there for this cover.

A new Mouse Guard Sketchbook featuring illustrations 

and text about all of the past wielders of the Black Axe.
(These will be available in my online store shortly after we return from SDCC)

Original watercolor paintings of Bardrick and Siobhan from Dawn of the Black Axe will be available for sale. Each is 9" x 12"––and it's rare for me to offer watercolored illustrations these days

Original inks for the 20th Anniversary print (I'll have the prints available at SDCC as well)
This piece will be framed and available for purchase.

And while this is a photo from last year,
I suspect the booth setup to look similar to this for you to keep an eye open for:

Dawn of the Black Axe #1 Simonson SDCC cover

Mouse Guard: Dawn of the Black Axe issue #1 had several Variant covers, but while the issue has been out for a few months––you probably have not yet seen this cover by the legendary Walter Simonson!
Walt has always been kind and supportive of my work and Mouse Guard, so I was thrilled when he agreed to do a cover. It will be released at SDCC as an exclusive.

Walt was gracious enough to share steps of his process below and I also wanted to show my colors on his work as well.

Pencils:

My editor shared this drawing Walt provided  with the note that Walt would like for his drawing of the Black Axe in this cover to be the axe going through the logo instead of the standard one on the other covers. I agreed to do some editing work on the logo image and he could proceed.

Inks:

I don't know what Walt inks with these days, but I know he's been a fan of technical or drafting pens in the past. I was provided with this scan to work with for the colors and logo alignment.

Flats:

In this step I was just about placing flat color in the color areas (fur, cloak, helm, grass, tree, etc) as well as establishing color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) on the sunburst and rays, and where they overlapped Bardrick's ear.

Color:

Most of the cover was rendered out with a combination of a soft paintbrush and the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop. I've come to find out after now coloring Dawn of the Black Axe work for Gabriel Rodriguez, Kevin Eastman, and Walter Simonson, that I have to approach the tools and color dynamics differently with each. I found that less of my normal rendering was needed on Walt's inks and just more soft color transitions and then slight hue/saturation/value changes on any little area formed by his ink lines (almost like stained glass panels)

Final Cover:

Here again is the final cover with that logo modified so Walt's Black Axe weaves through like the original.

This version will be available at SDCC exclusively (though if there are extras at the end of the event, I may have some for my online store)

Bardrick & Siobhan Paintings

Last week I posted about a Saxon watercolor piece I donated for Parkinson's Research, but if you missed out, I did two more Mouse Guard watercolors I'll be taking with me to SDCC this month for sale (and if they don't sell there, will be in my online store soon after).

These 9" x 12" paintings are inspired by characters from Dawn of the Black Axe, the latest Mouse Guard comic mini series written and colored by me, with art by Gabriel Rodriguez.

Below is a bit of behind the scenes process (I wish I had been better about photographing steps along the way, but must have forgotten) and clearer images of the final pieces.

The Bardrick piece started with a pencil drawing (based on a panel of Gabe's from issue 2). That drawing was then taped to the matboard the final painting would be on with graphite transfer paper sandwiched in between. By tracing over the original pencils with a pen (as seen here), the lines transfer over to the matboard. 

The final painting of Brarick, first mouse to wield the Black Axe with brown color pencil to tighten in the linework.

Siobhan, the Matriarch of the story was the other painting's subject. I did a very quick pencil portrait of her that had several proportion errors, so I just scanned that sketch and started cutting and resizing bit until it felt right. I then did some digital drawing and color blocking to plan a dramatic uplight. The same transfer process was used on a printout of this to get the image onto the matboard.

Here is the final painting of Siobhan, Matriarch & Healer from Dawn of the Black Axe. I really struggled with the watercolor on this matboard. I usually use watercolor paper or illustration board for painting on, but I had some scraps of matboard and though 'what the hell--I've painted on matboard before'...but the board soaked up the water too quickly and just the wetness made every brush stroke look dark like when you get a tee-shirt wet. Because of that I never really achieved the dramatic color and uplighting I was hoping for.