Lieam with the Black Axe

For my new Sketchbook 'Axe Wielders' I created a new illustration of Lieam with the Black Axe and a runic 11 (as he is the 11th wielder of the ancient weapon).

I know fans have been long waiting for a story that takes place after the Winter storyline, so seeing this illustration of Lieam must feel like a tease, and for that I apologize and thank you for your patience.

Below I'll share the process into making this new piece of art for the sketchbook about all the past wielders of the Black Axe.

It started with a loose sketch of Lieam with the axe that I scanned and color blocked in Photoshop. There's a bit of a homage here to Sean Rubin & Alex Kain's Legends of the Guard story, so I then looked at a lot of photos of bears until I found one that would fit where it looked like it was behind him, but also shrunk down enough to fit in the frame.

I did a draw-over that photo to get a pencil version of the bear's key points I needed to include.

As you can see below, I opted to cover over much of the bear with a stone den opening and also included ferns (barely visible here).

With a printout of the above rough (and perhaps a bit more work done on that stone den and fern leaves) I taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series brisol. On my Huion lightpad I was able to ink the piece seeing through to the printout to use as a guide. 

I used Copic Multiliner pens (the 0.7 nib mostly) to ink the piece. With all of Lieam's bracken cloak, lineweight had a lot to do with making sure the image was readable. I also used more texture on the fern leaves to help differentiate from the more open bits of Lieam's cloak and the bear's fur.

When the inks were finished I scanned them and started the coloring process. That first step is all about establishing flat color areas (known as flatting) with no lighting or texture. A professional version of coloring-in-the-lines.

Most of the color choices were straightforward, though I did have to play a bit to get something that worked in color harmony as well as value-play.

At this step I also established color holds (areas where I wanted to linework to be a color other than black) and did so for the runic number (and later the bear's eye)

Here again is the final rendered artwork included in the new sketchbook.

The colors were finished using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop with a stock textured brush to add shadows and highlights.

The Mouse Guard sketchbook 'Axe Wielders' is available in my online store:
mouseguard.bigcartel.com