Guard Induction

As I work toward a new sketchbook in 2026, I'll be doing a series of posts about Mouse Guard illustrations I've done that will be included in that new release: 'Past Whereabouts' that will debut at Emerald City Comic Con and be available in my online store soon afterwards.

Sketchbook illustrations are often a chance to explore corners of Mouse Guard that I haven't gotten to yet. Whether it's certain locations, characters, or just ideas or thematic tones. For this illustration we have a guardmouse being inducted into the Guard by a Matriarch. and in this post I'll break down the steps to creating the illustration 

The Matriarch shown here is one who is depicted in the stained glass of the Matriarch chamber: Allyson, who spoke the words 'It Matters not what we fight, but what we fight for'.

I was able to draw her more completely here on copy paper than the stained glass honoring her in The Black Axe volume. The Guardmouse being inducted was also drawn on copy paper and the two were assembled in Photoshop along with another drawing of a ruin based on some architectural model I found online. I blocked in some colors to help me see the forms of the two characters a bit easier.

The digitally assembled pencil layout was printed out and taped to the back of a sheet of Strathmore Bristol and placed on a light pad. With the light shining up, I was able to see through the bristol surface to the printout to use as a guide as I ink the artwork. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens to do the inking (the 0.7 nib mostly)

I kept the density of the inks mostly to the textures of different brick, stone, and ground cover, though the shapes on Allyson's tunic were pretty bold here, I knew they would be toned down in the final colors.

With the inks finished, I scanned them and started on the coloring process. This first step is called flatting and is about establishing all the color areas (fur, skin, clothing, ground, sky, etc) with different flat colors––a professional version of coloring-inside-the-lines.

Most of the color choices for the characters were established in the layout (though I wish I'd kept the Guardmouse's cloak more orange to avoid confusion with Saxon...who wouldn't even be born yet) and the environment's color were about making something cohesive and warm. 

It's also at this stage that I established color holds for all of the Matriarch's clothing details as well as the plants growing on the other side of the ruin.

The last step was to render the colors with dodge and burn tools and a stock textured brush. Dodge and Burn are tools based on photography terms (and from when Photoshop was a photo retouching program) having to do with purposely over or under exposing areas––or in other words darkening or lightening them.

I use these tools to create shadows and highlights to my base colors while giving a bit of a pebbly texture with that stock brush.

This illustration, along with many more, will be published in the sketchbook 'Past Whereabouts' which will debut at Emerald City Comic Con in March 2026 and will be available in my online store soon afterwards: mouseguard.bigcartel.com