Kestrel Archer

As I work toward a new sketchbook this year, 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 it's a Kestrel archer with a mouse helper. In this post I'll break down the steps to creating the illustration

Leaning into the era of Mouse Guard before the Guard...when mice were in the employ of other beasts (see Jeremy Bastian's Legends of the Guard Vol 1) I wanted to show a bird using a weapon of its own as a mouse helper rode with it keeping arrows stocked.

I drew the kestrel based on photo reference (though I made anatomical adjustments to get the legs in the right position to draw back the bowstring) and then on another sheet of copy paper overlayed on the first drawing, I drew the mouse & bow. These were assembled in Photoshop where I dropped in some vector silhouettes of pine trees as background.

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)

The inking focus was on the kestrel's feather pattern and on all those pine needle clusters. Originally my plan was to use the bird & mouse as a tee shirt design and to drop the pine branches away for the shirt, but ink them in so the original art looked more finished. I opted to not use this as a shirt (mouse was too small).

With the inks scanned, the color flatting (painting areas of flat color to establish all the color areas) started. The kestrel colors were referenced from the photo, but I certainly made hue, value, and saturation decisions with the base colors. The mouse colors were to echo the orange and grey-blue of the kestrel's head.

It's also at this stage that I established color holds (areas where I wanted the lineart to be a color other than black) for the feather patterns, bow string, and the pine branches.

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. I also shifted colors a bit here or there either with a soft paintbrush or a feathered lasso and the color balance tool.

This illustration, along with many more, is in the sketchbook 'Past Whereabouts'
which is available in my online store: https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/