As a theme for my next sketchbook (which was going to debut at NYCC...but will have to wait until later this year or early next) I had the idea of doing Mouse Guard pieces based on specific characters & stories from the guest contributors in Legends of the Guard. (
I did a series of these already and shared them in a previous blogpost). For those who don't know, Legends is a spinoff anthology series where guest artists write and illustrate tall tales, fables, and folklore set in the Mouse Guard world. The 3 volumes of Legends are
now available in a nice boxed set.
Below I'll show a bit of the original artist's tale that I used as reference, and the inks and colors for my homage:
The Battle of the Hawk's Mouse & The Fox's Mouse:
by Jeremy Bastian
In Volume 1, Jeremy told a story about mice being the servants to larger beasts, doing their bidding as well as fighting their battles for them. The Hawk's Mouse and the Fox's mouse enter into a combat for their masters, but are halted by the Fox Mouse's son & the Hawks Mouse's wife. Legend holds them as the first two Guardmice and the wife the Guard's first Matriarch.
I've always LOVED this Legend, and I like it better than some of the origins of the Guard in the RPG. I've tried to integrate these mice into Mouse Guard lore anyhow...Faulknir & Silfano (Hawk's Mouse & Fox's Mouse) have been featured on bookplates, and they along with Sefatus (Silfano's son) were in the story: "Service to Seyan" and Feruin (Faulknir's wife) is imortalized in stained glass in the Matriarch's chamber in The Black Axe. So, for my version of this Legend, I wanted to pay homage to the battle between them were they learn the lesson "Mouse must not kill mouse".
The Critic:
by Guy Davis
Guy Davis did a wordless story (using pictograms in a few cases) in Volume 1, where a mouse seeing the primitive painting of an owl, gets delusions of grandeur thinking if he says something like the abstracted image he'd become a great mouse. However, when he finds a next of owls, it's a pure horror show...bones everywhere and the discovery that spooky owls are much bigger and more terrifying than the scale-less simple painting.
I wanted to show the moment of dawning realization where the mouse has seen the bones, but not the owls haunting him from behind. As an extra nod to the story (so the reference to it is clearer) I added in the pictogram speech of the owl painting.
The Thief, The Star-Gazer, The Hunter, & The Tailor:
by Cory Godbey
In Volume 2, Cory told a story of four brothers who each learn a specific trade: thieving, star-gazing, hunting, and sewing. When they are reunited they are called to aid a mouse king whose daughter has been taken by a beast and they each must use their specific skills to rescue her toegther. Because I like Cory's dragons, I bent the Mouse Guard rules for non-regional animal species (or in this case, imaginary.
For my portrait of the brothers, I wanted to include that dragon, but to bring it back into some more familiar Mouse Guard territory, I referenced the visual of a snake eating its own tail, but now with a dragon head.
The Ballad of Nettledown:
by Nate Pride
Nate's story from Volume 1 is only three pages (a restriction I had to impose on him because of a miscommunication from the other contributors in that issue) but it doesn't feel small. It tells the story of a mouse who saves the town of Nettledown from a flood by drinking the all water before it reached the village. I've referenced this tale twice in Mouse Guard, Doren can be seen in the feast in Seyan in "Service to Seyan" and the town of Nettledown works into some past Black Axe lore in "The Axe Trio".
It was hard to pick a moment in this story to draw, and I worried no one could draw Doren better as a big sloshy impossibly overfilled mouse, but I did my best while including some of the townsfolk I was drawn to.
Love of the Sea:
by Christian Slade
In Volume 2, Christian did a story about a young pirate-y mouse who rescues a female mer-mouse from a sea creature. They emotionally connect before she swims away. We watch the Pirate mouse age and return to the sea edge as an old fur..he sheds a tear and she reappears and they sit on a rock and watch the moon.
I tried to keep the muted palate and hatched linework feel of Christian's pages, and simply just redrew one of his panels (adding in the moon from the last page of the story) in my own style.
Back and Forth:
by Jackson Sze
Jackson had never drawn a comic story before his Legends tale. He's an amazing concept painter for the Marvel movies, but to make up a narrative and tell it panel by panel was something new for him. I loved the concept paintings he'd done of exotic locations in his sketchbooks, so I suggested a travelogue type story, with a Guardmouse escorting a cartographer around noting things of interest/danger at each one. He added a nice tone of the Guardmouse feeling it was somehow beneath him to 'babysit' a mouse to write notes and draw maps, but in time he's won over by the adventure and usefulness of it.
For my version, I just tried my best to reinterpret Bridgeporte in my inked illustrative style to see how it would look. I included the two mice in the foreground paddling in their approach.
The Tale of Abdiel's Heart:
by Ramon K. Perez
Jackson Ramon's tale is a circular narrative in some ways. A mouse finds a scrap of paper noting a treasure as well as the perilous obstacles standing in the way (Think Dr. Henry Jones Sr.'s Grail Diary on one sheet). The mouse navigates and overcomes the dangers to find the bones of a mouse holding a heart-shaped jewel...as the would-be thief obtains the prize, a last trap reveals itself as a blood-red crow...and the paper blows away and lands at the feet of another mouse
The skeleton holding the jewel is what I most wanted to draw for my version. And it only seemed logical to include the mouse thief as well as the crow.
The Watcher's Stone:
by Ryan Lang
Ryan Lang's Legends story is one of the most shared and was and important story in terms of landing some of the pieces to get the Mouse Guard movie deal in place. Ryan has worked in animation for years, but I think this was his first published sequential comic work. Beautifully painted, The Watcher's Stone is about a mouse who stands sentry over a mink's lair to keep her town safe. But she doesn't use brute strength or her sword to keep the mink at bay, she holds it prisoner by using what it fears the most against it. And the Legend goes that she stood there so long, she eventually turned to stone, leaving an eternal landmark at the spot.
It was hard not to just recreate the last panel and reveal of Ryan's story for my homage. I tried to play up the ink textures and line to make sure it was my own. I also had the mouse's ears exposed, as I can never seem to pull off the mouse hood with the ears tucked inside without it looking wrong.
2019 Appearance Schedule TBD
I've made a Creator Commentary video for the second issue/chapter of Mouse Guard Winter 1152! Please feel free to follow along in your copy of the story in either issue form of from the hardcover as I talk about the behind the scenes details, art notes, and my head-space as I go page by page and panel by panel. Enjoy!
In Volume 1, Jeremy told a story about mice being the servants to larger beasts, doing their bidding as well as fighting their battles for them. The Hawk's Mouse and the Fox's mouse enter into a combat for their masters, but are halted by the Fox Mouse's son & the Hawks Mouse's wife. Legend holds them as the first two Guardmice and the wife the Guard's first Matriarch.
Guy Davis did a wordless story (using pictograms in a few cases) in Volume 1, where a mouse seeing the primitive painting of an owl, gets delusions of grandeur thinking if he says something like the abstracted image he'd become a great mouse. However, when he finds a next of owls, it's a pure horror show...bones everywhere and the discovery that spooky owls are much bigger and more terrifying than the scale-less simple painting.
In Volume 2, Cory told a story of four brothers who each learn a specific trade: thieving, star-gazing, hunting, and sewing. When they are reunited they are called to aid a mouse king whose daughter has been taken by a beast and they each must use their specific skills to rescue her toegther. Because I like Cory's dragons, I bent the Mouse Guard rules for non-regional animal species (or in this case, imaginary.
Nate's story from Volume 1 is only three pages (a restriction I had to impose on him because of a miscommunication from the other contributors in that issue) but it doesn't feel small. It tells the story of a mouse who saves the town of Nettledown from a flood by drinking the all water before it reached the village. I've referenced this tale twice in Mouse Guard, Doren can be seen in the feast in Seyan in "Service to Seyan" and the town of Nettledown works into some past Black Axe lore in "The Axe Trio".
Jackson had never drawn a comic story before his Legends tale. He's an amazing concept painter for the Marvel movies, but to make up a narrative and tell it panel by panel was something new for him. I loved the concept paintings he'd done of exotic locations in his sketchbooks, so I suggested a travelogue type story, with a Guardmouse escorting a cartographer around noting things of interest/danger at each one. He added a nice tone of the Guardmouse feeling it was somehow beneath him to 'babysit' a mouse to write notes and draw maps, but in time he's won over by the adventure and usefulness of it.
Jackson Ramon's tale is a circular narrative in some ways. A mouse finds a scrap of paper noting a treasure as well as the perilous obstacles standing in the way (Think Dr. Henry Jones Sr.'s Grail Diary on one sheet). The mouse navigates and overcomes the dangers to find the bones of a mouse holding a heart-shaped jewel...as the would-be thief obtains the prize, a last trap reveals itself as a blood-red crow...and the paper blows away and lands at the feet of another mouse
Ryan Lang's Legends story is one of the most shared and was and important story in terms of landing some of the pieces to get the Mouse Guard movie deal in place. Ryan has worked in animation for years, but I think this was his first published sequential comic work. Beautifully painted, The Watcher's Stone is about a mouse who stands sentry over a mink's lair to keep her town safe. But she doesn't use brute strength or her sword to keep the mink at bay, she holds it prisoner by using what it fears the most against it. And the Legend goes that she stood there so long, she eventually turned to stone, leaving an eternal landmark at the spot.
Back when I was drawing the epilogue for Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, I built a simple model of the larder. This model was made of bristol board.
Below is a video about the model, how I made it, how it was used, and how it could come to be used again in the future.
After creating this new piece to the left as a back cover to the later-to-be-released 2018 Mouse Guard Sketchbook, I wanted to run through several past blogposts about stained glass, my experience with it, and using it in art as a way to communicate world-building concepts.
Instead of doing one large piece (20" x 32") I decided to cut my surface and do two smaller 16" x 20" pieces. The reason for this is that unlike past years, I did not have someone close to me driving to Heroes to transport something so large as my past pieces...the two smaller pieces fit inside my luggage I'll be flying with to the convention. I started by laying out a digital composite of two sketches (one of Saxon and one of Kenzie...both traditionally drawn on paper and scanned) inside a frame border that I interpreted from a carved wooden frame I found doing some reference searching for medieval borders.
Once I had the digital composites the way I wanted them, I printed them out to scale. This meant each piece was made up of 4 sheets of printer paper, aligned (hence the grid on the above image) and taped together. On the back side of the taped together printouts, I rubbed graphite all over them...or at least wherever there were lines I needed transferred onto the mat board.
I taped the printouts, graphite side down, to the mat board, and then traced over all my linework with a ball point pen. Wherever I applied pressure with the pen, the graphite transferred onto the surface of the mat board. When both pieces were successfully transferred, it was time to get set up for painting. Some of my fans got to watch the following steps as I broadcast on Twitch (sorry, I didn't record them). For watercolors I used mostly Windsor Newtons and mostly colors that were already dried onto the plastic palate: Cadmium red, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow, Burnt Sienna...I'm forgetting the other colors...I know I used a bit of Payne's Gray too...
Over one long night I built up layers of yellows and golds and then reds and crimsons to get the border done. Fans on Twitch asked me why I started with the border, and I didn't have a great answer. Some of the reason was to get the big area wash of yellow/golds down as a light color (in watercolor you tend to work light to dark) but I think some of it was also to get the fiddly bit done so that the end of the painting was looser and more organic. At the completion of the borders of both pieces, I set them aside and went to bed.
Two days later when I was able to get back to the paintings and broadcast, I dug into painting the middle areas. I worked mostly from light to dark, building up the larger areas and then focusing down to smaller elements (Kenzie's staff, Saxon's sword) as I got closer and closer to being finished.
Conrad, the salty old peg-legged Guardmouse from Fall 1152 and The Black Axe, is the subject of a new 5X7 print (matted to 8" x 10") I'll be offering at conventions and in my online store. Conrad joins a portrait series that also includes: Saxon, Sadie, Gwendolyn, Kenzie, Rand, and Lieam.
I started with a sketch of Conrad and a photo referenced location. The sketch is all in pencil on copy paper. I like to use copy paper because I don't feel precious about it, there is less at stake and so I'll feel more free to dig in to the drawing and worry less about mistakes. This isn't the final drawing and putting pencil on copy paper reinforces that in my head as I draw. I didn't put the XXX jug into the composition because I had the feeling I was going to move it around once I had everything in the size of the mat. The beach photo is one I took, setting the camera very low to get a mouse-eye-view at the beach in Ludington, Michigan.
I scanned the sketch into Photoshop and moved the jug into place. I also placed the photo behind it. Zooming in and shifting around, I was able to find a composition that I liked, where the horizon line felt right where the breaking wave had the most impact. I drew over the photo at this scale (printed out for reference) on copy paper on a light pad to define the shape of the breaking splash of the wave and the shape and placement of the rocks. Lining that drawing (tinted blue) with the Conrad sketch I had my final layout. Since the background photo was providing some color tone, I spotted in some flat colors for Conrad and the fish to help me visualize the finished piece as I worked.
