Mrs. Sredich--My Kindergarten Teacher

A few weeks ago an email arrived in my inbox with the subject line 'Did you attend Pierce Elementary School'? The daughter of my Kindergarten teacher was reaching out because her mother, after watching a movie where the subject of illustrators was brought up,  mentioned a former student becoming a comic book artist. And with some lovely emails back and forth I reconnected with Mrs. Sredich for coffee. Below I'll explain why she was such an important teacher, and how I think there is a very direct line between her class (1/2 day PM Kindergarten) and my career.

Mrs. Sredich did the perfect job of shepherding kids into their educational life. This was in an age where pre-school wasn't a common track for most kids (or at least no kids I knew) and where Kindergarten was a half day to get kids used to being at home with Mom or Dad ready for the idea of spending most of their day at school from 1st grade on. She made you feel welcome, she addressed and acknowledged the fear and sadness some of the kids felt, and just came up with a way to distract us all into some creative learning. Pierce was a 'Creative Arts' public K-6 school. We had Art and Music year round with full time teachers for both.


In Kindergarten we had Must-Do's (learning assignments) and once we were finished with those for the day, we could go to one of the many activity stations for ‘Can-Do’s’. There was a painting area, a reading area, puzzles with number learning, and more––but the one I remember the most was a book nook for making books. Mrs. Sredich had pre-stapled blank booklets at a table also full of pencils, pens, & markers. We were supposed to fill the booklet with illustrations that told a story. And when we were done drawing, she'd come and sit with each student asking them to describe to her what was happing on that page. Then she'd help that student craft a sentence or two, and she'd use her print handwriting (better than our Kindergarten scrawl letters) to add the book's text.

At the end of that process, I'd have a book that I made. This was a big deal. I'd seen (and perhaps it had even been pointed out by Mrs. Sredich or a librarian) all the copyright and publisher information in the books I'd read. Books were important things that companies made, big printing machines churned out (I think I'd seen a video of a printing machine on Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers)...But in that book nook, I could make a book. I had the power to put a story on paper. It demystified the process while also making it all the more magical.

Unfortunately, none of my Kindergarten books survive to this day. But I think we can draw a pretty clear line between my days as a 5 year old in her class being given that opportunity and when I sat down to make issue 1 of Mouse Guard in 2005.

My dad (who'd been a teacher for a while) remembers being impressed by her creativity and out of the box thinking for education. She almost always had the best teacher costume in the Halloween parade, which made her 'one of us' I think, since a few teachers didn't participate at all. The activity she lead that made the biggest impression on my Dad was the day she put a large flat sheet down on the floor. Invited us all to sit on it in a circle, and then in the center of the circle she turned on a hot air popcorn popper and let the popped kernels fly all over, encouraging us to catch them or eat them. She used the exercise not just to keep us entertained and busy...but as a metaphor for metamorphosis and change.

I lived four houses away from the school. So I used the playground like my front yard. And in the summer between Kindergarten & 1st grade, I remember being up there and seeing the lights on in the Kindergarten room. I peered in and Mrs. Sredich was there, taking care of the chicks we'd raised in class from eggs. She was cleaning the hutch and preparing to get the chicks off to Mott farm. I visited with her in the classroom that day. I remember telling her I was scared about going to 1st grade, a new teacher, a new room, and a full-day of school. She reassured me. She let me know she was just down the hall if I needed her. She gave me the peace of spirit that Mr. Rogers made a career of broadcasting. And I got to hold the baby chicks without competing with other students for time or attention (I'm lucky to have photos of that visit since my Mom had her camera in her purse when she came looking for me).

So I feel very lucky not only to have had Mrs. Sredich as my Kindergarten teacher, but also to have reconnected with her. She has the same gentle and assuring spirit--the kind that makes you feel special just because she says it's so. At 85 she's still sharp as a tack and enjoys her coffee and sweets. Julia and I gifted her a box full of my books and prints, and she was so excited to look through them all and read them, she kept re-opening the box to peek at them as we chatted over coffee. A big thank you goes out to her daughter Jana. Not only for doing some online searching to find me and reaching out, but for also being so open to my offer of meeting for coffee.

Long live the teachers who make a difference. Long live Mrs. Sredich.

2019 Appearances
San Diego Comic Con July 17-21
GenCon August 1-4
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

New Mouse Guard Tee Shirts

Hello Guardmice! I'll be releasing a new shirt at SDCC and in the online store soon afterwards! I've adapted the image from the 2019 German Print to be an image on Old Gold and on Sand colored Gildan tee shirts!

Here's more info on the original image

German Print: https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2019/04/2019-german-print-process.html

And I hope you folks enjoy the new shirts!

2019 Appearances
San Diego Comic Con July 17-21
GenCon August 1-4
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Creator Commentary Winter 1152: Hardcover Extras

I've made a Creator Commentary video for all the Mouse Guard Winter 1152 Hardcover Extras! Maps, Endpapers, Spot Illustrations, the Epilogue, etc! 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!

Direct link to watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OpyKu5-kpyY

2019 Appearances
San Diego Comic Con July 17-21
GenCon August 1-4
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

2019 HEROES CON Paintings

For Heroes Con this weekend, I've created two new Mouse Guard 16" x 20" watercolor paintings. Like last year, one of my paintings will be going into the auction, the other will be available for sale at my table Sunday (the morning after the auction) with a price based on the auction results. Below you can see both of the paintings of Gwendolyn and Sadie, but further down, I'll go thorough the process pictures as I created the paintings.

First step was to sketch out my characters on copy paper. I'd known I wanted to do Gwendolyn and Sadie, two prominent female characters from Mouse Guard. For the characters I pushed their costumes a bit beyond their looks in the comic. And over the course of three sheets of paper, I had the elements I needed for the characters themselves. Note I drew the pike-axe separately as I re-designed it, and I only drew one of Sadie's short swords knowing I could digitally re-use it for her other paw. As for the backgrounds...

I decided to reference some architectural photos I took a few years ago in Central Park. I'm bad with my park geography, but I'm pretty sure the diagonal floral motif is near the bridge where the scene from Avengers was filmed. Anyhow, these spoke to me, and I had them on-hand to make a pretty architectural-design inspired background for each painting. 

In photoshop, I took my pencil drawings, and the architectural photos and combined them into a satisfying color study of what I wanted my final paintings to resemble. The digital colors helped me pick colors and to pick the color values (light-dark ranges). To give the pieces some cohesion, I used the same arch template formed by Sadie's background to shape the diagonal floral pattern for Gwendolyn's. 

Then I printed out each design at 16" x 20, the same size as the mat board I was ready to paint them on. That meant printing each image in sections and taping the printouts together. This is what the grid on the digital version is for, to help me line-up and re-register the pieces.

To transfer the piece over to the matboard, I taped down a large sheet of graphite paper (like carbon paper) to the matboard, then taped down the image printout, and lastly traced over all the image details with a ball point pen. Wherever the pen put pressure on the graphite paper, the graphite was transferred onto the matboard. Below you can see the backside of the graphite paper after the transfer where the graphite is already lifted.

While the process went very smoothly (and below you can see the final transfer of Gwendolyn) I wouldn't ever use graphite paper for this use again. The wax binder that holds the graphite to the paper also transferred over to the matboard and acted as a bit of a resist for the watercolor. It was workable, but there was a thin white halo between the linework and the paint.

Then it was time to start the painting. I streamed most of that process over on Twitch. Below is a photo I took of my work set-up. A few brushes (mainly one wide flat, and two smaller round), an uncleaned tray of old watercolors (a few tubes were still wet enough to squeeze new dolops from), a water mug, and my painting. I should also mention that while I did my best to document the process, there are several points where I was focused enough on the work, I forgot to stop and take a photo.

Below is the background of Gwendolyn painted.

Below is the wash of Sadie's background painted.

Below I've worked on more of the design, shadows, and colors of Sadie's background.

Working on Sadie with the watercolor tray set-up.

Starting in on the fur and skin tones.

Skipped a few steps of Gwendolyn's fur, skin, and costume colors getting washed in and then built up...at this point I only had her dress, jewelry, book, and the pike-axe handle to work on.

Sadie is nearly done here. Just some color correction and the yellow piping/stitch trim to paint in.

Details of the two at that stage:

And then the painting portion of each were finished.

But––I always feel that my work looks better with a strong line. My painting skills aren't quite up to snuff to define forms entirely with color and shape. So, I 'inked' each piece with a brown color pencil. I used a dark brown color pencil instead of ink to soften the linework a bit compared to ink--I didn't want it to look like a coloring book. 

And below you can see both paintings fully finished. 

To repeat, one of these will be going into the Heroes Con auction (I've been told they do phone bids) And the other will be available at my artist alley table at Heroes the morning after with a similar price to the winning bid at the auction. 

For Reference, here is the blogpost for my two paintings from last year: https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2018/06/heroes-con-2018-auction-pieces.html

2019 Appearances
Heroes Con June 14-16
San Diego Comic Con July 17-21
GenCon August 1-4
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Recent Commissions

At conventions I do toned paper commissions. Single figure bust/torso, on 9x12 toned paper, with ink, pencil, brown color pencil, and white gel pen. I'll be doing fewer of these than I used to, because I can't bring a load of them home after a con is over, since I want to get back to working on Mouse Guard pages asap. With Heroes coming up this weekend, I thought I'd share a few of the recent pieces as examples I did earlier this year:

Hellboy with a Guardmouse

A Harvester Mouse

X-Men's Lockheed

A Fan's RPG Guardmouse

2019 Appearances
Heroes Con June 14-16
San Diego Comic Con July 17-21
GenCon August 1-4
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Beneath the Dark Crystal #11 & 12 Cover Process

For my last two covers, numbers 11 & 12 of Archaia's Beneath the Dark Crystal series, I decided to do adjoining covers of the Gelflings Kira & Jen!

To view my past Dark Crystal covers click here. 

With the series being 12 issues, and there only being 10 sets of Mystics & Skeksis, my editors and I knew the last 2 covers would need something different.

We talked about having Jen & Kira together on a cover and having the other cover being Augrah & a Garthim--or the new two main characters in the 'Beneath' series, but as I drew Jen on a sheet of copy paper, I drew him rather larger than I'd drawn any of the Skeksis or Mystics...And I thought, damn, I like the drawing, and I'd hate to re-size it and lose any detail or make inking him harder. So I went ahead and drew Kira at the same scale holding out hope I could find a way to cram them together on a single cover...and I suddenly realized, they were meant to be facing each other! So I re-formatted my photoshop cover template file to be two adjoining covers and layed out the cover that way. I tinted each character to help me see them better, and then drew the background of the prophecy stone (heavily helped by photo reference provided by Henson) on sheets of copy paper and added them to the composition.

With the digital collage of my pencil drawings all sized, set, and approved by Henson & Archaia, I printed it out (took 4 sheets of copy paper I had to tape back together) and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. The bristol was a sheet of 19" x 24"...the image itself is about 21" x 17". A very large piece to ink. On my lightpad, I could ink the piece with my Copic Multiliners (I used the 0.7 nib mostly with the 0.3 nib coming out for the eyes and most of Fizgig). I streamed inking this on Twitch over several sessions. 

Once the inks were finished and then also approved by everyone, I could scan them and start on the coloring. With the piece as large as it was, I had to scan it in 2 parts and then reassemble it in Photoshop. The first step in coloring a piece like this for me is establishing the color holds (where the inkwork won't be black, but a color I can paint: The background, Kira's wing edges & Jen's pants pattern) and laying in flat colors for hair, skin, leafs, wings, clothing, etc. I did myself a favor on the color holds by leaving a gap between my background ink-lines and the figures...it made them much easier to isolate.

The last step to a piece like this is to render the color. Something I also shared while streaming on Twitch over a few sessions. Most of my rendering (adding highlights, shadows, and texture) is done with a textured brush and the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop. However, in several cases on this piece with the Gelflings' skin, I had to use the paintbrush tool to more carefully control the color choices and the subtlety of the rendering. It's something I rarely do, but have found that when coloring human-esque faces it's necessary.

These will be published as separate covers #11: Kira & #12: Jen. Below are what the covers will look like cut apart.

This is kind of a full-circle moment for me. It was a decade ago in 2009 that I did a Dark Crystal promo for Archaia to announce at SDCC the Archaia partnership with Henson...and it had Kira on the left and Jen on the right with the prophecy stone as a background element. Here I am 10 years later and rounding out the 12 issue arc of Beneath the Dark Crystal the same way.  I'm also very glad to see the growth in my work in that time as a penciler, inker, colorist and in my compositions. 

I've had a blast getting to draw every Skeksis and Mystic and Jen and Kira from the 1982 film for this run of covers. Thank you to Archaia for hiring me to do so, and for the fans for being so supportive of my covers, and for you blog readers who have come along with me to see the process.

2019 Appearances
Heroes Con June 14-16
San Diego Comic Con July 17-21
GenCon August 1-4
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Rosard Mouse Print Process

*NOTE: THIS WAS WRITTEN PRIOR TO DISNEY CANCELING THE MOVIE AT FOX––WE ARE STILL EXPLORING ALL OPTIONS TO BRING THE MICE OF MOUSE GUARD TO LIFE*

When the Mouse Guard Movie was given a full green light from FOX, Stephen Christy and Ross Richie came to Michigan to deliver the good news, deliver the payment, and celebrate with a meal. As a thank you for their work on Mouse Guard as a book series and on the Movie (they are involved both in publishing at BOOM! and producers on the film at the FOX lot) I drew them each as a Guardmouse and gave them the original inked piece.

To the left you can see the finished colored version of 'Rosard' that I've released as a print available in my online store: mouseguard.bigcartel.com



Ross Richie is head of BOOM! Studios who acquired Archaia several years ago. But even before that, Ross had always been in my and Mouse Guard's corner. Early on he'd shared with me his appreciation for my book and hired me to do covers for BOOM! titles. When Archaia had hit some hard times, he mentioned to me, with no pressure or hard sell, that if things got bad, and I ever needed a new home for Mouse Guard, he was there for me. It was BOOM!'s deal with FOX that made the movie possible (and under the favorable terms for me). He's made a lot of things possible for me and Mouse Guard.



So, how to interpret Ross as a mouse? Well, I thought of Ross as firstly a guy who needed a weapon whose sound effect would go 'BOOM!'. Ross' personality is a big presence. It's not overwhelming, or oppressive, but it has a mass to it. I wanted to add that volume to his mouse's cloak, his oversized warhammer, and a story told in his fur and his scars.

The name Rosard comes from the origin spelling of the name Ross ('Ros') and the pronunciation of the Scottish Gaelic for 'Hammer' ('òrd' pronounced 'Ard'). I drew the Ross-mouse and the swirly patterned stones on one sheet of copy paper, scanned it in to Photoshop to resize it for the final artwork-size.



With the layout assembled and printed on to copy paper, I started inking it. I taped the printout to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion lightpad, I can see through the surface of the bristol to the printout below and use that as a guide to ink from. For pens I used my trusty Copic Multiliner SPs...primarily the 0.7 nib that I like so much.

It would have been easy to get carried away with the textures of the scarred mouse, his fur cloak, well-used front sash, hammer details, and stone background...but I tried to restrain myself and leave room for color.



I scanned the inks and started to lay in flat colors as well as establish the few color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) on his scars

Ross' colors weren't as easy to pin-down as other human-to-guardmice-inspirations. I think of some of Ross' tenacity and directness to be in the red-family for cloak colors...but I opted to make that the front accent panel color and leave his fur and cloak more in a natural cream and brown tone-range. The hammer also had to be seen...it needs to do some of its job before it's even swung...so I went with a brassy tone for that.



The last step was to render the colors by adding light and shadow as well as texture using the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop with a stock textured brush. I did some color adjustments from the flat colors, punching up the fungus color to be a bit more vivid.


I've told Ross that his mouse 'Rosard' may make it into the Weasel War as a casualty...and to not take that personally. It doesn't mean there aren't stories to tell about that mouse earlier in his life...

You can buy a print of Rosard in my online store: mouseguard.bigcartel.com

2019 Appearances
Heroes Con June 14-16
San Diego Comic Con July 17-21
GenCon August 1-4
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18