Painted TMNT Blank Covers

The cover stock on the blank TMNT #100's I have is really glossy, so rather than my usual method of ink ing a special cover, I decided to try painting them with acryla-guache. It meant spraying them all first with matte finish so everything would stick and then a long process of building up paint with a steep learning curve for someone used to only painting in watercolor. But in the end, I'm proud of these. I'm offering them for sale separately in my online store: mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/painted-tmnt-blank-covers 

but below I'll share the process of creating them:

They each started with a pencil drawing on copy paper scanned into photoshop into a scan of the blank cover for placement and then given a blocked in digital color pass for me to reference when it came time for paint.

The pencils sketches needed some refinement and I made digital alterations to them at this stage, even adding in stock 3D models of Leo's katanas to match the angles I'd drawn his hands in.

These were then printed out (along with a brick pattern not shown here) and using transfer paper, transferred to the cover stock by tracing over them.

I wasn't great at stopping to photograph them at all the stages of building up the paint, but here are the photos I did manage to take along the way for each character:

Leo

transferred pencil drawing

building up base colors--something I was doing too thinly to get to stick well at first because of my watercolor bias

more base colors and some modeling on Leo's skin

Final with ink outlines, white halo painted on, pencil to shade the brick and some brown color pencil to push the shadows on Leo.

Don

Pencil transfer

Base colors––I was getting better at not going as thin, but certainly still painting in a watercolor mindset of thin transparent laters.

Building up more tones

smoothing out those tones because it all looked too splotchy

Final Final with ink outlines, white halo painted on, pencil to shade the brick and some brown color pencil to push the shadows on Don

Mike

pencil transfer

Had some brown that was on the palette that was going to dry, so I opted to start with his elbow pads, belt and wrist bands. 

I was getting better at going straight in with thicker midtone layers at this point and then building in both shadow and highlights (something very different for a watercolor painter)

Last of the painting before adding line

Final with ink outlines, white halo painted on, pencil to shade the brick and some brown color pencil to push the shadows on Mike

Raph

Pencil Transfer

Midtone skin, shell, pads, and reds getting built up

further skin and shell rendering

last stage of painting before linework

Final with ink outlines, white halo painted on, pencil to shade the brick and some brown color pencil to push the shadows on Raph

Splinter

pencil transfer

I got nervous with how dark I was making my base color when trying to get good coverage on a coverstock that doesn't absorb water.

building up Splinter's robe and arm wraps

Fur rendering

final painting before lineart

Final with ink outlines, white halo painted on, pencil to shade the brick and some brown color pencil to push the shadows on Splinter

Again, I'm offering these for sale separately in my online store: mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/painted-tmnt-blank-covers 

Baltimore Comic Con

 Baltimore Comic-Con is this weekend: https://baltimorecomiccon.com/
and I'll be there all three days with books, prints, tees, RPGs, original art, stickers, and more. This is a photo of last year's booth, but expect to find a similar looking setup at BOOTH 1020.

As always I'll be signing any book or thing I've worked on (bought from be or brought from home) for free (Magic the Gathering cards are $5 each)

But beyond my booth, there are some other things I have going on in Baltimore at the convention...

COMICS ALOUD:
For severl years I've been putting together a panel where comic creators vocally perform excerpts of their work as the images of their panels are projected on the screen for the audience to enjoy. 

I'll be doing a performance from Dawn of the Black Axe, the first time I've ever read any part of that tale aloud

The lineup this year will include Gene Ha, Sarah Myer, Jamal Igle, Matthew Dow Smith, and myself on Sunday at 1pm in room 338

Baltimore Yearbook & Auction:
For over a decade Baltimore Comic Con has curated and published a Yearbook featuring a creator-owned character or title from on of the show's guests. This year it's Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon!

I have contributed a color piece for the book (full art process here: http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2026/08/baltimore-yearbook-2026-savage-dragon.html) The yearbook will be available in the lobby at the exclusives booth and my original inked art for the piece will be up for auction with other contributor pieces at the convention.

Hero Initiative Auction:
I've contributed a Mouse Guard painting of Siobhan the Matriarch from Dawn of the Black Axe for the Hero Initiative auction at Baltimore Comic Con.

The auction takes place Saturday Sep. 26 at 5 p.m. in Room 339-342. I may be up in that room walking my piece around while the bidding happens if I can get away from my booth long nough.

To preview what else will be available in this auction check here: https://www.heroinitiative.org/hero-initiative-fundraisers/2026-baltimore-comic-con-auction/

Commissions:
I'll be taking commissions at the convention.

They are 9" x 12" brushpen on bristol
-Single Figure
-Minimal Background
-Subjects need to be in my wheelhouse
(which can also include non-mouse characters: examples TMNT, Usagi, Monsters, D&D, etc.).

See you in Baltimore!!!

Gilkey Warlocks RPG – Pius Westcombe

This year is the ten year anniversary of the short story I did for Gotham Academy issue 17 titled 'Whatever Became of the Gilkey Warlocks". It was a tale about four friends at the boarding school who find a hidden room to play the RPG Serpents & Spells in 1984 during whatever the Bat-verse's version of the satanic-panic was. (past blogpost about the tale here: http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2016/04/gotham-academy-short.html)

As a fun exercise I decided to do character portraits of each of the Warlock's RPG personas since they were never seen in the story. For this post I'll be breaking down the art process for Davey Kurtz's Serpents & Spells character: Pius Westcombe.

The Gilkey Warlocks are based on my friends and I back when we were younger and more active as RPG-ers. Davey Kurtz is the Gotham version of my friend Mike Davis. His character Pius Westcome (a name arrived at using a school he attended and his street name) is described as 'tiny gnomish illusionist' and it's his incantation of the spell 'animated shadows' that causes the trouble for the friends when unknowingly under the effects of Jonathan Crane's fear toxin.

I started with a pencil sketch on copy paper that I scanned in to Photoshop to add some color blocking as well as pasting in a few stock shapes to become his staff and poof of magic.

Like the original Gilkey Warlocks pages, I decided to do these in pencil. Though I did opt not to do as much rendering and tone to keep it less messy and quick since it's just a fun exercise. A printout of the color-blocked sketch was taped to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol and on my Huion lightpad I was able to do a clean drawing using a mechanical pencil with HB lead.

The shading and texture was added to certain areas like his striped pants, boots, and quilted harlequin cap. The poof of magic got the most value range of rendered pencil to try and make it something more etherial and not just a 2D shape.

With the drawing finished I scanned it into Photoshop to start the painting process. The first step of that is called 'flatting' where flat colors are laid in to establish all the color areas. On a more technical level, the pencils were on a layer set to multiply (which treats white as transparent, black as opaque and any % in between as that % of transparency) The colors were all put on a layer underneath that one.

Pius's colors were inspired by the purple and gold school colors of Whittier Middle School where Mike and I first met. They also seemed to be a good wizardy palette.

For the final colors, I tinted the pencil art to be a warmer sepia (except the magic poof which I color balanced to be purple) and did some painting as well as some dodge and burn tool work (Photoshop's holdover tools from being a photography retouching program that allow over and under exposing areas with a brush). 

To get the magic to be more flashy I added a few painted layers on top of everything set to various layer modes to get that glow effect.

That's one Gilkey Warlock RPG character down––I'll share another in about a month's time...

Sienna under a mushroom in the rain

I'm continuing a series of posts about Mouse Guard illustrations I've done that are included in the new release: 'Past Whereabouts' that made its debut at Emerald City Comic Con and is now available in my online store.

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 Sienna taking mushroom shelter in the rain. In this post I'll break down the steps to creating the illustration

This illustration was the result of checking several boxes I felt the sketchbook needed: rain, an insect, a character from the comics who doesn't get much panel time. So, I started drawing a series of mushrooms (looking at some reference) with Sienna (Orange cloak, mace, tender of the Lockhaven hives) taking cover. This is one of the rare times where the bits I drew weren't drawn separately and then assembled––the pencils were all done-in-one.

But I wanted to reference a mace, a bee, and a lantern which were photos, 3D models, or photo collages I pasted in. Then I digitally pained in the rain on top of a light blue-grey base tone.

The digitally assembled 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 rain. In the comics I've done rain as an overlay, but after seeing Gabe draw rain on the page in Dawn of the Black Axe, I thought I'd give that a try, at least for this sketchbook piece.

With the inks scanned, the color flatting (painting areas of flat color to establish all the color areas) started. I kept that cool grey-blue as the base sky, and then chose colors around that. I had to paint the rain on it's own layer and fade out any areas where the linework didn't close it off. This way I could adjust the opacity of that layer to get some of the colors underneath to come through and make the scene look wet.

It's also at this stage that I established color holds (areas where I wanted the lineart to be a color other than black) on rain, the bee's wings, and the lantern glow.

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. There was a lot of adjustment to color balance wherever the lantern's light would hit that had to be selected using a lasso tool with a soft feather.

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

Creator Commentary: Baldwin the Brave

I've recorded Creator Commentary for all the short stories that appear in Baldwin the Brave and other Tales hardcover.

Many of these short stories were released for Free Comic Book Days and are short morality tales where the lesson of the story is being learned by a mouse we know as an adult in the main Mouse Guard series...what childhood story made Saxon Saxon or Kenzie Kenzie?

Here is the second video of that series with behind the scenes info, writing notes, and art details for: Baldwin the Brave

Watch on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/Xl-c98LTnlk

 A reading of this story is available here: Mouse Guard: Baldwin the Brave

Watch on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/6NIAVo7qfZI

Baltimore Yearbook 2026: Savage Dragon

Every year the Baltimore Comic Con has published a convention art book called 'The Baltimore Yearbook' that features a character or property, where that creator is a guest of the convention. Selected guest artists are asked to contribute a piece of fan art for the book to celebrate the creator and property. It allows us to play in someone's world, and offers a chance for attendees to meet new creators as they go around the show floor collecting autographs in their yearbook.

This year's subject is Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon! To the left you can see my finished art, and below in the blogpost I'll walk through my process.

When I received the invitation email wondered what I'd do with Savage Dragon. I tend not to draw superheroes––but as he's also kinda like drawing a monster, I was up for the challenge. First thought was to have him holding the Black Axe in smoldering ruins in a pile or dead weasels––or holding dead weasels.

I tried drawing over top of a 3D posable bulky life drawing figure (lower left), but didn't care for the result and opted for more action. Looking at some swinging axe poses I thumbnailed the upper left image and then did more complete pencils over top of that (which spilled on to another sheet of paper for his legs).

The tighter pencil drawings were scanned and the upper body and lower body were assembled together into a template for the technical specs of the Yearbook's formatting.

I painted in some color blocking for Savage Dragon himself and added some smoke plumes as well as a 3D model of the Black Axe from Javier Urena's Celanawe sculpt (this was just to get the angle looking more realistic.): https://javier_urena.artstation.com/projects/5XDDz

I printed out the above layout and taped that to the back of a sheet of 14"x 17" Strathmore bristol board. On my Huion lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use as a guide while I inked the final drawing.

I used a 0.7 Copic Multiliner SP pen  to do all the inkwork. While inking the details for Savage Dragon was important (all that body hair and musculature), the real time consiming part was inking the smoke plumes. I'd done a similar technique in a past Plotmasters piece for the 'Claw' episode: https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2021/05/plotmasters-claw.html

The inks were scanned and I started digitally coloring the piece. This involves blocking in flat colors to establish each color's shape. Most of the color choices had been made by reference the colors from Erik Larsen's comic as well as from my layout.

In this step I also established color holds (areas where I want the inklines to be a color other than black) on the smoke plumes and all the debris.

The sky background does have a bit of rendering at this stage...I dropped in a gradient fill and then used a paintbrush to make some variance in the color and value structure.

The last step was to do the final rendering and lighting effects for the piece. I did some of this using the dodge and burn tools and a stock Photoshop brush, but I also relied heavily on a layer masked off to just the character to add more of that warm light glow

This piece will be published in the Baltimore Yearbook in October. That book will be available for purchase at the convention and through the con's website afterwards. The original inked piece will also be for sale in the art auction at the con on Saturday.

Past Baltimore Yearbook pieces & blogposts:

2025: Bone:
https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2025/09/baltimore-yearbook-2025-bone.html

2024: The Tick:
https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2024/09/every-year-baltimore-comic-con-has.html

2023: First Comics (American Flagg):
https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2023/07/american-flagg-baltimore-yearbook-2023.html

2022: Scary Godmother:
https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2022/10/scary-godmother-tribute-for-baltimore.html

2021: Halloween:
https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2021/10/happy-halloween-baltimore-yearbook.html

2019: Blacksad:
https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2019/10/blacksad-for-baltimore-yearbook.html

2018: Strangers in Paradise:
https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2018/09/baltimore-yearbook-strangers-in-paradise.html

2017: Tellos:
https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2017/09/tellos-baltimore-comic-con-yearbook.html

2016: Archie:
http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2016/08/baltimore-yearbook-2016-archie-process.html

2015: Mouse Guard:
http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2015/09/baltimore-comic-con-yearbook-cover.html

2014: Grendel:
http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2014/08/baltimore-yearbook-grendel.html

2012: Liberty Meadows:
http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2012/09/baltimore-comic-con-yearbook-2012-this.html