David Petersen's Blog

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Em of Appleloft

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 Em of Appleloft and a crow friend. In this post I'll break down the steps to creating the illustration

I made a list of places to return for 'Past Whereabouts' and had Em of Appleloft at the top. I started with a drawing of the outside of her home, a balcony/air-dock-perch with an awning looking into the open knothole in an apple tree. I referenced my original drawings from The Black Axe volume as well as some photos of apple trees. On a new sheet of copy paper I drew em and a crow (based on photo reference).

These were all digitally assembled in photoshop with some color blocking to help identify the forms.

The inking focus was on making sense of all the organic shapes of the bark, the balcony bracing, the leaves, etc by trying to be careful with texture and line density differences.

With the inks scanned, the color flatting (painting areas of flat color to establish all the color areas) started I pulled colors from the The Black Axe for Em and her clothing and the crow, but I was able to play with the browns, greens, and reds of the setting until the flats looked harmonious enough.

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 Em's clothing embroidery, the leaf veins, and the speckles on the apples.

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 toyed with pushing the other leaves and apples back a bit by adding some lighting effects in the lower right corner.

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: https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Lillygrove Library Funeral

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 funeral in the Lillygrove Library. In this post I'll break down the steps to creating the illustration

After dusting off the Library Arch model for a recent Architectural Model Video (https://youtu.be/sqiKdE50BNc) I wanted to revisit that location for an illustration, and liked the idea of the sun streaming in, but also keeping the ghostly tone of when I showed the location in Legends of the Guard Vol 1 by setting a funeral there.

The location was drawn on a sheet of copy paper over the top of a composite photo of the model with and added design of the window (based on a tile pattern). Then the dead mouse and altar and flowers were drawn on another sheet, and the mouse paying respects on yet another sheet. They were all assembled in Photoshop (each tinted a different color) and a tone blocking to help me see where the light's edges were.

The inking focus was on keeping the line weight and details spare in the stream of light, but much more dense the further in the corners everything was. There was still a lot of detail in the walls, mice, flowers, and books to worry about on top of those lighting concerns too.

With the inks scanned, the color flatting (painting areas of flat color to establish all the color areas) started. I pulled colors from the Legends of the Guard issue cover with this library for starters before shifting everything a bit darker and greener.

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 window and the murals (as well as that one open book).

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 toyed with additional layers to help sell the beam of light streaming in and the cast tones from all the window glass on the floor and deceased Guardmouse.

Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Soren: Daggerheart RPG Character

My RPG friends from childhood have reunited to roll some dice again. Jesse Glenn got inspired to run a newer RPG from the folks at Critical Role called Daggerheart. We've had two sessions so-far, a character creation session and then the first part of the adventure. I've posted art process for my character and Mike's character (see links at the bottom of the post)

For this post I'm sharing my drawing and the process of making the art for Nick Kowalcyk's character Soren.

Soren is a Drakona (Dragon person) Seraph who wields a divine sword for his dragon god Azhdaha. Nich gave a me a lot of free reign on the dragon design parts (he asked the horns not be too big or crazy) and focused more on his skin tone being muted earth colors (and an eye that has a pupil of flame that I couldn't show well enough in a drawing this size).
I looked at several references for poses of human knights from RPG artists before settling on drawing this readied stance I could add my dragon head drawing to. The horns, sword, and crossbow were images/3D assets I pasted in as shape holders to make life easier, and the same for painting in a quick tail shape.

The layout was printed out and taped to the back of a sheet of Stathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion lightpad I was able to use the printout below as a guide while I inked on the surface of the bristol. I used a 0.7 nib Copic Multiliner SP pen for the whole thing.

The texture of the mail armor was the daunting part, how do space that so it was more open in the lighter areas and more dense in the shadows. To offset those textures I wanted his other armor bits to reflect his mountain upbringing with warm quilted bits and fur lined bracers/shin guards.

I scanned the inked art into Photoshop and started the color process. This first step is just to separate the different parts of the drawing as different flat colors, a professional version of coloring-in-the-lines.

As I said, Nick asked that Soren's skin be muted warm earth tones, which gave me some room to do richer warm tones for his other clothing and a cool green/grey for the armor.

At this stage I also added in color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) to Soren's pupil and dragon spots.

The final colors were rendered using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop with a stock brush that also adds a pebbling texture.

Drawing your RPG character (as well as the other players in your party, if you happen to be the 'artist' of the group, is one of the real pleasures of playing an RPG and part that I certainly missed.

I look forward to playing more with my old pals and I'm glad we have these images to help get us in the spirit of our characters and have a unified idea of the visualizations of this adventure we all make up together.

Below is a group shot I assembled of our characters together:

If you missed the process art posts for the other two characters here are links:

Caledon Spargan: http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2025/09/caledon-spargan-daggerheart-rpg.html

Winnifred Cloverdale: https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2025/12/winnifred-cloverdale-daggerheart-rpg.html

Tuesday, January 20, 2026

Dawn of the Black Axe Print

The Mouse Guard: Dawn of the Black Axe hardcover is OUT TODAY!
You can pick it up from your local comic/book shop or various online retailers (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/813486/mouse-guard-dawn-of-the-black-axe-by-david-petersen/)

I entrusted Gabriel Rodriguez with the visuals of my world of mouse adventure as we told the story of Bardrick, the first Black Axe and he did nothing short of a masterpiece of illustrating.

I'm offering a 8"x8" print in my online store mouseguard.bigcartel.com I drew of Bardrick with the axe and the five snakes who surrounded all that was. Below I'll walk you through the process of creating the artwork (and another bonus FREE papercraft at the bottom of the post)

The piece started with rough sketches for my ideas for Gabe to draw for the hardcover collection's front cover. It was based on my original drawing of Bardrick (in the Axe Wielder's Sketchbook) and a panel Gabe had drawn in the issues. The concept of the snakes as a celtic knot appealed to me to tie into the illuminated manuscript illustrations I typically use to show Black Axe history. Gabe's cover certainly has this vibe and tone, but with his own sensibilities in his own artistic voice.

Something about that loose sketch with the more tangled snake knot wouldn't let go of me. I wanted to see my version of that drawing to completion and figured if I offered it as a print, we could put it in the online store and take it to conventions. I tightened the pencils of Bardrick on one sheet of copy paper (lightboxing a blowup of the original loose doodle)

Then over the course of several sheets of paper and digital blocking in of colored stripes overlapping each other, I was able to do tighter stylized versions of the five snakes: Gammeltan, Dødfare, Skalaknute, Streikrask, & Langtspyd where I tried to infuse details into their patterns that are special to each snake's appearance, build, and abilities.

The layout (a combination of pencil drawings and digital compositing and color blocking) was printed out and taped to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series 12"x12" bristol so I could ink it on my Huion lightpad.

I inked this using a Copic Multiliner SP 0.7 nib pen. On the lightpad I'm able to see through the surface of the bristol to the printout to use as a guide as I ink––which means no erasing away pencils or digitally adjusting away blueline.

Even though I'd done so much prepwork on the snake designs, keeping all of the patterns and lineweights and details on them straight as I inked around Bardrick was the trickiest part.

When in the inks were finished, I scanned them and started the coloring process. That first step is called 'flatting' and is basically establishing flat color areas for each part of the illustration. No textures, no lighting––just flat base colors. Much of the color choices were already established either from the comic issues (which I colored) or my rough starting sketch...though lots of the colors needed little adjustments for hue, saturation, and value before I felt like I had a place to start rendering.

It's also at this flatting stage that I established all the color holds (areas where I want the inks to be a color other than black) on the snake outlines and their inner details.

Here again are the final colors all rendered out mainly using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop to get all my shadows and highlights and the textures are achieved by using a stock textured brush in Photoshop.

The Hardcover book (out today!) collects all three issues (including all the variant covers) of Dawn of the Black Axe, and this print is available right now as well in my online store: mouseguard.bigcartel.com

Also available for FREE is a PDF print & assemble papercraft of Bardrick I designed on the Mouse Guard website:

https://www.mouseguard.net/s/Bardrick-Papercraft.pdf

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Lieam vs the One Eyed Owl

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 It's the scene from Winter 1152 with Lieam vs the Owl after Celanawe had fallen. In this post I'll break down the steps to creating the illustration

Since the title of the sketchbook is 'Past Whereabouts' I thought it would be good to revisit some familiar scenes or locations. This moment (I'm sharing almost on the dawn of a new year) is about the loss of something (Celanswe) that also gives new life to the future (Lieam as the Black Axe).

I drew the owl separately from the mice each on copy paper and then scanned them and digitally blocked in color to help establish the forms and to figure out the landscape.

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)

In revisiting this scene I handled the inks on the owl feathers a bit differently than before, bit for the most part the stippling of the snow, the silhouettes of the trees, and the details of the mice were inked the same as when I inked the last pages of Winter.

Next step was to start the digital coloring. After scanning the inks I painted in flat base colors––a professional version of coloring-in-the-lines.

Most of the color choices for the characters were established in the Winter book as well as the rough layout. These colors needed to be color shifted cool as well as muted and desaturated.

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 snow, trees, and blood.

Tuesday, January 6, 2026

Fan Art

A great joy as a creator is to see fans drawing, sculpting, panting, modeling, cosplaying, inking, and expressing themselves by making artwork of Mouse Guard characters from the books and moments from their RPG campaigns. And so to celebrate that, here is a whole post of amazing Fan Art

(See past Fan Art Blogposts here)