David Petersen's Blog

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Cats Trio Revisit

I still find tremendous nostalgic comfort & joy in CATS TRIO: a comic my friends and I worked on (never finished) at the start of high school. Three mutated/anthropomorphic cats befriend a similar raccoon as the group discover their shared origins, survive in abandoned places away from human eyes, and avoid being hunted by another of their kind (a TMNT homage to be sure). Here is a new revisit I did just as a fun indulgence.

For a past post about Cats Trio: https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2017/08/cats-trio-revisit-cover.html

Or, watch the Plotmasters Project episode about it here: https://www.theplotmasters.com/cats-trio

This revisit came from my going through old sketchbooks to scan for Patreon and I found a thumbnail lineup of the group that I think I drew at the time of the Plotmasters Project episode. I pulled it out with the idea of just inking it at that same size...but quickly realized it was both very small and that the characters were too loose to go straight to ink (especially the further to the right).

So, I blew up a scan of the rough and re-penciled it at a larger scale. On the back of the paper I also penciled in a boarded up fence I wasn't sure I wanted to add or not.

Both sides of the pencils were scanned and reassembled in Photoshop and I found an old rusted road sign to reference I could add my Plotmasters Project-era CATS TRIO logo to.

With that printed out and taped to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol, I started inking the piece on my Huion lightpad. On the lightpad I can see through the surface of the bristol to the printout to use as my 'pencils' as I ink with a Copic Multiliner SP 0.7 nib pen.

Inks were scanned and the color process began by adding flat color to everything establishing not only what areas are what colors, but also what the overall base colors are. I pulled the color choices I'd made from my Plotmasters Project episode revisit, but they still needed to be altered a bit (hue, value, saturation) here and there for this piece.

It's at this stage that I also establish the color holds (areas where I want the inklines to be a color other than black). I did this on their pupils, glasses, the sign text, and the rust.

Here again are the final rendered colors. To add the shadows, highlights and texture I sued the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop with a stock textured brush.

These characters feel like old friends. They occupy a special place in my heart that idealizes a great time in my life with great friends. And while I have no current plans to develop Cats Trio, it's always fun when I get a chance to say hello to these guys and keep them alive.

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Extending art for a new banner

A few years ago I did an image for a print of Saxon, Kenzie, and Rand (https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2024/07/saxon-kenzie-and-rand.html) and since it's one of my favorite Mouse Guard illustrations I wanted to have it featured on a new banner for my booth (seen here at ECCC '26).

But, the horizontal format of the initial image didn't work with the vertical banner shape. And when cropped to fit, important elements didn't end up in the printed area. So, I did an art edit and extension to reformat the piece. Below you can see the steps.

I started with the original piece and then in Photoshop started digitally painting extensions on the top and bottom to rough in the forms of plants, roots, rocks, etc. It took a few attempts to extend the forms in a way that didn't look like there was an obvious seam or without blending in by inking too far over the top of what already existed.

I also moved Rand in toward the center more, so there was a gap where he used to be that also had to be filled in.

The overall size of this piece was already sized to fit the dimensions of the banner size and I left enough room at the top for the text.

With the rough done, I printed out the sections I needed to extend and taped them to the back of some Strathmore bristol so I could ink the linework for the new bits on top of my Huion lightpad. First off were the weeds above the characters and the patch for filling in the root where Rand used to be.

You can see I made some pencil marks of existing bits of lineart from the original to help me register the new art back into the digital file when it was time.

The larger bit of inking was the bottom section. Same process with a printout of my digital mockup taped to the back of some bristol and inked on a lightpad. There was so much going on for this bit with the detail of the ground cover but also how those lines needed to feed back into the existing linework that this patch was much more time consuming.

Inks scanned in and registered in place with the existing inks (I had to do some layer masking on both the new and old inks to get everything to flow perfectly) I colored the new tall version of this piece. There was a lot of eye-dropper color selections to try and blend the new color with the old while trying not to overpaint any of the old work where I could help it.

The original version of this image is available as a print:
https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/trio-print-14-x-20

and I've also now offered it as a playmat/deskpad:
https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/playmat-mouse-guard

Below you can see the final version for the banner with the text and logo:

Tuesday, June 2, 2026

HeroesCon 2026 Paintings

For my return to Heroes Con June 12-14, I've painted two 16" x 20" pieces in watercolor and color pencil. One of them will be put into the Saturday art auction at the convention. The other will be available at my table the next day with a price set from the winning bid of Saturday's auction.

This year's pieces are both from my favorite Disney animated feature: Robin Hood. This one meant a lot to me growing up and definitely influenced what Mouse Guard became.

Below are the process steps and photos I took as I worked.

I started with pencil drawings that were assembled in photoshop with some corrections and drawing fill-in done digitally. For both pieces, I wanted to try and draw the characters the way I'd treat them (more like real animals) but balance that with their cartoon likeness.

Next step was to use transfer paper to transfer the large printout of the rough onto the thick illustration board. Using a ballpoint pen I traced over the rough's outlines to get the linework on the final surface.

You can see the drawing transferred onto the illustration board and the back-side of the transfer paper where the graphite has worn away.

The transferred drawings ready to paint.

My painting setup. One large and muddy watercolor tray and lid with dried up paint tubes I use like cakes and a spare set of colors I never use, but are stored in the larger tray.

From here on out, I won't type more commentary until the end.

To get the fireflies, I used clean water and a brush to lift the pigment and blot with paper towel.

The last step was to reinforce the linework with color pencil. Almost like inking my work, but rather than a bold and harsh black line, I opted for a softer dark brown color pencil.

As I said, one of these pieces will go into the art auction at Heroes Con on Saturday––the other will be available at my table on Sunday morning for a price based on the auction's results.

Also, since I've been asked, I don't make prints of characters I don't own/have the rights to––so I'm not making prints of these.

Bonus:
Here are the past Disney-themed pieces I've done for Heroes Auction art: