Gilkey Warlocks RPG – Avon Walker

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 Glen Thomas's Serpents & Spells character: Avon Walker.

The Gilkey Warlocks are based on my friends and I back when we were younger and more active as RPG-ers. Glen Thomas is the Gotham version of my friend Jesse Glenn. His character Avon Walker (a name arrived at using a street he live on a a school he attended) is described as the 'wandering elven huntsman'. The animated shadow that specifically haunts Glen is an owlbear, so I opted for this ranger to have an owl as an animal companion.

I started with a few pencil sketches on copy paper that I scanned in to Photoshop  and assembled before adding some color blocking to help me see the forms.

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 cloak, belt, bracers, boots and bow. I did a bit more subtle rendering on the owl––which I drew while looking at photo reference and did my best to simplify as I interpreted it into a small pencil drawing.

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.

Avon's colors were mostly picked to be standard ranger earth-tones clothing, but I went with a blue for the quilted tunic to honor Jesse's go-to identifying color (same reason Guardmouse Kenzie's cloak is blue).

For the final colors, I tinted the pencil art to be a warmer sepia 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 render the forms and add highlights and shadows. 

I may have spent more time on the owl and looking at reference while painting than I did rendering the rest of Avon's portrait.

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

Creator Commentary: Thane & Ilsa

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 third video of that series with behind the scenes info, writing notes, and art details for: Thane & Ilsa

Watch on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/lM7GHpToIbw

 A reading of this story is available here: Mouse Guard: Thane & Ilsa

Watch on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/Q3h3oU8zG4I

Hellboy painting for NYCC auction

New York Comic Con is this weekend at the Javits center and for their charity auction I've painted a Hellboy piece. The annual auction's proceeds benefit St. Jude Children's Hospital and to-date has raised over one and a half million dollars!

The auction will be held on Sat, Oct 10 from 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM in room 406.1
If you're at the convention, consider bidding on original artwork for the internationally recognized organization for its pioneering research and treatment of children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Your participation in this event will help support lifesaving research and treatment for the children of St. Jude.

Here is the final 10" x 16" painting, but below I'll walk through the process of creating it.

Originally the image I had in my mind was Hellboy emerging with a lantern from a mausoleum or crypt in an old cemetery. However, when looking for reference, I didn't find the right look –everything was too modern– and thought back to when I'd researched lych gates, which would have the right rustic vibe I was going for. 

I gathered some 3D model reference on a popular site for such things and rotated them until I got the angle I needed.  

At that point I'd already sketched Hellboy on copy paper in the position of holding his arm in a lantern-bearing posture. I added in the reference images and drew over them to simplify and refine them into linework that looks like my drawing style.

And because this was ultimately going to be a painting, I needed to color block the whole thing in to plan both for the colors but also the value structure (degrees of light and dark) of the piece.

The line you see in the sky is originally where the painting would have ended before I opted to trimmed my 16" x 20" illustration board in half to 10" x 16", which meant I needed the piece to go taller, so I digitally extended it (the moon was added then too)

With the layout printed out in a few sheets on my home printer, I transferred the drawing to the illustration board using transfer paper. The transfer paper is placed between the illustration board and the printout and when pressure is applied to the top when tracing over the lines the graphite on the transfer paper sticks to the board.

The rest is just painting layer after layer of watercolor to build up the value structure and get the colors right.

Below are a long series of process photos I took as I worked on this on and off for two days:

The last step was to reinforce my linework with a brown color pencil on Hellboy and a grey color pencil for the background.

Again, the original painting will be up for auction this Saturday at NYCC––happy bidding!

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