David Petersen's Blog

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Recent Commissions

A few recent 9" x 12" brush pen commissions from SDCC

A Guardmouse on a tree root

Leonardo: a TMNT

Godzilla

Frankenstein's Monster

Bride of Frankenstein

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

Creator Commentary: The Wise Weaver

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 first video of that series with behind the scenes info, writing notes, and art details for: The Wise Weaver

Watch on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/FlTVSO3RtF0

A live reading of this story is available here: Mouse Guard: The Tale of the Wise Weaver

Watch on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/aXXhVQcY250

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Gwendolyn, Sadie, & Sienna Trio Print

For SDCC last week I decided to create a new 20" x 14" print featuring the Matriarch Gwendolyn and two of her Guardmice: Sadie & Sienna. It was a last minute decision, and a crazy rush to draw, ink, & color it in time to get off to the printer and arrive at the hotel in San Diego. But I managed to get it done in time. Here is the finished 20" x 14" print and below I'll go through the steps to create it.

The goal was to create a companion print to the Saxon, Kenzie, Rand trio print I did a few years ago. But instead feature some of the female characters like Gwendolyn, Sadie, and (though she hasn't had much page time––she is a playable pre-generated character in the Mouse Guard RPG)

Julia and I agreed that the mice should face the opposite direction to the previous print and I worked on sketches for each character before doing separate tight drawings of each on copy paper. Those were all scanned in and assembled in Photoshop with some blocked in color for the characters. I painted in rough shapes for the landscape before printing that out and on a light pad drawing a penciled version of the rocks, moss, and plants.

And for the blue bird...I looked at several photos for reference to be able to accurately draw the one seen here. Julia and I were looking at Sarah Suplina's work on Instagram and enjoyed the blue orange contrast of her bluebirds.

The plants are referenced from the Astilbe and Azalea growing in the garden beds in front of our house, which is very handy to be able to just walk out the front door if I wanted more reference that was closer or from other angles.

The plant life ended up getting stylized a bit, and I went with the coloring of late summer early fall when the Azalea goes more red in the leaves.

When I was happy with the digitally assembled and color-blocked layout, I printed that out (over the course of 4 sheets of copy paper I had to trim and align into one big piece) and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series 14" x 20" bristol.

I inked the whole piece on a light pad with my Copic Multiliner SP pen––I used the 0.7 nib exclusively. Because it was a big piece, it took a long time to ink and I spread it out over two days. Getting the density of stippling on the rocks correct (enough but not too much) was the thing I fussed over the most on this piece, but there certainly was a lot to concentrate over with the delicate moss, feather patterns, and mouse details.

The inks were then scanned in two passes and re-assembled in Photoshop to begin the coloring process. This early coloring stage is known as flatting because it's all about painting in flat colors to mark out the color areas (what parts are what base colors).

At this stage I also established the color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) for the background plants, the veins on the leaves, and some of the mouse clothes.

The last step was a long process of rendering a bit with the paintbrush tool for the sky, but mainly using the dodge and burn tools with a textured brush to give all the forms light and shadow. The 20" x 14" print was available at SDCC and now in my online store: https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/bluebird-trio-print-20-x-14

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

SDCC 2026

San Diego Comic Con is this weekend! I'll have a 10' x 10' booth #4606 full of Mouse Guard Hardcovers, RPGs, Sketchbooks, Prints, Tees, Totes, Stickers, Original Art and more! 2026 marks the 20 year anniversary of my first time ever exhibiting at SDCC with Mark Smlie at the Archaia Booth right after the first few issues of Fall were published nationally*.

Signatures are always free (other than on MtG cards–which are $5 per card) on anything you buy from me -or- brought from home.

Julia and I will be joined by my best friend Jesse (real-life Kenzie) to help with transactions and keeping the booth stocked.

Below is more info about where to find me and some special things I'll have at the show.

SDCC floorplan:
Booth 4606 Inside lobby F

New Items Debuting at SDCC:

A new 20" x 14" Mouse Guard print of Gwendolyn, Sadie, & Sienna with a bluebird

New Tote with a Guardmouse archer in black and green––handy for carrying books around SDCC or back home when running errands.

Items new to SDCC:

Mouse Guard coloring book with 90+ illustrations and lay-flat binding

Saxon, Kenzie, & Rand Mouse Guard playmat/deskmat 24" x 13.5"

Limited edition 11" x 11" 'Marigold' print

2026 Bookplate

Discordant Fellowship tees (in green and blue)

Mouse Guard character stickers:

Sadie, Lieam, Celanawe, Rand, Saxon, & Kenzie

17" x 11" print of the 1149 Map of the Territories

for your collection or your RPG table

The latest Mouse Guard hardcover collecting the limited series with Gabriel Rodriguez & myself teaming up to tell the story of the first mouse to ever wield the Black Axe.

Latest Sketchbook 'Past Whereabouts'

The original inked artwork (among other originals) for the new Trio print.

And while this is a photo from last year,

I suspect the booth setup to look similar to this for you to keep an eye open for:

*Bonus fun photo---here I am in the Archaia booth in 2006 with Mark Smylie, Aki Liao, & Alex Sheikman

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Cats Trio Re-Revisit

I recently posted about a Cats Trio revisit that I drew at the end of last year...well, during my friend group's RPG session, I started doodling and started drawings of the cats again. And as a fun indulgence, I did a full finished piece of it.

For those who don't know, CATS TRIO was 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).

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

I took the rough pencils of the three cats I drew during game night, then revised a better drawing of the raccoon before putting them all into Photoshop and moved and resized them until I had a composition I liked. To help me see each of their forms, I blocked in some base colors for each character so that as I moved them individually, their colors moved with them.

Using a photo of a derelict bridge as reference, I penciled a background that gave the whole piece a 'Stand By Me' vibe.

The layout was then printed and taped to the back of a sheet of 11" x 17" Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion lightpad I'm able to see through the surface of the bristol to the printout to use as a guide as I ink the lineart. I used a Copic Miltiliner SP 0.7 nib pen.

I left the details of the characters fairly open focusing more on line weight for their contours, fur texture, and clothing wrinkles. I spent more time on detail for the environment.

The inks were then scanned and brought into Photoshop again where I started the coloring process by blocking in all the flat colors (this professional version of coloring-in-the-lines is called 'flatting). Most of the color choices were already established from past Cats Trio pieces, but I did make some adjustments of value, saturation, and hue for this piece to help the viewer's eye move through it better.

At this stage I also established color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) on the bindle bag, their pupils, and all of the background.

The final art (seen here without the Cats Trio logo) was rendered using the dodge and burn tools. I happened to be finishing the color rendering on the final character's at the virtual RPG gaming session with that same group of friends one week later). I pushed the background way back to make sure the characters were more of the focus (ironic with all the ink detail back there)

These characters are old friends. They occupy a special place in my heart that idealizes a great time in my young life establishing lifelong friendships. 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, July 7, 2026

Farewell Cocobolo

Our beautiful Colobolo passed over into the realm of memory yesterday. We are utterly heartbroken. It all happened so quickly. She was such a joy. The silence is deafening. She leaves us and her sister Bronwyn with giant holes in our hearts.

She was about 13 (our vet office at the time argued over if she was 2 or 4 when we got her, so we split the difference) and we had 10 amazing years with her. She was in good spirits and had a chance to see many of our friends and family on the 4th before an inoperable mass effecting her bladder left us no choice but to give her peace.

Coco was a rescue who we got after our first Anatolian Shepard passed away and our second Anatolian Bronwyn, who met adult Autumn as a puppy, suddenly didn't know how to be a dog without her big sister. We found Coco listed as being in need of a home.

She was several states away, a rescue who was found tied to a tree outside a infrequently used fire station training center. The family who was fostering her said they'd had seven people before us inquire, but when they met it was an obvious bad match. When I walked in the door, Coco knocked me down licked my face and sat on me begging for affection. She chose us immediately.

Coco was a bit mischievous and strong-willed about doing what she wanted, but her overwhelming trait was to be sweet and cuddly. 100+ lbs of cuddle with a big jowly face who could hold your arm down to prevent you from leaving and petting her further.

Many of the photos I'm sharing of our beloved girl are of her napping or just waking up from naps, it's because she was leery of people taking photos of her.

Within just a few months of us getting her, she blew her CCL (similar to an ACL in humans) and needed surgery. It was a hard recovery for her that took months, so when her other CCL went (which the vets told us would likely be the case--if one goes the other is about a year behind) a year and a half later, we did the other leg, but with a different procedure that would have a faster healing and recovery.

We know many folks didn't understand us putting the amount of orthopedic money into a dog––but she really was that special. I know everyone feels that way about their dog(s), but I can tell you that this was different. She connected to us on a level intellectually and emotionally differently than most other dogs I've owned or known.

My Mom was in the early stages of dementia setting in due to her Parkinson's, and Coco became her whisperer. Our dog could settle my Mom down and calmly look inter he eyes and just be there with her. This continued even after Mom moved in to our home for the final years of her life, and Coco was there with her every day keeping her company and being especially gentle for her size with Mom.

I mentioned before that she was mischievous––She once broke through a window screen onto the roof because I left the house with my Mom without taking her. I was dropping my Mom off at a care facility when my across the street neighbor texted me and asked if I knew my dog was on the roof. I drove home as quickly as I could and spent no time outside (for fear Coco would try to jump down to me) and ran in the house calling her name until I got to the broken window and got her back inside safely. Heart attack at the time, but a story for life.

And we will certainly miss her life in this house. She was loud (she barked at planes in the sky, and howled along with any sirens), she let you know what she wanted (food, potty, affection, you to move out of the spot she wanted to curl up in), and she was a real companion who wanted to share our lives. And she certainly did––and us in hers.