Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas!
36 handpainted snowflakes on 3" x 3" bristol.




Watercolor Wednesday: In case you missed last week's Watercolor Wednesday pieces, here they are for a closer look. Like the week before, both are fairy tale
inspired. First up is Pinocchio & the talking cricket. I'd intended to do this less Disney-fied than it came out, but the costume & color palate was so ingrained in me, that I couldn't shed it for anything more original. The talking Cricket (named Jiminy for the Disney version) came as a bonus piece so the two formed a weighted diptych.

The second piece from last week are the three little pigs. It's no secret that I enjoy drawing talking animals, material textures, & working trades, so doing a take on these guys seemed a natural fit. After the Pinocchio painting I decided not to fight the Disney costumes for these three brothers.

Tomorrow I'll post a blizzard of paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances: 
Emerald City: March 1-3
Fabletown Con: March 22-24
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21

*more 2013 dates coming*

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

FCBD 2013 Cover process

This year's Free Comic Book Day offering by Archaia will be an 8" x 8" flipbook (like years 2010 & 2011). My contribution is a Mouse Guard cover for one side and an 8 page story. I had teased a bit of working on this on Twitter, but was told that Archaia preferred to keep it hush-hush until their official announcement last week.

This year's story of mine will follow the tradition of the last two: a morality tale being told to a younger version of a character we know from the Mouse Guard series that helps explain who they grew up to be.  Sadie is the mouse who will hear a story this year.

I don't want to give too much away about the story itself, so I'll skip over that and just say that I had a picture in my head of a beautiful mouse swinging carefree on a swing held by a goose. I looked at the Rococo painting Fragonard's "The Swing" (or "The Happy Accidents of the Swing") for inspiration and to help me imagine the correct body language for the swinging mouse. I sketched the swinger, the goose, and the viewing mouse all separately in my sketchbook and then composited and resized them into this single image. I dropped in ghostly version of the logos to make sure I was keeping my composition in the view-able area.

Next step was to print out that composited rough at actual size (in this case 12" x 12") and tape it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 bristol. On a lightbox I was able to see the printed image and use it as a guide while I inked the piece. I used Copic Multiliners for almost the entire image (the 0.7 nib mainly) other than the water ripples that I inked with a brush. knowing I planned on using a color hold on the landscape inkwork (to help it recede into the background more subtly) I carefully left a white gap between the foreground subjects and the background. That made it easier to isolate them in the next steps...


The scanned inkwork is ready to be digitally colored and have its color areas established. Laying out these flat areas of color...or coloring in the lines...is called Color Flatting. Here I kept it close to my final color choices, but since the idea here is just to make the goose's feathers a different color than the sky and the vines a different color than the goose's bill, I could have used any colors: a red feathered duck with a green bill and pink vines. The final color choices can be altered at any time easily once you've established color flats. Part of the reason to flat colors is so you can easily move between different areas when you want to render them or alter the colors without effecting the color or rendering of the part next to it.

The final color rendering is done by adding texture, shading and highlights. I use the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop for this and a textured brush to give it the right look as I go. Because this cover has more of a fairy-tale romantic feel, I also designed a new retailer-stamp area that fit the mood (and is based on some stained glass from the antique store I worked in when I started Mouse Guard.

Free Comic Book Day is the first Saturday in May each year. I've yet to announce my 2013 FCBD plans, but in any case, tell your retailer now you want the Archaia Mouse Guard flip book, and then take a friend who has never read a comic next May and introduce them to worlds of stories with a free issue of something.



Black Axe Replicas:
Skelton Crew Studio has started their Mouse Guard weapon replica line (at mouse-scale) with the Black Axe! The Axes are available for pre-order (shipping in January) for $30 through their online store. Axes come with a debossed leather pouch and the first 400 ordered have tags I signed. Israel Skelton did a fantastic job interpreting  sculpting, & casting the mythic axe of black. So, as a gift for that Mouse Guard fan in your life, consider a mouse-sized replica of the Black Axe (you can print out a photo and wrap that until the axe arrives)

As Israel started working on the Axe, he asked for 'control' art, but not only did I not have a perfect & clean master drawing of the axe, I also hadn't drawn it consistently over the course of 3 series. I drew a new piece for Israel to use as a guide for his sculpt. Knowing that some of the stylistic elements of the axe in the comic would need to be more believeable as a 3d object for this project, gave me some license to push my design a bit away from past drawings. The two biggest changes were the barley-twist handle and the slightly more curvy shape of the axe's head. Israel took all of this and ran with it to make a wonderful art object for me and my fans.


Holiday Sale Reminder:
In my online store you can use promocode MOUSEGUARD to receive 10% off your order! The discount is good on Original art, Shirts, Non- Mouse Guard art pieces, Prints, and the Winter B&W edition. The sale runs through the end of the year, so whether you are buying a gift for a Mouse Guard fan, or something for yourself, If it's still December, you can get a discount. I'll be updating the store with more items as the sale goes on (check Twitter or Facebook for updates)

Watercolor Wednesday: In case you missed last week's Watercolor Wednesday pieces, here they are for a closer look. Both are a bit fairy tale inspired (but not meant to be literal illustrations of) The Beast of Beauty and the Beast and a Sea Hag like the one in Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid.


Tomorrow I'll post a few more fairy tale inspired paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances:
Emerald City: March 1-3
Fabletown Con: March 22-24
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21

*more 2013 dates coming*

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Role Playing Game Portraits
A month ago I tweeted an image of some Role Playing game portraits I did in the early '00s inspired by some Tony DiTerlizi 'Flawed Characters' Portraits from Dragon Magazine around the same time. While looking for something else in a file cabinet, I uncovered the originals of those drawings and a few more to boot! I've re-scanned & colored them for the sake of the blog. Here they are with some commentary:

Dwarven Fighter:
My favorite of the bunch. I gave him evidence of some serious injuries (and a dead eye to match) Don't know what function the rings & pins serve on his pauldron straps, but the look cool.

Elven Rouge & Assassin:
I had a backstory for these two, being an arranged couple. The Rouge was a grizzled version of my standard D&D characters (thief with a conscience) and the Assassin is a cold blooded killer that eventually scares the Rogue away. (It's a themed arc-type pairing I'll use in a later story)

Halfling Bard:
Bards get a bad rap, but I think if handled properly, they can be rather cool. Become a minstral that gets in good with the King/Queen and then uses the closeness to his advantage. The $#!+ eating grin on this guy's face makes me think he's already set that plan in motion.

Dwarven Cleric:
I don't get sick of drawing craggy old bearded characters. So often you see D&D Clerics as being clean and neat. So this guy got a tangled mess of facial hair and only a few stubby teeth to push the idea of piety and faith being a Cleric's weapon, not fastidiousness.

Elven Paladin:
After the Elven Assasin drawing I got hung up on doing ringmail with a stencil...but youy can see that it starts to fall apart as a technique rather quickly. I imagined that something horrible happened to her mouth/jaw, so the armor is also cosmetic. And even though back in the 2.0 days of D&D, non-humans couldn't be Paladins, I always liked the idea of non-human holy knights with different deitys and rituals.

Halfling Mage:
This guy looks more run down than flawed & scarred. I don't know if I had a class in mind for him back when I drew him..but after the coloring gave him a bit of a Weasley/Gryffindor looks, I thought it was appropriate he was a mage. It's also fun to imagine a D&D mage that isn't just wearing robes and Gandalf's hat.


I will be offering the original drawings (pencil on 8.5" x 11" paper) of all of the above for sale through my online store later today. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed & Facebook page for more info.

Holiday Sale Reminder:
In my online store you can use promocode MOUSEGUARD to receive 10% off your order! The discount is good on Original art, Shirts, Non- Mouse Guard pieces, Prints, and the Winter B&W edition. The sale runs through the end of the year, so whether you are buying a gift for a Mouse Guard fan, or something for yourself, If it's still December, you can get a discount. I'll be updating the store with more items as the sale goes on (check Twitter or Facebook for updates)

Watercolor Wednesday:
Here are last week's Watercolor Wednesday pieces in case you missed them or wanted a closer look. First up is my attempt at a John Bauer style Giant (though he was known for Trolls rather than Giants...I wanted to draw a giant) This is one of my favorite Watercolor Wednesday pieces to-date.

The second piece started as a bad drawing of a Jack Frost like ice-pixie. The trick to turn it from a bad rough drawing into a watercolor I was pleased with had everything to do with defining the edges of the character by painting in the background space around him. The negative shapes between the icy/snowflakey bits and the happy accents that formed them are where the magic happened
 Tomorrow I'll post a few more paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances: Emerald City: March 1-3
Fabletown Con: March 22-24
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21

*more 2013 dates coming*

Tuesday, December 4, 2012


From the Vault: The Big One:
Two of last week's Watercolor Wednesday paintings were based on a project called "The Big One" (seen to the left and just below to the right). My friend Mike Davis (character inspiration for Rand) had an idea for a story/setting that paralleled WWII in mood, theme, and technology but was being waged by Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Drow, Giants, Orcs, etc. (the Meta-human races of D&D)

The idea still has some legs in my mind, and while I was painting gnomes and dwarves, & giants in a more fairy tale style for Watercolor Wednesdays, I thought I'd dip back in to the WWII theme for some new and unique pieces.Mike and I started talking about this project right after college gradation (we graduated together from EMU with degrees in Fine Art...though we've been friends since 8th grade).

 Mike is a bit of a miliraty buff and we both like strategy war games (I think we'd been playing Axis and Allies at the time). The concept was his and I just helped him flesh out the factions and what races would represent the various real-world sides of WWII. Elves represented Great Britain and Dwarves were Russia...but after that we started spiraling off into our own fictionalized history and war rather than the direct comparisons of the real events. This triptych was painted on my last sheet of watercolor paper from college and was my first try at showing the major players.

While elves were my race of choice to play in Dungeons and Dragons, I was more fascinated by what we were doing with the history and culture of our military Dwarves. I was basing their helmets on Naval helmets and liked the idea of a dwarven navy, though I think Mike resisted because Dwarves dislike water in D&D. For this painting I threw them into a blizzard  hunkered down and trying to get supplies. By the time I did this painting I felt my artwork wasn't portraying a grity or realistic enough view of this story...it was coming off cartoony and cute.

I started doing research. At that time I was working at Starbucks Coffee, so after my shift ended and I didn't have classes anymore, I could work on painting a fictionalized WWII. Using a lot of photo reference, I did these three paintings for the project.

Unfortunately niether Mike or I had any idea at the time where to take the story. We had broad strokes, but no characters, no heart for our set up. And as usual, life got in the way...I found another hobby or thing to draw after work and Mike did too. Perhaps some day Mike and I will figure out a direction for The Big One, but until then..it remains in the Vault.

Holiday Sale Reminder:
In my online store you can use promocode MOUSEGUARD to receive 10% off your order! I'm running this sale through the end of the year, so whether you are buying a gift for a Mouse Guard fan, or something for yourself, If it's still December, you can get a discount. I'll be updating the store with more items as the sale goes on (check Twitter or Facebook for updates)

Watercolor Wednesday:
The other piece from last week's Watercolor Wednesday was He-Man's arch enemy Skelator. I had a Skelator action figure when I was a kid, but I took him and my He-man figure down the street to an unoccupied house. The house was maintained by a guy we all called "M'Guffy"...though I don't think that was his name at all. Anyhow the house was vacant and kids would play on the lawn and front steps of the house. As I played, I had He-Man put Skelator in 'jail'...which was really the house's mailbox. I guess I went home forgetting to ever pardon Skelator, and when I went back and found him gone I cried. I asked Mr. M'Guffy the next time he came to mow, and he said he'd found the toy and given it to a little boy in HIS neighborhood. What an odd and long story to accompany a single painting...
Tomorrow I'll post a few more paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances: Emerald City: March 1-3
Fabletown Con: March 22-24
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21

*more 2013 dates coming*

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Character development over time:
This week is a bit of a "From the Vault" type post...but with less focus on explaining the vaulted project and more on the evolution of developing characters over time. This project (originally titled "'R Wars") was started by my buddy Mike Davis (Real life Rand inspiration...I'll share another project he and I collaborated on after college next week) as a sci-fi comic about a rag-tag group of aliens and one human. I don't have a lot of the early art from this other than my own, so I'll tend to focus on two of the characters you see here: Zubelflex & Cap

In high school (when this story begins) our normal method character development was started by each of us having a character based on us (I think this is also because we all role played together). Mike's human character was essentially a manga version of himself. And Jesse Glenn (Kenzie) was drawn as a large furry noseless creature called J-Man. Jesse and Mike tried coming up with designs for my character, but ended up with nothing they like or that could be easily re-drawn. So I took a crack at it and came up with this drawing and named him "Zubelflex".

At some point, I felt the cast needed to be rounded out more. Mike had added in a race of creatures that were somehow supposed to be related to salamanders and he named the lead one Sal and based his personality on our friend Nick...but I thought this group was the perfect place for a character I had drawn on my own several years before called "Cap Transfo". I first drew Cap in 8th grade science class putting together a bit of cartooning I had mimicked from practicing drawing Roger Rabbit & the Loony Tunes characters. He was blue because I only had a blue color pencil in my bag. He was a scientist that had barrel-like attachments to his arms and legs that could shoot fire, launch grappling hooks, or eject buzz saws (think part Inspector Gadget part Gizmo Duck).


Over the course of high school, the characters became more refined. With Jesse as the most accomplished artist of us at the time, we all emulated his style of drawing. I certainly copied his style of drawing eyes from Cats Trio when drawing these characters. Cap became smoother & squatter. I nixed the multi-purpose barrels that his arms formed into in favor of him having a single "tech bucket" device that had a data screen and could shoot fire (I figured it was small a modified ship engine). Sal, Davis, & J-man simply became my interpretations of Mike or Jesse's drawings, and Zubelflex got more gangly and tall. I based Zube's vest on the longer sleeveless liner of my winter trenchcoat (we all wore trechcoats at the time..it's wasn't a cult thing...they were warm and we thought they made us look cool).

That last evolutionary jump was more about simple refining of what was already there (and learning how to draw something consistently at all). But later on...much later on...I thought it would be fun to revisit the characters. Not just revisit them, but redesign them. From high school through college and beyond up to that point, any time I'd drawn them, it was just a slight revision of the style you see above...like I was staying on-model for a client. But I wasn't drawing that cartoonish/animated look any more, and it was time to break free of the old designs. I kept the overall shapes of their anatomy, but tried a new line style and a look of something more like a creature than a cartoon.

While the Sal above looks more like a creature design, I felt I lost something in him, I also didn't tackle J-Man or Cap. So here is a doodle from a notepad (I was on the phone) where I got back to some of Sal's original charm and versions of Cap & J-Man in this style. J-man with a pipe worked for me instantly...but there was somethin about Cap that looked a little too Ninja Turtle-ish and not pushed far enough away from my high school era shapes and design.

I looked at a few of Bobby Chiu's demos and took a stab at a digital painting of cap...I don't know that I got away from a blue TMNT, or if the look serves the character...but It was a good excersize in getting far enough away from an original concept to see where the boundaries are.

Later I gave the same design another shot, but in pencil (with digital colors) I made his head wider, his eyes smaller, and his neck longer (and a few more than his on-model 3 whips of hair). I like this version, but the angle of the eye still makes him look unfriendly compared to past versions.

Now because this project or the characters have never been committed to anything published (I tend to think of stories and characters not really 'existing' until they are made accessible for a fan to see it presented in a completed form...otherwise it's all concepts in flux) There is no happy ending or 'right' or 'final' design to share with you...only the most recent drawings I've done of them and the ideas of direction I'd like to take them if I ever had the time & resources...

While I love comics, I think the sci-fi series would be even better as a TV or webisode project. The alien characters would all achieved with  puppets of different types: Zubelflex: costumed body with an animatronic head (think the 1st TMNT movie or Dinosaurs...but with a skinny furry galoot) J-Man: a Full body puppet with the head operated by the puppeteer's arm (think big bird or Bear in the Big Blue House) & Sal and Cap are hand puppets with digital bunraku used when full body shots of them are needed....and Davis is performed by a human teenager. Of course if that were to happen, a whole other round of visual development would need to happen to realize the characters in 3D and with the materials used to make puppets and the limitations of their types of movements in mind (or to positively look at it, to take advantage of the types of movements & looks puppetry does best).

Holiday Sale:
In my online store, I've started an online sale that runs through the end of the year! Enter code MOUSEGUARD at checkout to receive 10% off your entire order. I've also added some copies of the RPG Boxed set. In those copies I've opened the sets and signed the rule books, but there aren't many of them, so if you'd like a copy, now is the time.

We have tried our best to get the cheapest shipping rates on everything we can (also accounting for our boxing & packing materials). I know the prices on a few items is high, but I assure you they are as-close-to (and in some cases cheaper) than the best shipping prices we can find.


Watercolor Wednesday: In case you missed last week's Watercolor Wednesday pieces, here they are for a closer look. The first was a fairy tale type giant. Perhaps he's not even an ogre-ish race of giants, but a human who grew to giant size. And where would you sit if you grew that large? You would want a nice sturdy chair that didn't stand a chance of toppling over. 4 closely growing trees would be the legs of your resting spot. You would also have to commission a talented knitter to make your striped socks in 27XL and a very good hatter to fashion a cap large enough for your crown. Oh, you would also nap in your tree chair when your socks and cap were made...

Also...a tiki mask in a harvest looking theme (you know...for Thanksgiving last week)

Tomorrow I'll post a few more paintings in my online store.


2013 Appearances: Emerald City: March 1-3
Fabletown Con: March 22-24
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19

Heroes Con: June 7-9
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21

*more 2013 dates coming*

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Usagi Pinup Process


Better Late Than Never: Usagi Yojimbo Pinup Process:
In 2006 I first met Stan Sakai, creator of the long running Usagi Yojimbo comic. Mouse Guard has just hit on a national level and Stan stopped by the Archaia booth at San Diego to offer very kind words and support of my work. His book is a perfect example of the kind of material I wanted Mouse Guard to be: talking animals, historic setting, a bit of humor, grounded in plots that have a weight and sincerity to them. Usagi also has a wide age readership and while it does show the consequences of death, it never glorifies it or shows the goriness it.

Stan asked to swap pinups for each other's books (Stan's appears in Winter Issue 2 and also in the Winter 1152 hardcover)

For my pinup of Usagi, I decided to go for a four seasons theme. It would allow me to draw the character a few times to show the range of storytelling Stan does...The spring kite flying shows some levity, the summer has a bit of action and focuses on Usagi's training, Fall is about how interesting a mundane task can be, and Winter is all about severity, focus, and mood. I sketched out the four poses on scraps of bristol board. At the time for Mouse Guard, I was trimming down 14" x 17" pieces into 12" x 12" pages, so I had scraps like these all over the studio as scratch pads.

I don't seem to have the file of the scanned sketches resized in a template for the pinup's final art size...but that's what I did..and then printed it out and inked the piece on bristol board using the printout as a guide behind the bristol on a lightbox.
I checked with a few folks to make sure the kanji for each season was correct before I committed them in ink to the piece. I also wanted each image to look like a Japanese woodcut, so there was a focus to add a decorative element and composition to each 'panel'...the kanji was part of that, but so were the choices for the cherry blossoms, the koi, the scallop pattern on the bowl, and the falling snow


The artwork was scanned in for digital coloring. Here I established the color areas, which is a fancy way for saying, without shading, I colored in the lines. I cheated here a bit and re-created this for today's blogpost. I did not save a version of the file just flatted at that time, so I went back in to the final color file and made this example of what the piece probably looked like before I started the final colors.


The final colors are seen here and were achived using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop with a textured brush. I probably over rendered and texturized the piece compared to what I would do today, but I think it still holds up pretty well. The pinup appeared on the back of Usagi Yojimbo issue 104.







Watercolor Wednesday:In case you missed last week's Watercolor Wednesday pieces, here they are for a closer look. I started by drawing one of these and I thought "This is Tough Pete, nobody messes with Tough Pete" And I decided he was one of several brothers all named Pete who boxed...or just fought. I then drew and painted Angry Pete and Strong Pete. I had a lot of fun playing with the shapes of their anatomy and making them so odd looking. There was a conscious decision to make each wear primary colored pants and hats...but not the same color on any one Pete. I was torn about the idea of selling these individually or as a group. In the spirit of trying to keep prices down on these, and hoping to make more than 1 person happy with a purchase each week, I opted to split the brothers up....



...perhaps down the road I'll have to paint their rival cousins..three scrapping brothers named Mad Pete, Crazy Pete, and Big Pete. Tomorrow I'll post a few more paintings in my online store.


2013 Appearances: Emerald City: March 1-3
Fabletown Con: March 22-24
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21

*more 2013 dates coming*

Blog Archive