Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Hornblower Print Process

In 2020 I'll be introducing some new prints to my convention & online store offerings (Expected to debut at ECCC and in my online store in the weeks following). These won't just be new images, but a new format I haven't done before: 9"x12". The plan is for them to be full-bleed (the image goes off the edge of the paper) and we will sell them backed and bagged. So-far, it looks like I have 3 of them ready to send off to the printer.

For this blogpost, I'll be walking through the process for the Hornblower Guardmouse print you can see to the left.



The inspiration for the piece was a Woman's Sufferage meeting propaganda poster that I came across online. I loved the pose and the armor––and felt it was a great starting point for a Mouse Guard piece. So, I drew my guardmouse version of the hornblower, but replaced the metal horn with a tooth-horn borrowed from the Legends of the Guard Vol 1 cover tale. The fox was suggested by Julia and the castle-rooftop was done referencing Bran Castle in Romania. I drew my pencils on copy paper with a 0.5 lead in a mechanical pencil.



After I had my pencils scanned in, I composed the final layout in Photoshop (truth be told, I started doing this right after I had the mouse drawn). I tint each drawing a different color to help me see the various elements. for the same reason, and to block in my understanding of the forms, I did a quick digital coloring job. It was at that digital coloring stage that I also blobbed in some vines of ivy draping over the castle roofs and towers.

There's a part of me that was coming up with context for this image being a past matriarch on the tower parapet of Lockhaven, with a fox companion signaling for the Guard.


I printed out the above layout onto copy paper, and then taped that to the back of a sheet of 11"x 14" Strathmore bristol. On my Huion lightpad, I could see through the surface of the bristol to the printout below so I could ink the piece.

I inked with Copic Multiliner SP pens (I think I almost exclusively used the 0.7 nib for this piece).

The inking process was something I broadcast on my Twitch Chanel (twitch.tv/davidpetersen) as fans watched and could ask me questions.


After I finished the inks, I scanned them and moved on to the first part of the digital coloring stage called flatting (something else I did LIVE on my Twitch Chanel). This is the step where I place in flat colors to establish the color palate and to define where all the colors are (what is ivy, what is shingle, what is white fur, what is orange, what is armor, what is cloth or cording, etc.). To push back the depth and add some effects, I also established a lot of color holds. These are places I want the inkwork to be a color other than black...so the distance linework became a brown, the fox became a bit lighter, the engraving on the horn was tinted to look more like scrimshaw---and purely as a digital addition, I drew in whiskers on the fox.


The last step was to do the final colors on the piece. I only did a little bit of this step on Twitch (though I did work on the tower stone and the shingles). The rendering and the texture are done simultaneously as I use a stock textured brush when I'm using the dodge and burn tools to add highlights and shadows.


2020 Appearances

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Recent Commissions

At conventions I do 9"x12"toned paper commissions for fans. They cost $250 and I only accept them when I'm at a show--I unfortunately cannot keep an open list when I'm at home and stay productive on more Mouse Guard pages. I wanted to share some recent ones--especially since I'll be at C2E2 at the end of the month! It's a last minute addition to my convention schedule and the first time back in a several years.

Mouse Baker

Scarred Guardmouse

Dandy Mouse

Norse Guard

Lily Redfur (a fan's RPG character)



2020 Appearances

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Bricks of the Mouse Guard KICKSTARTER


Back in 2015, to celebrate Mouse Guard's 10th anniversary, The Seattle ArchLUG group put on an amazing Mouse Guard LEGO display at Emerald City Comic Con. To have mini-figures for the installation, BOOM! and I licensed Mouse Guard to Guy Himber of Crazy Bricks to manufacture LEGO-Mini-Fig-compatible mouse heads and specialty Mouse Guard accessories.

And in 2020, Guy is Kickstarting another round so that fans of Mouse Guard can not only get the original 7 custom mini-figures--but now five new figures as well!


The original seven characters were Kenzie, Sadie, Saxon, Conrad, Lieam, Celanawe, and The Matriarch Gwendolyn.

The heads are injection molded ABS plastic color matched to LEGO bodies and then paired with custom accessories and cloaks so you can build in brick you favorite scenes from the Mouse Guard books, your own RPG sessions, or just from your imagination.


But now, Guy has also made new parts and accessories to extent to Midnight, Members of his Army,  Disguised Lieam, Bastian, Delvin, & Calla's Ghost:





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If you are interested in getting a copy of the photo book published of the installation, 'Mouse Guard: The Art of Bricks' is available *SIGNED* in my online store:

https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/mouse-guard-art-of-bricks-signed

See sample pages below:














2020 Appearances

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

London Inked Drawings Colored

I spent part of my Christmas/New-Year's Holiday in London, England on a trip with family. While adjusting to the time-change, I'd wake up at odd hours and find time to pencil and ink some little 6" x 6" Mouse Guard piece. I shared the inked images on social media as I completed them. But for today's blogpost, I wanted to share the recent colors I'd done on each after I returned home:


Guardmouse in the Holly.



Guardmouse Sela with a stone/tile background based on London's Natural History Museum





A Guardmouse with a Wren at dawn.



I plan to include these pieces in a future Mouse Guard sketchbook (which does not yet have a release date––but does have a tentative title: 'Dawn, Daye, & Dusk'.




2020 Appearances
Emerald City Comic Con: March 12-15
FACTS-Ghent Belgium: April 4-5
Heroes Con: June 19-21
San Diego Comic Con: July 22-26
New York Comic Con: October 8-11
Baltimore Comic Con: Oct 23-25

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