Mouse Guard Flower Spot Illo Process

This year I've released a new Mouse Guard sketchbook (past sketchbooks are available in my online store: mouseguard.bigcartel.com) and many of the colored inked commissions I've been sharing on this blog will are collected there. But, I also wanted to generate some pieces of my own. And some of those pieces will need to be smaller illustrations  for things like the inside front and back covers.

To the left you can see one of those pieces finished and colored that has a place in that sketchbook––and in this blogpost I'll break down the process to get there.

We have a flowering Rose of Sharon bush that lines our back yard, and in the summer it is in full bloom with bees stopping by each flower like it was visiting an old neighbor. The Rose of Sharon overhands our deck a bit, and I took a few photos with my phone thinking they'd make for good Mouse Guard illustration inspiration. 

I drew the flower and bee in one go on copy paper, and then on another sheet overlyaying it on a light pad, I drew in the mouse gently holding the petals open and watching. When both were scanned I blocked in some color to help me see what each form was (as well as to add some more leaves I felt the composition needed.

I printed out the above layout on copy paper and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion lightpad I can see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use as a guide as I ink. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.7 & 0.3 nibs). 

Most of the focus was on getting the details and textures of the flower and leaves right. I added a stippled trail of pollen (almost like the fairy godmother's magic trails in Disney's Cinderella) that I planned to exploit with color in a later step.

 I started the coloring process for this piece by scanning in the inks and then laying in flat colors. The step is called 'flatting'  for that reason––it's basically a professional task of coloring-in-the-lines and establishing what color area each thing in the piece is. I used variations of the colors from my layout combined with my real life reference in the backyard.

I also took this step to establish a few color holds (areas where I want the black linework to be a color other than black) on the lines that transition the tones in color on the flower, the bee's wings, and that trail of pollen magic.

Here are the final colors all rendered and textured. I do most of this work only using two tools in Photoshop: Dodge and Burn. These are tools that date back to when Photoshop was a photo retouching tool and emulate part of the development process to over and under expose areas––ie: make areas darker and lighter. So with a stock textured brush I add shadows and highlights.

This piece is in the new Mouse Guard sketchbook: Alone Together available now in my online store: mouseguard.bigcartel.com .