Dorys The Matriarch cook

As part of the new illustrations for a 2024 Mouse Guard Calendar, I did this piece of a Matriarch of the Mouse Guard named Dorys in the kitchens.

Like last year's calendar, this new one will feature half of the months featuring new-for-this-project artwork, while the other months feature existing favorite illustrations.

Below in this blogpost I'll walk through the process of creating the artwork

I'd wanted to draw at least one new piece that had a homey-comfortable-cosy feel, and I'd also wanted to draw a 'real' version of the Matriarch Dorys that appears in stained glass form in the Matriarch's Chamber in The Black Axe book. The character is based on my Grandmother Doris, who is also my inspiration for having Matriarchs as the leaders of the Mouse Guard in the first place. 

A consummate cook, and a lover of purple, I did the rough of her on copy paper, and then drew the background hearth, pots, tables, and ingredients on a different sheet and assembled them together in Photoshop.

I printed the above digitally assembled layout onto two sheets of legal sized paper (taping them together so the image was 11" x 11") and then taped them with painter's tape onto the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series Bristol.

On my Huion Lightpapd I was able to see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout and use it as my 'pencils' as I worked. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.3 & 0.7 nibs). 

I inked this piece focused mainly on making the background elements interesting while still being able to fade into the background.

With the inks finished, I scanned them into Photoshop and started the coloring process. That first step is known as 'Flatting' and essentially is professional coloring-inside-the-lines. Some of the color palette was established both by the cannon of her stained glass and my layout stage...but there was a lot to figure out with the background in terms of value (light/dark) and saturation.

Here I also established color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) on her feather, the leaf veins, the flour, her glasses, and the liquids in the pots.

The final step was to render the piece. I used the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop while using a stock textured brush. 

Getting that soft glow meant a bit of using the paintbrush tool (something I rarely use) as well as isolating freehand lasso sections with a large feather (blurred edge) and adjusting the brightness/contrast as well as the color balance.

As I said before, the colored image appears in the calendar for 2024

mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/mouse-guard-2024-calendar