Usagi Yojimbo: Ice & Snow #4 Cover

For the Ice & Snow Usagi Yojimbo series now being published at Dark Horse I was asked by Stan Sakai to contribute two covers. To the left you can see my final cover art for issue #4.

This cover was new territory for me. In the past my Usagi covers have either been for classic reprints where the entire arc was finished and ready to read, or the Usagi/TMNT crossovers where I completed once piece to sum up the entire series based on some amound of completed material. But, for Ice & Snow, we were working far enough in advance that I didn't have any of Stan's pages for the issue, just an outline & description.

Below I'll go through the steps of creating the piece.

I was given a PDF of inked pages from issues 1 & 2 showing Usagi and Yukichi in the snowy mountaintops of Northern Japan. And Stan let me know that the climax to issue 4 is a fight between Usagi and his old enemy Jei on a frozen lake.

I'd never drawn Jei professionally (only a commission for a fan), and I wanted to push in close on a duel between the two. I started drawing the characters separately on copy paper. To make sure they were both going to fit while fighting, I had to make use of the vertical nature of a cover and have Jei leaping/thrusting down with his weapon as Usagi takes a near miss over his shoulder. 

I scanned in the drawings of the two figures, digitally blocked in their forms with some color, and painted a simple background idea so I could send it off for approval.

When the pencils were approved, I printed out the layout/pencils and taped them to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol with some painter's tape. On my Huion lightpad I can see through the surface of the bristol to the layout and use it as a guide to ink from. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.3 & 0.7 nibs) as I inked the piece.

I had to build up several different dark areas (Usagi's pants, Jei's clothes, and Jei's hair) and tried to give them all a slightly different density and in the case of Jei's hair a different line quality. I also left a gap between the characters and any of the ink lines for the background. This is partly to make the coloring easier, but also just to separate them and push an idea of distance before color is even added.

Stan & Co. approved the inks and I was able to scan them and begin the coloring process. That first step in coloring is known as 'flatting' which is a professional version of coloring-in-the-lines with flat color (no texture, no shading).

Some of the color choices were roughed in for the layout, but still needed to be adjusted for value, hue, and saturation to go with the more stark inks.

At this stage I also established the color holds (areas where I want the lineart to be a color other than black) for the ice cracks, trees, and Usagi's scar.

The last step to coloring (seen below) is the rendering. I used the dodge and burn tools along with a stock textured brush to add shadows and highlights. I then also painted in the falling snow on a new layer.

Usagi Yojimbo Ice & Snow #4
will be in stores January 10th, 2024!