Ivory Mouse Carving Illustration

In the past few weeks I have been sent photos of this Japanese carving from several friends, professional peers, and fans. I did a little research and found it is ivory and black coral (for the eyes), a little over 2" tall, from the late 19th century and is in a private collection.

Many years ago a similar thing happened when I was repeatedly sent a photo of a weasel riding a woodpecker, and decided to draw it as that event would happen in Mouse Guard (Blogpost for that piece: https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2015/05/weasel-rinding-woodpecker.html)...so, here we go again, I've made an illustration of this mouse and broken down the steps to create the illustration below.

I started with a pencil drawing on copy paper where I tried to keep the pose very close to the carving and only imposing some of my Mouse Guard proportions and flourishes on him. For a setting/background, I opted for the kind of gnarled tangled branch of a flowering tree you often see in Japanese lacquered panels, block prints, and paintings.

The paper was scanned and in Photoshop I gave it all a quick color blocking (mainly to help me to better see the petals from the tree and the rocks from the soil. I also digitally blocked in a circle for a setting sun.

With a layout for the piece I liked, I sized it to 8" x 8" and printed it out on my inkjet printer. That was then taped to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series smooth bristol. On my Huion lightpad I can see through the bristol surface down to the printout to use as a guide while inking. 

The inks were all done with a Copic Multiliner SP 0.7 pen. The time consuming part of the inking was all the texture on the tree. When inking the clothing patterns, I found a website that had several photos of the carving from different angles to use as better reference (https://www.buddhamuseum.com/traveller-mouse_13.html)

When the inks were finished, I scanned them in to Photoshop and started the coloring process. That first step (after cleaning up the scan so the inkwork is crisp) is called 'flatting'. This is where each area is established with a flat base color; no texture & no shading. It's a professional version of coloring-in-the-lines. I went with warm colors overall to harken back to the soft warmth in the ivory carving. 

At this stage, I also established color holds, areas where I want the inklines to be a color other than black. In this case that meant the sun outline and the clothing patterns.

The last step was to render the color by adding shadows and highlights and texture. I do most all of this with Photoshop's Dodge and Burn tools with a stock textured brush.

This was a fun piece to do really just for the fun of it. I know many fans have asked if I'll ever do Mouse Guard stories set in Asia, and while I don't plan to, perhaps this will please their curiosity for such a thing.

This piece will be included in my next Mouse Guard sketchbook that I hope to release later this year.