Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Belladonna Print

Each Year I create a new limited edition signed and numbered 11" x 11" print. The tradition started many years ago when Julia urged me to create a new print for a convention or event that was 'just pretty'. She thought that we had plenty of images of mice wielding swords and threatening snakes and owls––that the audience, especially women, appreciated when I just drew tender moments, or nature, or flowers.  I followed her advice, and for years now fans have proven her right by anticipating and purchasing the new square print I offer.

This year the piece is titled 'Belladonna'. Below I'll show the step-by-step of creating the art.


This piece started more with the character––the mouse is the Matriarch Siobhan (seen in the Black Axe hardcover extras and she will be explored more in the upcoming Dawn of the Black Axe mini series coming out this year). As a Matriarch she was a healer, but there's something about her I always saw as ominous––hence the pairing with Belladonna; a flowering plant known for being poisonous, but also historically used in small doses medically. I drew Sibhan & some of the plant life on a single piece of copy paper, then drew more of the Belladonna on another sheet with the first drawing on a lightpad. Those were then scanned and assembled and I did a quick color blocking to be sure the overall composition was to my liking.

I printed out the above layout composite and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion A3 Lightpad I can see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use as a guide for inking. I used a Copic Multiliner SP 0.7 pen.

Lots of the inking was just about weighting the contour lines and only using texture sparingly (like the density of the veins in the leaves, the spots of the blooms, the shading on the berries, and the embroidery on her stole.



When the inks were finished and scanned, I could start the coloring process. The first step to that is called 'flatting' which is where you paint in all the areas with flat colors only. It's about establishing easy to grab and re-isolate areas for the later step of rendering. Think of it as a professional version of digitally coloring in the lines.

I also added color holds (areas where I want the linework to be a color other than black) to the leaf veins, the spots on the blooms, the berry highlights, and the chalice details.

Some of the color palette was already dictated by the character's look in Dawn of the Black Axe and the belladonna coloring was inspired from several photos found online.

The last step was to render the color with shadows, highlights, and texture. I do most of that work with the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop, though I did use a soft paintbrush here and there and several areas where I shifted the color of an area when I had it lassoed (with a feathered edge).
The Belladonna print will be signed and numbered, available at ECCC next month and then in my online store afterwards.




As this is the 14th year I've been doing these, here are the past year's 11x11 limited prints (many of which are available in a bundle in my online store) and links to blogposts for these pieces below


Tuesday, February 11, 2025

2025 Bookplate

 Every year since 2012 I do a new Mouse Guard bookplate for sale at conventions and in my online store. The idea is that this mini-print can be pasted/taped into your book(s), you can write your name in to identify it as yours to borrowers, and since the bookplates are signed, it means you now have a signed book. I try and make each year's bookplate art some medium the mice would/could use. I've done stained glass, relief printing, embroidery, mosaic, etc in past years––this year I was inspired by relief stone carving.

The bookplate will be made available at Emerald City Comic Con and then in my online store shortly after.

The process started when I was wowed by a photo of a restoration/recreation of facade from Louis Sullivan's Gage building. I did some clay relief carving in college this reminded me of. I ended up cutting up the reference photo and making it into a new configuration and then I went about sketching some mice––specifically a scene of the first Matriarch and founding Guardmice as documented in Jeremy Bastian's Legends of the Guard tale.

With this year (in May) being the 20th anniversary of Mouse Guard, I thought showing the in-world founding of the Mouse Guard in stone would be a nice touch. The pencil sketch was quickly digitally blocked in with some greyscale values for reference for the next step.

I printed out the above layout and on my Huion Lightpad I was able to transfer the basic drawing in pencil on the lightpad.  Below you can see three stages of me slowly shading in the areas of the drawing with graphite while using an eraser to pull highlights and a tortillon to smudge and blend the greys.





When I finished that process I carefully cleaned up the outer edges with an eraser and then scanned the piece in greyscale.

To tighten up the value range I adjusted the levels to set the darkest point and lightest point and fiddle with a midrange until I got what looked right to me.

I contemplated leaving the art this way for the bookplate, but decided to add a little bit of tone and color.



So in Photoshop I did just that. The final bookplate has been printed and as I said above will debut at Emerald City Comic Con in March (booth 20505) and then be made available in my online store sometime shortly afterward.









Here are all the past years Bookplates––many of which are available in my online store as a bundle (https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/set-of-10-mouse-guard-bookplates). Below are the blogposts about the process of making each:






Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Dawn of the Black Axe #1 Petersen Cover

As recently announced, Dawn of the Black Axe is a 3 issue mini series written and colored by me and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (Locke & Key) about the first wielder of the Black Axe! 

It's up for preorder now in local and online comic shops (JAN250017 for my cover) And I wanted to use this post to share a deeper dive into the cover art for cover B (there is also a Gabriel Rodriguez cover as well as another guest variant)

To the left you can see my finished cover with logo etc, but below I'll go through the art steps.


I gave Gabe the big snake battle cover and I opted to focus on the lore of the story. Fans of Mouse Guard may know I've dropped hints about the legend of the Black Axe through my first two books and a short story the Axe Trio, but also in a whole volume called The Black Axe (which is about Celanawe, the 10th wielder of the weapon).

I drew Farrer (based on Gabe's designs of the character) the axe's smith bestowing it on Bardrick while that moment in encircled in a a medieval halo design. The background is also the Adana Tapestry (something like our world's Bayeux tapestry showing the story of the Axe) that leads to the point Bardrick kneels upon––where he receives the axe. This was all done on various sheets of copy paper, scanned and assembled in Photoshop with some blocked in color shapes.

With the above layout in a state that I liked, I printed it out on copy paper (two sheets of legal paper trimmed and taped together after printing to fit the whole image) and taped to the back of a sheet of 13" x 13" Strathmore bristol (art size is 12" x 12").

I inked the piece on my Huion lightpad where I can see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use as a guide while I inked. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.7 nib mostly)

Lots of texture in this piece, and in black and while it's a little too busy, but I know I'm going to add color to al lot of that linework to add clarity.

The inks were then scanned in and I started the coloring process. The first step is called flatting, basically a color-in-the-lines for professionals with flat base colors (no shading or textures.)

The colors of the characters and the tapestry were already known from coloring the issue and the Black Axe volume, but it still took a lot of careful tweaking to get the saturations and values all right.

Here I also established color holds (areas where I want the lineart to be a color other than black) on the tapestry embroidery, and a few different hols on the halo.

To render the color I used Photoshop's dodge and burn tools with a textured brush to get the highlights, shadows and textures.

Below is the solicitation info for the first issue that will be in shops March 19th, 2025:

CODE: JAN250017 (Petersen cover)
(W) David Petersen (A) Gabriel Rodriguez

The origins of the legendary Black Axe are revealed for the very first time!In celebration of its 20th Anniversary, experience the earliest tale in Mouse Guard history...
Adventure with the ancient weapon's first mouse wielder and champion, Bardrick, as he sets off on an epic quest in the newest installment of the Harvey Award-winning series by Mouse Guard creator David Petersen and Eisner-nominated artist Gabriel Rodriguez (Locke & Key)!

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