Lieam vs the One Eyed Owl

As I work toward a new sketchbook in 2026, I'll be doing a series of posts about Mouse Guard illustrations I've done that will be included in that new release: 'Past Whereabouts' that will debut at Emerald City Comic Con and be available in my online store soon afterwards.

Sketchbook illustrations are often a chance to explore corners of Mouse Guard that I haven't gotten to yet. Whether it's certain locations, characters, or just ideas or thematic tones. For this illustration It's the scene from Winter 1152 with Lieam vs the Owl after Celanawe had fallen. In this post I'll break down the steps to creating the illustration

Since the title of the sketchbook is 'Past Whereabouts' I thought it would be good to revisit some familiar scenes or locations. This moment (I'm sharing almost on the dawn of a new year) is about the loss of something (Celanswe) that also gives new life to the future (Lieam as the Black Axe).

I drew the owl separately from the mice each on copy paper and then scanned them and digitally blocked in color to help establish the forms and to figure out the landscape.

The digitally assembled pencil layout was printed out and taped to the back of a sheet of Strathmore Bristol and placed on a light pad. With the light shining up, I was able to see through the bristol surface to the printout to use as a guide as I ink the artwork. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens to do the inking (the 0.7 nib mostly)

In revisiting this scene I handled the inks on the owl feathers a bit differently than before, bit for the most part the stippling of the snow, the silhouettes of the trees, and the details of the mice were inked the same as when I inked the last pages of Winter.

Next step was to start the digital coloring. After scanning the inks I painted in flat base colors––a professional version of coloring-in-the-lines.

Most of the color choices for the characters were established in the Winter book as well as the rough layout. These colors needed to be color shifted cool as well as muted and desaturated.

It's also at this stage that I established color holds (areas where I wanted the lineart to be a color other than black) for the snow, trees, and blood.

The last step was to render the colors with dodge and burn tools and a stock textured brush. Dodge and Burn are tools based on photography terms (and from when Photoshop was a photo retouching program) having to do with purposely over or under exposing areas––or in other words darkening or lightening them.

I use these tools to create shadows and highlights to my base colors while giving a bit of a pebbly texture with that stock brush.

This illustration, along with many more, will be published in the sketchbook 'Past Whereabouts' which will debut at Emerald City Comic Con in March 2026 and will be available in my online store soon afterwards: https://mouseguard.bigcartel.com/