David Petersen's Blog, page 11

Sparrow and Berries

As part of the new illustrations for a 2024 Mouse Guard Calendar, 
I did this piece of a mouse harvesting berries and sharing them with a sparrow.

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

This piece started with a photograph I took outside of my in-law's home last fall of their little thicket. I'm not sure what the plant even is––closest I've going on Google is Winter Berry, but that doesn't quite match. Anyhow, I used this photo and added a mouse harvesting berries and a sparrow watching/sharing. 

Bird fans always let me know their appreciation for more birds in Mouse Guard illustrations. The drawings here of the characters as well as the branches they are standing on were done on sheets of copy paper and assembled in Photoshop. I had photo reference for the sparrow drawing.

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).

That tangle of thicket is my zen happy place to ink, but I was worried about losing the focus of the characters, so I left a little white gap around them to help separate them from all that visual mess.

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 by the original photo––and then I just extended that to the tones of the characters as well.
Here I also established a color hold (an area where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) on all of the background that tapers off as it gets lower in the image.

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

Getting the depth of field with the tones all being so matchy-matchy was a trick and took a lot of fussing with even after I had everything rendered. In the end I'm very pleased with the result.

The colored image appears in the calendar for 2024:
mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/mouse-guard-2024-calendar 

Crystal Pixie Owl Dragon

Last Friday on my Twitch Stream, we did the #DiscoveringDragons Community-Draw-Along! It's a fun event where I welcome all skill levels to push their pencils (or whatever tools they use to make art).

I worked on my piece live on my Twitch stream while viewers worked at home and then on Monday we shared our finished pieces.

Here is my finished colored Dragon. And below are my steps to create it as well as the community submissions.

For #DiscoveringDragons, I post two or three prompt words for everyone to make into a dragon. It's a nice framework for artists of any skill level to focus some time on an 'assignment' to shake the rust off or get the pencil moving again––all while also being loose enough that there's plenty of room for individual expression and interpretation.

This month the prompt was three words: Crystal, Pixie, & Owl.

I opened several tabs of google image searches of crystal formations, mythical pixies, barn owls, saw whet owls, and butterfly wings.

I considered that it would be possible to make a dragon that was entirely crystalline with owl features and pixie wings––but I knew wanted instead to have the crystals be horns and back-spines of the beast. Originally I was going to limit the owl bits to the face & beak, but after trying some scales on the body, I opted for a feather pattern seen on barn owls.  

This was drawn on a few sheets of copy paper (sometimes with them overlaying each other on a light pad to make corrections/amendments to the earlier versions) and then assembled into what you see here in Photoshop. This process to find and draw a design took me much longer than normal for some reason.

The printout was taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. Using a lightpad, I was able to see through the surface of the bristol as I inked the dragon. I used Copic Multiliner 0.7 SP pen to ink the art. 

The inking on this piece started with all the line weights for the fluffy feather wringles around the face. I was able during the stream to get into the crystals and the pattern on the body, but ran out of time before getting to finish.

Since I was unable to finish the inks before my stream ended, I wished the viewers all luck with their pieces and told them we'd take a look at everyone's work on Monday.

After some dinner, I came back up to the studio and finished inking the piece and then scanned the bristol to start the color flatting process––basically professional coloring-in-the-lines. First step was creating color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) for the crystals, body markings, & wing patterns. Then I flatted in the various colors (Though I did start painting a lighter belly tone)

On Saturday I dove into the final colors. I did do a bit of painting with the paintbrush tool, but did most of the highlights, shading, and texture with the dodge and burn tools and a stock photoshop texture brush. Below you can again see the final rendered dragon.

But, as this is a community event, I wanted to share all the other entries posted in the Discord.

88 Uncle Ernie

Capt.Nemo

danthebcman


Doombot79

DruffZilla

jodudeit

Jonathan Towry

Nate Pride

RedSkwrl

Sleepless Ninja

VernNYC

TMNT Raphael painting for NYCC Auction

For several years there has been a charity auction at ReedPop events (NYCC, C2E2, ECCC...) that benefits St. Jude's Children's Hospital. For the NYCC auction this year, they are hoping to crack the 1 Million dollar mark in total donations since they've started. 

So, to help get them further towards that goal, and obviously to help in all the good work St. Jude's does, I decided to do a 16" x 20" watercolor of Raphael for the auction.

I streamed working on this piece on my Twitch Channel, but forgot to take enough in-process photos, so instead I opted to show the process of this piece through the timelapse below.

If you will be at NYCC this weekend, I encourage you to bid on work in the auction.

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

Mouse Guard 2024 Calendar

The Mouse Guard 2024 Calendar is now available for purchase! mouseguard.bigcartel.com/product/mouse-guard-2024-calendar.

It's a  12" x 12" thirteen month Calendar spanning from January of 2024 through January of 2025 and includes US Holidays and the phases of the Moon.

Six of the month artworks were specially created for this calendar (and have been the subject of process blogposts here)

 

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

Bone tribute, Get well soon Jeff Smith

On August 19th the official Cartoon Books twitter account shared the following:

"Jeff Smith is recuperating from a cardiac arrest, which he suffered on Sunday. There will be a long road to recovery, so regrettably we must cancel the remainder of his book tour this year."

Jeff's work, especially Bone, have been a guiding light for all-ages content in the comic & graphic novel space for decades. Jeff's always been a kind and generous supporter and friend, and I wanted to do a piece of tribute art while he's recovering.  

Kathleen Glosan, the production manager of Cartoon Books mentioned that if fans wanted to do any get-well art they'd love to share it as well as if we wanted to mail anything to Jeff she provided an address.

So, I started work on my rough right away. I drew Phone Bone on a sheet of copy paper as well as a mouse arms stretched wide. I then scanned those assembled then in Photoshop and did a bunch of alterations and digital corrections as well as a quickly painted background.

The next step was to print out the above layout and tape it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore bristol. On my Huion lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol and use the printout as a guide to ink from. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.7 for most of it, but the 0.3 for the mouse's eye).

It was tricky to ink Phone Bone so cleanly and not add in more texture like I do for most of my contour inking. I then made up for it with the environment.

When the inks were done, I scanned the art and started the coloring process with flat colors. This is the digital step where I clean up the artwork to be crisp blacks and whites and then I lay in flat colors for all of the shapes to establish what areas are what colors. It's a professional version of coloring inside the lines.

Most of the color choices were things I'd already decided on in my layout stage, but I certainly made some subtle changes in hue, saturation, and value to many areas so the whole piece worked together even before I started rendering it.

The last step was to render the color. I use a stock texture brush in Photoshop with the dodge and burn tools (these are carry-overs from when Photoshop was developed as a photo retouching tool and references darkroom exposure techniques). They basically just darken and lighten whatever color(s) they are going over at the time, so that's how I add shadows and highlights. I also select areas (like some individual leaves) and then slide the color balance around to shift the hue to make them look a little more individual and less of a digital mass of the same color.

The original inks have been sent to Jeff, and I hope you all join me in wishing and praying for the best for Jeff's recovery.

Lava Lion Dragon

Last Friday on my Twitch Stream, we did the #DiscoveringDragons Community-Draw-Along! It's a fun event where I welcome all skill levels to push their pencils (or whatever tools they use to make art).

I worked on my piece live on my Twitch stream while viewers worked at home and then on Monday we shared our finished pieces.

Here is my finished colored Dragon. And below are my steps to create it as well as the community submissions.

For #DiscoveringDragons, I post two or three prompt words for everyone to make into a dragon. It's a nice framework for artists of any skill level to focus some time on an 'assignment' to shake the rust off or get the pencil moving again––all while also being loose enough that there's plenty of room for individual expression and interpretation.

This month the prompt was two words: Lava & Lion.

I opened several tabs of google image searches of dragons, Lava flows, Lions, Stone sculptures of lions, etc.

In my 'Dragon' search tab, I found an illustration for a Magic Card with a dragon flying with the rear legs tucking under it while breathing fire. I used that pose as the start for my piece.

Even before that I knew I wanted my lion headed dragon to be vomiting lava, so the head pose needed to work with that. I sketched the head and body on a sheet of copy paper, and then scanned it into photoshop as I blocked in some wings using clip art as a guide.

When the wing clip art was where I wanted after some resizing, warping, etc. I printed it out and drew lava versions over the top in pencil on a light pad. The entire drawing was merged in Photoshop and tinted to make seeing it a little easier.

The printout was taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. Using a lightpad, I was able to see through the surface of the bristol as I inked the dragon. I used Copic Multiliner 0.3 and 0.5 SP pen to ink the art. 

The inking on this piece was all about texture and trying to retain some of the subtlety around the lion's face from the pencils (most of which I think I lost). I found that the later pencils on the tail and wings were the easiest to ink, and that might be that they were more open areas, unlike the forms of the lion's face. 

I was unable to get the inks finished before my stream ended but I wished the viewers all luck with their pieces and told them we'd take a look at everyone's work on Monday.

After some dinner, I came back up to the studio and finished inking the piece and then scanned the bristol  to start the color flatting process––basically professional coloring-in-the-lines. First step was creating color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) for the entire dragon as well as the lighter ones around the eyes, in the wings, horns, and the lava flow. Then I flatted in two colors: the overall creature, and the lighter bits.

For the final colors I did do a bit of painting with the paintbrush tool, but did most of the highlights, shading, and texture with the dodge and burn tools and a stock photoshop texture brush. Below you can again see the final rendered dragon.

But, as this is a community event, I wanted to share all the other entries posted in the Discord.

88UncleErnie


anelanlani WIP

Art Vogt

Capt.Nemo

Doombot79


joedudeit

Jonathan Towry WIP


Nate Pride WIP

Nuvalo WIP

redSkwrl 

sleeplessninja WIP


SummerDragoness
VernNYC

Loukas & Saxon Calendar Piece

I was asked by Scott Dunbier if I'd like to contribute an original piece to the charity auction he runs for the Hero Initiative at Baltimore Comic Con next month
The original inks (see below) were turned over to Scott at San Diego Comic Con and will be included in the auction.
But I decided even before I started on the piece, that it could pull double duty and be used for a 2024 Mouse Guard Calendar. So, my process was more involved since I knew the final piece would also be colored and used for print.
For a subject matter I started with the idea of drawing Loukas, Saxon's Mentor who made an appearance in Winter. I thought it would be cool to have a strong veteran of the Mouse Guard as the focus of the piece. But somewhere in drawing him on a sheet of copy paper, I also wondered what it would look like if I added a young Saxon. And as I drew Sax, I decided not to draw a cloak, but to draw him in a pre-Guard induction vest.
These drawings were done on copy paper, scanned into Photoshop, assembled with a quick digital flat painting and background 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 bak 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). 
Because the inks were set to be auctioned, I wanted to do something with lots of line weight and texture while sting being clear to read and very clean.
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. A lot of the color palette was established both by the cannon of what I know the characters look like, but also from my layout stage. 

Here I also established color holds (areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black) on the oak leaves, Loukas' plaid tunic, and Saxon's scratches.

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

The colored image will appear in a calendar for 2024––AND the original inks will be in the Hero Initiative auction at Baltimore Comic Con.

Art will be available for viewing both at the Baltimore Comic-Con, and at Hero Initiative’s website: https://www.heroinitiative.org/portfolio-item/2023-baltimore-comic-con-auction/

In addition to bidding at the auction, advance proxy bidding will also be available via Hero’s website with a strict deadline of August 31, 2023. Hero will begin accepting bids on August 21.

The Bygones Fan Art

For several years I've been a fan of the music of Joshua Lee Turner. I've enjoyed his solo work, his collaborations with Carson McKee, and more recently his pairing with Allison Young as 'The Bygones'.
Josh & Allison currently have a Kickstarter running for a first full album and tour for The Bygones (funded in less than 48 hours!): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thebygonesband/the-bygones-first-full-album-and-tour-3

I decided, just for fun, to do some fan art of the duo as birds in a mock poster/tee design––sort of as a thank you for the enjoyment they've given me through their music. Below is a bit of process & inspiration for the piece, as well as some links to videos of Josh, Carson, & Allison's music.
The piece started with inspiration of a drawing Allison did as part of the Kickstarter graphics with little bird versions of them singing and playing the guitar. I based my birds on house finches, but added in some glasses on Josh and looked at specific references of his guitar and classic microphones that Allison uses when she preforms with Post Modern Jukebox.
I drew the duo traditionally in pencil on copy paper and then added some digital tweaks for my layout with a stock banner shape, clip art notes, a font for the text, and straight lines for the guitar strings.
I printed the above layout onto copy paper and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol to the image below and used it as a guide to ink from.
For pens I used Copic Multiliner SP's with the 0.7 & 0.3 nibs. The pencils were pretty tight with a lot of lineweight work already done, so the inks were mostly about reinforcing that without screwing it up and overworking it in the process.


In addition to the full color version you saw at the top of this post (where I ignored real-life finch color patterns and went for nodes to Allison & Josh's hair as base colors), I tried making something a little more vintage looking with a monochrome grey-blue tinted version.
Again, this art was done just for fun, to share with Josh & Allison (who wrote me back very kind notes on Instagram), and to help get more eyes and ears to music and musicians I appreciate.

Here is The Bygones Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thebygonesband/the-bygones-first-full-album-and-tour-3 (still time to help fund and get a copy of the album early)
And here are some videos of the music that inspired me to back their album and follow their music.

Public Life –– Solo Album by Joshua Lee Turner
After seeing some of Josh's YouTube videos of him playing covers or explaining Nick Drake's guitar specifics, this was the work of his that got me hooked. It was my go-to Pandemic soundtrack starter. There's a Paul Simon & Nick Drake quality to this album that I really love.
Below is the entire album as a playlist on YouTube:






UNAMERICANA –– The Other Favorites
(Carson McKee & Joshua Lee Turner)
Carson is Josh's long time friend and collaborator and together they are a Folk duo called The Other Favorites. This album was released during the pandemic––I think one track per week. There's a Kingston Trio meets Simon and Garfunkel meets Tennessee Ernie Ford feel to the set-list, and while it leans more classic country than I normally go, I'm happy to be there for this album.
Below is the entire album as a single video on YouTube:




In The Hollow Wood ––– The Bygones
As the Kickstarter is currently going for their first album, (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thebygonesband/the-bygones-first-full-album-and-tour-3)there isn't a lot of original music available from The Bygones yet...but Josh and Allison have performed many times together on Josh's YouTube channel.
But one song that has been released is 'In The Hollow Wood' A dreamy lullaby folk ballad that evokes the tale of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree.
Below is a video of that song on YouTube:






 

Wild's End cover

Wilds End is back for a 4th series. From Dan Abnett & I.N.J. Culbard, publisged by BOOM! Studios is this anthropomorphic mix of Wind in the Willows & War of the Worlds.

I've been asked to provide a variant cover for Issue #3 of the series and in this blogpost I'll go through the steps to making the final art you see here.

If you'd like to go back and see a variant cover I did for Volume 1, I have a blogpost for that one too: http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2014/06/wilds-end-cover-process.html

Layout: I was given an outline of some early issues, some character concept art, and some editor suggestions for cover ideas. One of which I mis-read as 'All the characters shocked to be pulling in one of the aliens in their fishing net'––when in-fact it was more like 'one character, looking away not noticing the alien is trapped in the net'. Whoops. 

Well I drew these characters each separately on copy paper, and assembled them in Photoshop. I also had a 3D fishing boat model as reference, and I pasted in a drawing from the concept art of the alien 'lantern body'. I added some flat colors to help me see all the forms and plan for avoiding tangents and bad compositional overlaps, and I sent it off, apologizing to the editor for misreading the brief and hoping it would still be ok.
Inks: Turns out it was ok. The team liked the composition and felt that since this is a variant cover, I had more narrative leeway. I printed out the above layout and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series 11" x 17" bristol.

On my Huion lightpad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol to use the printout as a guide to ink from. I used Copic Multiliner SP pens (the 0.7 & 0.3 nibs).

Most of the inking was straight forward, but I did consider inking the badger character's dark spots flat black, before opting to leave them open so I could show more fur texture and details around the muscles & eye.

Color Flats: When the inks were approved by the editorial team, I scanned them in and started the coloring process by painting in mostly flat colors. This process, known as 'flatting' is a professional version of coloring in the lines, but also helps set up the digital file to be able to later re-isolate areas to render them separately. 
Many of my color choices were already established in my layout, but they still needed subtle shifts in value, hue, and saturation until it all looked right against the inked lines rather than a pencil drawing collage. 

I added in color hold (areas where I want the ink work to be a color other than black) on the Badger's tattoos, the ship's lettering, the alien's tentacles, the cat's eyes, and the polkadot bandanna.
Final Colors: The last step was to render the color. I do this with Photoshop's Dodge (lighten) and Burn (Darken) tools and a stock textured brush (Dry Brush).
Around character's noses I also lassoed areas and tinted them a bit pinker/warmer as well as using a textured paint brush to add some rust coloration to the ship's hull.
Wild's End Vol. 4 Issue #3 is available for your comic shop tomorrow August 16th