David Petersen's Blog, page 32

Fan Art

A great joy as a creator is to see fans drawing, sculpting, panting, modeling, cosplaying, inking, and expressing themselves by making artwork of Mouse Guard characters from the books and moments from their RPG campaigns. And so to celebrate that, here is a whole post of amazing Fan Art
(See past Fan Art Blogposts here)


Alessandro Cavina


Aldrich Ink

Aleksey Nisenboym

Ashley Fleege


Bluepozy


Bob Q.

Brendan Foley


Brill

Brock Brown

Calvin Mudge

Chris Schweizer


Christopher Richard

Coach K

Cody Gramstx

Cora O'Dell


Damien

Mike Dawson
Danny Limor

Edwin Gonzalez




Elollus


Emre Deniz
Even Mehl Amundsen


Federico Dalman


ffranses


Gamer Mouse


Greg Jones Jr.
Greg Shaw

Happy Crumble



Hazeltreefairy


J. Christopher Schmidt

Jacob & Shepherd Cecil


Jajaf Thompson


Jenna Smith


Jerome Jacinto

Joel Dubbleu

Josh Edgar 

Juni Ba


Karla Marie

Khroma


Lauren Fisher

Lieam Cosplay

Linus Andersson

Luce Zbigley

Luis Belerique

Luke Seals


Mason Karl

Matheus Lima


McLinskey


Melisa Ong Mi Quin


Milan Kovar

Mr. D

Nguyen Dong

Nick U.

Philip Siemens


Pixel Island


Pug Grumble

Rachel Bennett

Randall Hampton


Renmeleon

Renzus S.
Richard Tran

Rodrigo Pitwak Menezes Rosa
Santhan Vutha

Santi Arderius

Sceleratus

Scott Suarez

Sebastián Stöckle 


Shepherd Cecil
Simon Kennedy

Sprout

Steven Umanee

Stian Willums


Steven Maye

Thom Barrett





2019 Appearances
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Blacksad for the Baltimore Yearbook

For the last several years at the Baltimore Comic Con, the organizers have released a 'Yearbook' tribute book that honors a specific title or character (usually it's creator-owned and the creator(s) is a guest of the con). This year it's Blacksad by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido.

To the left you can see the finished version of my tribute to the anthopomorphic cat detective John Blacksad. Below I go into my thought process and art steps to get to the finished piece.




For starters, I needed an idea. I wanted to avoid doing the pinup style drawing of Blacksad with a 'dame' posed with either a gun or cocktail. I avoided this because I knew the yearbook would be full of them, but also because it didn't convey the storytelling and framing Juanjo does so well. I especially like his bird's-eye views for panels in visually detailed rooms.
Since detailed rooms are something I like drawing, and the camera placement was something I appreciated in particular, this felt like the right type of piece to do...

The next step was where to place the scene––what was the story, the moment, the mood. My first thought was a bar, and to perhaps find a historic photo of a Baltimore bar to tie it in with the location of the convention...but With Blacksad being a noir detective book, I kept coming back to the visual of a murder on a Hollywood soundstage. So, I went to work with google image searching every keyword pairing I could think of for vintage soundstage production views & equipment. To the left you can see a few examples of my harvest.



Then I started generating sketches. After a few character sketches (A & G) and a thumbnail of the whole piece (C) I decided the perspective on the location was key, so I started working on drawing the set piece (D, F, & B). Some of those were done by overlapping sheets of paper on a lightpad to be able to draw props or details in over the base architecture without having to erase bits. Once I had the room view locked, I could toy with the figures (E). As for the story of the piece, I went for a commentary about Disney canceling the Mouse Guard movie...the vicim in this Hollywood murder is a mouse, and the pool of blood he's found in is forming a familiar hidden figure comprised of three circles. Part way through the pencil drawings, I second guessed my composition and toyed with the idea of staring over--Blacksad's feet up on his desk in a cluttered PI's office full of easter-eggs as he raises a glass of scotch to the viewer. But I ended up staying on course with the bird's-eye idea.

I scanned all my pencil drawings and started assembling them into one composition in Photoshop. Because so many of the elements were on different layers, it allowed me to adjust the sizes of things that were slightly off, or omit parts that were unnecessary. Digitally I could also fix the 'Stage 4' door sign as well as the 'no smoking' with fonts and perspective-warp tools.

To get the idea of where the light and shadows would be I did a quick digital paint job to help me see the overall piece before the next step.



For the final inks, I first printed out the above digital composition and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol. On my Huion lightpad, I can see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use it as a guide to ink by. I used Copic Multiliner pens (mostly the 0.7 nib) to do all the inkwork.

It was in this stage that I started to 1) see all the perspective flaws I missed in the pencils, and 2) overworked the textures and hatching to compensate.




Once the inks were finished I could start the coloring process. Luckily I had my digital prelim to eyedropper colors from to get close to the final look right off the bat. I also took this step to establish some key color holds. Color holds are areas where I want the inkwork to be a painted color and not black. So the 'stage 4' and 'no smoking' lettering, the texture of the spotlight lens, and the stripes on Blacksad's tie. Normally I'd also have done the blood outline here...but I guess I did that in the final rendering work.



The last step was to do the final rendering and lighting effects for the piece. I did this mostly using the dodge and burn tools, but in a few instances, like the shiny reflections in the blood, I used a stylus and the paintbrush tool.


This piece will be published in the Baltimore Yearbook later this month. That book will be available for purchase at the convention and through the con's website afterwards. The original inked piece will also be for sale in the art auction at the con on Saturday.

2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Mouse Guard Tote Bag

At New York Comic Con I'll be debuting a new Mouse Guard item: A Mouse Guard Tote-Bag! This is something Julia and I have toyed with offering for a while, especially since we sell hardcover books at conventions. And with NYCC just around the corner, I did new artwork especially for the tote. In this blogpost I'll go through the process of creating the artwork you see to the left.

The Tote will debut at NYCC, but I'll be selling it in my online store sometime after returning home (possibly not until after Baltimore Comic Con later this month).



When Julia and I decided on the model of the tote (a 12oz. Canvas Gusset Shopping Tote 10.5" x 14") I toyed with saving myself some work and reusing a Mouse Guard image from the past for this printing.

Of the pieces I tried, this older tee-shirt design (the 'Jorgen' tee) really spoke to me...but the design was too busy. It didn't read at a distance, and the sparrow the mouse is riding is practically lost.

So I set out to do a piece in this spirit. A guardmouse riding a bird...


I was going to draw a sparrow again, but decided after a google search to go with a bird that had a more specific silhouette and feather patterning. So, I drew the blue jay you see in the lower right of this image. With the help of some calibration marks and a light pad, I placed another sheet of paper over that drawing to work out the oak branch, bird armor and guardmouse. One last sheet of paper laid on top allowed me to tighten up details for the mouse (their sword, clothing & cloak clasp.


With those drawings each scanned separately, I could composite them together into a single image in Photoshop.
Each drawing was on a separate layer and tinted a different color to help me edit the composition together knowing where one drawing started and the other ended.

The backgound pattern was a circular design I found online and heavily edited away to just those floral-looking stars and a few radial dots and lines.



I printed out the digital composite above onto copy paper and then taped that to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series bristol.

On my Huion light pad I was able to see through the surface of the bristol down to the printout to use as a guide as I inked with Copic Multiliners (the 0.7 nib mainly). I streamed as I inked this piece on my Twitch channel.





The Mouse Guard Tote bag will be available at NYCC and Baltimore and in my online store soon after those events.








2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Drawing Like Yourself Lecture Video

Last week on my Twitch channel I did a lecture titled 'Drawing Like Yourself' where I talked about my personal journey into understanding the term 'style', finding a voice,  and the complex relationship with emulating artistic heroes.



The broadcast was recorded and is available to watch on Twitch or in the player below:
As with any live broadcast, there were a few technical glitches, like where I meant to advance the slide and instead cut my mic and went to the 'Thanks for Watching' screen--or when my mic had issues and turned my voice into a robot's...but it's all there 45 min of lecture, and about an hour of Q&A and chat with the viewers.




2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Shameless Promotion post

Just wanted to update everyone about two upcoming events where I'll be giving talks and lectures.
The first up is later this week–– A Twitch stream lecture I'll be giving on my channel (https://www.twitch.tv/davidpetersen) titled: "Drawing Like Yourself" Thursday Sept. 19th at 9pm east.

It's a personal walk through my journey of understanding style, emulating artistic heroes, & trust falls into training. The talk itself will be about 45 minutes with a Q&A to follow. The broadcast will be archived on my Twitch channel if you can be there to watch it Thursday, but I hope you can to be part of the Q&A...where I often find we really get into the heart of a subject.

The second is The Fantastic Workshop. I'll be back as a guest instructor at the 5 day artists workshop where I'll be giving a big talk on 'Story and Worlds as Products'. That talk will address the IP management side of an artists images answering the question 'what can I do with this besides make a print'. I'll also be doing a smaller talk about Comic Storytelling and a hands-on & group participation architectural scratch-built reference model. There are still some slots open and a few days left to register: https://www.1fantasticweek.com/info

The full schedule, including talks by Tim Von Ruden about gaining an online audience, Vanessa Lemen painting as she discusses arts connection to life, Worldbuilding with Sean Andrew Murray, Sam Guay on personal mythology, and many more has been posted to let you know what will be happening at this year's workshop: https://www.1fantasticweek.com/schedule-2019



2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Legends Creator Commentary with Jeremy Bastian

Legends of the Guard (The Mouse Guard anthology series) allowed me to work with some amazing illustrators and storytellers. I sat down with Jeremy Bastian, the creator of Cursed Pirate Girl, and wend page by page and panel by panel of his Legends story: The Battle of the Hawk's Mouse & the Fox's Mouse. Below is the video where you can listen to the conversation as well as see the panels and pages we are referring to.


Direct link to watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vTokuEmVJf8

Jeremy Bastian's links:
Website: jeremybastian.ink
Twitter: @jeremybastian
Instagram: @jeremy_bastian
Patreon: patreon.com/JeremyBastian




2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Dark Crystal Age of Resistance cover: Ordon

Archaia is publishing a new Dark Crystal comic series that ties in with the Netflix show Age of Resistance and I was asked to do some variant covers for it!

The series will be broken into three 4 issue arcs, and the first arc is all about the character Ordon.

To the left you can see the finished cover, but below I'll break down all the steps I took to create the cover artwork.



Sketches:
I started by reading the outline of the comic series given to me by Archaia as well as some character and show info from Henson. Besides the main character of this arc Ordon, I decided to include the following elements for the cover: The Skeksis skekVar the General, the Dual Glaive, an Arathim, and the Gelfling village of Stone in the Wood.

I used a stock photo of a samurai to get Ordon's pose, and then on copy paper and my Huion lightpad, I was able to build up pencil drawings of the other elements that would puzzle piece together in the next step...



Layout:
I scanned all my pencil drawings and put them together in one composition. By having every character/element on a different layer, I was able to resize, mirror, and make adjustments until the composition worked. I did a quick color treatment to the whole piece so it would help me see the various forms and how I'd tone them so that they could all be seen without forming into one blobby mass. The orange borders here represent the live area, trim, and bleed lines.

This was then sent in to Archaia and Henson for them to approve before I could move on.


Inks:
When the layout was approved, I printed it out (it takes two sheets of copy paper taped together to get it to the size I need) and taped it to the back of a sheet of 300 series 11"x17" Strathmore Bristol. Then on my Huion light pad, I can see through the surface of the bristol down to my layout to use as a guide when I'm inking. This way I keep all pencil graphite off of the finished inkwork with no need to erase.

I inked with Copic Multiliner SP pens (The 0.7 nib mainly). I was careful to not butt the inklines of the forms against each other to help give a sense of depth and also so life would be easier in the next step...


Color Flats:
The inks were approved while I was away at GenCon, but as soon as I got home, I started setting up my digital file for color. This step is called Color Flatting, named so because of the flat, hard-edged color layers you are laying down to establish what areas are which colors. Because this piece had so much depth, I also established all the color holds (areas where I want the ink-lines to be a color other than black) and made sure to separate out the linework of the Froud-ian circle design, the Skeksis, Ordon, the Arathim, the village, and the crystal.




Final colors:
The final rendering was done using mostly the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop with a stock textured brush. I did do a bit of painting on Ordon's face to get a little more control over the shading and planes of his visage.

Dark Crystal Age of Resistance #1 will be out in comic shops Sept. 25th.
Use comicshoplocator.com to find a comic shop near you.






2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Recent Commissions

At conventions I do toned paper commissions. Single figure bust/torso, on 9x12 toned paper, with ink, pencil, brown color pencil, and white gel pen for $250.

I thought I'd share a few of the recent pieces as examples I did from SDCC and GenCon:

Spider-man
A Guardmouse with a Sword
Kenzie
A Guardmouse with a sword
A ruffian gambler mouse
A Piper mouse
A Mouse with an elaborate dress
A Guardmouse with a flower
Death-Mouse
A Spartan mouse
Saxon
Elliot from Pete's Dragon
A Mouse with the Burning Wheel Logo(For Luke Crane)
A Bison character named 'Norchack'
A 17th Century French Mouse with a musket(For Luke Crane as celebration of his new RPG: 'Miseries and Misfortunes')


2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

Worldbuilding Lecture Video

Last week on my Twitch channel (twitch.tv/davidpetersen/) I gave a talk on World Building. It's the same talk I gave at the 1FW workshop last year. And If you missed getting to watch the stream LIVE, I've made it available as a Video on demand (VOD).

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/467837400 




So come listen as I walk through the three main methods I develop the world of Mouse Guard with: Costumes & Characters, History & Culture, and Locations and Architecture.



Watch Highlight: Worldbuilding Lecture with Q&A to follow#MouseGuard from DavidPetersen on www.twitch.tv



2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18

World-Building lecture

In two days I'll be giving a talk on my Twitch channel on World Building. This is the talk I gave at the 1FW workshop last year that some fans asked I make available for folks who didn't attend.  So come listen as I walk through the three main methods I develop the world of Mouse Guard with. A Q&A will follow, and I often find that this is the most robust portion of any presentation I give, so please make your way over to Twitch on Thursday at 8pm. If you want to ask questions in the Q&A you will need a Twitch login (free), so make sure you have an account set up before the talk starts.
twitch.tv/davidpetersen




2019 Appearances
New York Comic Con October 3-6
Baltimore Comic Con October 18-20
The Fantastic Workshop Nov. 13-18