David Petersen's Blog, page 4

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)!

Dawn of the Black Axe #1 Rodriguez Cover

Announced a few weeks ago 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 (JAN250016 for the Gabe cover) And I wanted to use this post to share a deeper dive into the cover art for cover A (I also have a variant cover and there will be at least one other guest artist for each issue)

Gabe agreed to do the project, but really wanted me to be the colorist. It's been the hardest coloring work I've ever done...

The cover art was created after the first issue was already drawn. I co-ordinated with Gabe letting him know what scene/visual I thought he should focus on and also what I was going to do for my cover (that way if he wanted to do something beyond my suggestion, he knew what I was doing to avoid overlap).

This series really leans into snake battles (if you know the Black Axe lore from the illuminated pages in Fall you understand) and I asked for the big confrontation for this issue. Gabe sent over pencils, and then this amazingly clean and detailed inked art. 

While the interior pages were all drawn & inked, I had yet to finish the colors on the issue––importantly, I hadn't yet colored this scene, so the cover is were some of the color choices were made. Bardrick (first wielder of the Black Axe) had a color scheme and so did the snake (Gammeltann) and the elk, but what colors the backround were and how that may alter the hue and saturation of my established character base colors was something I figured out with the cover first.

This flat color stage is where all the color shapes are established, a coloring-in-the-lines for pros. I also established the color holds, which is where I want the lineart to be a color other than black. In this case I made color holds for the elk, the snake's eye, and the puffs of dust.

Rendering (adding shadows, highlights, & textures) has proven to take much longer for me on Gabe's inks than on my own. I think part of that is the realism of forms in Gabe's work requires a different style of lighting. He also tends to have a lot more degrees of depth in a panel, where I almost always break forms into 2 or 3 planes.

To render the color I used a bit of a painbrush tool (something I don't often do on my own work) to get some color transitions, then Photoshop's dodge and burn tools with a textured brush.
Below is the solicitation info for the first issue that will be in shops March 19th, 2025:

CODE: JAN250016
(W) David Petersen (A/CA) 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)!

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.

Welcoming Artists into the Guard

In the weeks since we announced the new Mouse Guard mini-series Dawn of the Black Axe, which while written & colored by me, will be drawn by master inkslinger Gabriel Rodriguez, I've seen comments online about me not drawing it or wondering what it must have taken for me to give over so much creative control to another artist.
I wanted to do a post to assure everyone that I will still be writing AND drawing my own Mouse Guard books (Weasel War––with a still unknown completion date), but also that the Mouse Territories are a place I've welcomed in over 50 artists or writers to contribute stories, pinups, or covers even before I asked Gabriel to draw this story.
To celebrate the artists who have already donned a Guard cloak and entered Lockhaven, Here's a past blogpost that features them all https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2019/11/thankful-for-mouse-guard-contributors.html
Though, I do want to acknowledge a difference; Legends of the Guard was meant to be an anthology where the guest stories are tall tales and folklore, and this Dawn of the Black Axe series (hopefully the first in a long line of artists exploring past wielders of the Black Axe) is cannon. It's also why I handpicked Gabriel. He is an unparalleled draftsman, an auteur storyteller, and a wonderful friend...we've wanted to work on a project together for years, and this was one worth waiting for.
As a note, I have a limited number of the Legends of the Guard boxed set in my online store for sale (all the books are signed by me) mouseguard.bigcartel.com
And there have been many past blogposts about Legends of the Guard to go back to or discover as we get closer to Dawn of the Black Axe's release (and therefore subsequent Blogposts with behind the scenes, process, interviews, etc.)

davidpetersen.blogspot.com/search/label/Legends

Blog Index Updated

Since I started this Blog in 2007, there have been hundreds of posts about art process, ideas, advice, cover work, illustration projects, and lots of Mouse Guard.
I've updated the Blog's index (something 18 months past-due)   

Perhaps there are posts you've missed, or forgotten about, or you're new to my work and would like to go back and look at posts.

https://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2019/12/blog-index.html

Included in the update are Magic the Gathering pieces, TMNT illustrations, Usagi Yojimbo covers & a pinup, Discovering Dragons, Mouse Guard prints, and much more.
Enjoy the new year everyone!

Happy 2025

It's New Year's Eve––and just in a matter of hours, it will be 2025. While, as I always do, I have concerns going into this circuit around the sun, I'm also pleased that this year will mark the 20th anniversary of when I self-published the first issue of Mouse Guard.

To the left you can see a little illustration I did between Christmas and New Years of a very David Petersen-eque mouse riding a frog. May we be the mice atop a frog mount leaping into 2025 and hopefully hopping over as many of our obstacles as possible.

Below in this blogpost I go through the art steps to create the piece.


Rough:
I decided it would be nice to have a mouse on a mount, and I've done a fair number of mice on birds in recent years, and somehow I arrived at the alternative for a frog. I looked at reference for a leopard frog (native here in Michigan) and drew it on a sheet of copy paper. On a lightpad I then placed a new sheet of copy paper overtop to draw a mouse with some sort of basket-saddle.

The two drawings were scanned and assembled in Photoshop (tinted different colors). I then did a little digital drawing and warped both the Mouse Guard emblem and '2025' to fit the banner.
Inks:
I printed out the above layout and taped it to the back of a sheet of Strathmore 300 series Bristol. On my lightpad I could see through the bristol surface to the layout beneath to use as a guide as I inked. I used a Copic Multiliner 0.7 SP pen.

The reason I inked the Mouse Guard emblem on the banner was so I could use this art piece again at some point (as well as sell the original without the date connotations) The 2025 was inked separately on another small piece of bristol. The little lines above the numbers were there to help me register them back up to the crossbar of the banner.
Flats:
With the inks scanned I started the process to color this piece called 'flatting' Flatting is basically a professional version of coloring-in-the-lines to establish with flat colors where all the color areas are (the fur is different than the hat is different than the frog is different from the banner, is different from the other banner, etc). I flatted this with the 2025 numbers properly registered back in place.

Also at this stage I established color holds, areas where I want the ink lines to be a color other than black like the numbers and the frog's eye and spots.
Final colors:
The last step was to render the finished colors. I do so using the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop while also using a stock textured brush. The colors here are very different from the flats, and I did get them all adjusted closer to what you see here before I started adding shadows and highlights.
So, Happy 2025––Happy 20th Anniversary year from Mouse Guard, which is as much a celebration of all you fans who have enjoyed and supported it!

Dawn of the Black Axe Announced!

 Last week we announced a new Mouse Guard series called 'Dawn of the Black Axe' where the origins of the legendary Black Axe are revealed in this prequel story set in the earliest point in the Mouse Guard history with the ancient weapon’s first mouse wielder and champion, Bardrick.

I am writing and coloring this book and I handpicked the amazing Gabriel Rodriguez to drawn it. He's been an amazing collaborator and have been very kind as I attempted to write a script for someone other than myself. The series will be three issues and start in March of 2025.

This series will have 3 main covers per issue, Gabe's cover, My cover, and a Guest Variant.
Like the interiors, I also colored Gabe's covers. And here are the covers and order codes for mine and Gabe's (I'll do future blogposts as we get closer to release with process breakdowns for these)

Gabriel Rodriguez cover
Diamond Order Code: JAN250016



David Petersen cover
Diamond Order Code: JAN250017

The variant for this issue will be by Goni Montes and has not yet been revealed (though the order code for Diamond is JAN250018

Gabe and I were asked for some quotes, and I'll pepper those between the inked preview pages below that were shared around on various other comic sites--I can't show more of the finished work now, but I can tell you that I've sweated every moment as I colored these. 

David: Getting to write this Mouse Guard lore of the forging of the Black Axe and it being handed to Bardrick (first of eleven wielders) while getting to do so with the brilliant Gabriel Rodríguez drawing Dawn of the Black Axe has been a thrill,

David: “He’s going above and beyond with his inked pages and storytelling...while I’m just trying to keep up coloring them and still do them justice.

David: Gabe was top of my list when we started pitching names for this spin off project, and I postponed it for a long time until his schedule opened up––I didn’t want to do this first one with anyone else. 

David: I’ll continue to work on the next volume in the main Mouse Guard series: The Weasel War of 1149, but I also hope this is first of many more Mouse Guard books like this one, where I get to explore the other past wielders of the Black Axe with exciting and extremely talented collaborators like Gabe.”
Gabe: I’ve been a fan of David Petersen’s work since the first time I saw a volume of his astonishing Mouse Guard books. We became friends as soon as we met,

Gabe: Almost a decade ago we started daydreaming about working together on the story of the first wielder of the mythical Black Axe. That dream finally came true, and I’m humbled, grateful and excited to share it with the faithful legion of Mouse Guard readers.
-------------------MOUSE GUARD: DAWN OF THE BLACK AXE #1 will be available in comic shops March 19, 2025. It is available for pre-order at your local comic shop. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including Kindle, iBooks, and Google Play.

Gilkey Warlocks Page breakdowns

Last month Nick Kowalcyk, Mike Davis, & I got together in Flint, MI to celebrate Jesse Glenn's 50th birthday with him. The four of us were very close friends back in high school, and variations of us have appeared in many Plotmasters Project creations, Mouse Guard, and most unabashedly––in Gotham Academy.

This recent reunion made me think it would be a good time to revisit the story on my blog. Below are my 'Gilkey Warlocks' pages broken down into roughs, pencils, greyscale, & final color. 

Page 1 Roughs:
For the hallway I made a little paper model (though the checkered floor was digitally added in). With this story being for DC and having a proper editorial process (unlike my creator-owned Mouse Guard pages) I had to send roughs in for approval.

Page 1 Pencils:
Because I was worried about smudging up a rendered pencil panel when working on an adjacent one, I decided to draw them all separately, drawing a little bit of overlap to make sure there wasn't going to be a gap between panels.

Page 1 Greyscale:The pencils were all assembled in Photoshop and then masked off to conform to their appropriate panel shape. I added in borders digitally.


Page 1 Final Colors:
Using different layer modes I was able to color over the top of my greyscale page to essentially tint the image like a colorized black and white photo.


Page 2 Roughs:The Serpents and Spells RPG name had already been established in the pages of Gotham Academy––but not what the cover of a 1984 era players handbook would look like, so I got to do a fun cover treatment and then paste it in.  I also photographed a huge D20 rather than drawing an icosahedron from scratch.
Page 2 Pencils:
Getting pencils this dark was difficult––I suspect that the file I opened to show you this already had some heavy level adjustments done to darken those darkest darks. On some of the panels I added in little crop marks to know where the panel borders were as I was drawing it, but also to know where to crop it when making the greyscale composite.

Page 2 Greyscale:All assembled with some added in digital black space in the areas around the last 5 panels.
The digital borders on this included another dashed line between a panel and the zoom-in, something I enjoyed on the first page and continued here.
Page 2 Final Colors:
Keen eyed viewers will notice that on page 1 Jonathan Crane's name was on the secret door, and here we find an abandoned room with chemistry equipment and an erlenmeyer flask with 'FEAR TOXIN' on the label––and there goes Davey (Mike Davis) blowing off all that dust on the table into the air... 

Page 3 Roughs:
These pencils got a healthy amount of digital help when it came time for me to visualize the animated shadows growing off the kids, and then forming into Serpents and Spells monsters. 


Page 3 Pencils:
After the success of drawing the last 5 panels on page 2 together, I opted for the middle section of 4 panels here to all be drawn together.

Page 3 Greyscale:
I'm not sure why, but I think I put reasoning into why each boy's shadow became which monster––and for the life of me I can only remember Glen (Jesse Glenn)'s being an owlbear-like thing because of an inside Joke about real-life Jesse once drawing the friendliest owlbear for my homemade board game Tower

Page 3 Final Color:
This story was written, drawn, and turned in a few months before the first season of Stranger Things aired––you know, that 1980's period piece about four pals playing an RPG when one of them mysteriously disappears after a session. 

So there you have it! I'm still proud of this story, because it got me to stretch narratively (humans, likenesses, panel count (9 panels on page 2!), and in a different medium (rendered pencil).
I did a blogpost about the process of drawing this story back when the issue came out in 2016. The story can still be found in Gotham Academy Vol. 3: Yearbook TPB or Comixology.

Someday soon I hop to have a moment and revisit these characters––to show what each of their Serpents and Spells characters looked like.

Mouse Guard Holiday Ornament

With the end of year Holidays approaching, I wanted to offer up a print & cut Mouse Guard ornament for you all. Save the 8.5" x 11" .jpg below, and print it on your home printer (you can use a heavier stock paper if you like). Then use some glue stick on the back side before folding on the dotted line to adhere both sides of the ornament to each other. With scissors or a hobby knife, cut around the outer border of the ornament and use a hole punch to tie a ribbon or string for hanging.

My Patrons over on Patreon get a larger version 


If you want more crafting fun to make ornaments for your holidays, I also have Mouse Guard papercraft figures that can be printed at full size, or a smaller % to make them hang on a tree easier.

Free Papercraft .PDFs
https://www.mouseguard.net/papercraft
 

Mouse Guard mice, pre-publication (2005)

It's easy to look at an artist's published works and forget that before those images were seen by the public, there were hundreds of thousands of steps to artistically get there. I've been lucky enough to be noted as having a 'style' that stands out with a confidence of textured ink line (I've done a few videos addressing 'style' and my inkwork 'Drawing like yourself' and 'Inking grey'), but I wanted to use this Blogpost to remind everyone that the look of Mouse Guard Issue 1 didn't just happen––nor did it happen quickly.

Below I've put together many images of my drawings of Mouse Guard characters when it stopped being the lots-of-species 1149 story, but before I'd drawn a single page of the comic. The earliest image is from 1996 when I was in my first year of college, and the last are from 2003-4 when I was newly married, bought a house with Julia and just before I started drawing issue 1 of the comic. I've tried to keep them in chronological order, and written some commentary for each.

This is the first image of Saxon Kenzie, and Rand––when I decided to add mouse characters to 1149.
These were drawn while sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom looking at the mice in Tom Pohrt's Coyote Goes Walking (a Michigan based Illustrator).

The images were drawn in pencil on copy paper, inked with a crow-quill dip pen, then painted with watercolor pencils.

Very soon after that first image I used a scrap of mat board to draw my patrol of Saxon, Kenzie, and Rand. I was still figuring out scale here––the 1149 characters were human-sized, but with animal features, and when I brought the mice in is when I wanted to utilize real-world proportions--this is still an in-between stage. The mouse bodies are wrapped in cloaks (later to be a distinguishing feature of Guardmice) because I didn't have good reference (real of from another illustrator) of a mouse standing on it's hind feet.

This is again crow-quill dip pen and watercolor pencils.

To try and make the characters more 'comic book style' I tried stylizing their proportions (I feel like I was influenced by real-life Kenzie, Jesse Glenn's drawings for a 1996 Cats Trio revamp.

Crow-quill dip pen and Prismacolor Markers 


Another ink & watercolor pencil on a scrap of mat board piece––this time trying to get a handle (poorly) of that fictional upright mouse anatomy. This may have been in preparation of a bronze statue you'll see in a few more images. What I remember about this piece was how many people commented on my 'rat' character...I made a concious decision I had to figure out how to stylize them so they looked 'cuter' to evoke the feel of mice.
In my second year of college I took a printmaking class around the same time I was actually writing down a story for my Guardmice characters. This was my second ever etching (a technique assignment all using softground). This may be the first time I'd drawn all three with their signature weapons. 

One of my last prints made in that first-semester Printmaking class. The assignment was more about the scale and printing an edition of your plate, but to note here is that I was doing this as a potential book cover when 1149 was going to be a prose book with illustrations. Much of what that story was got stored away and used as raw ingredients for what will be The Weasel War of 1149. But, at this stage, the other species of rams, a tiger, duck,  fox, opossum, etc. were still characters.
 
Around the time I was taking that printmaking class, I was also taking a sculpture class where we did a bronze casting. The piece had to be sculpted in wax first, then a mold (able to resist the heat of molten bronze) was formed around it, heated to melt out the wax, and then filled with molten bonze (I added the felt cloak later).

This isn't the only sculptural Mouse Guard piece from this pre-comic era. And I'd say at this stage that was partly because I didn't know what 1149/Mouse Guard was supposed to be. Was it a prose book? a comic? a stop-motion film? a puppet show? Exploring mediums as well as 2D & 3D here was all about trying to find what I wanted this thing to be and where I felt most comfortable.

Please excuse the poor quality of this image--it's actually a low-res photo of a slide projected on a screen of a watercolor painting, and while the original wasn't great, a lot of quality was lost here. This was from my one and only Watercolor class in college. It's also an era of internet where doing image reference searches wasn't really a thing...so for weasel reference I had one or two photos in a book on mammals to look at. But art-journey-wise, I think here I was exploring taking what I learned in casting the bronze statue and applying it back into a 2D format where I felt more at home.

To give a sense of dates, I think this was from 1998(?) I got into a groove with 1149 drawings at this point (I have a Ferret and a Fisher drawn around the same time) all done in rendered pencil. Still trying to find a balance in stylization and realism. 

1999-2000-ish(?) These mice were all drawn from some field guide that had several photos of mice I could reference. And while they are so based on real-mice, I think this is where the clearest turn to my stylized proportions and sensibilities of the comic arrive.
This was pencil in a sketchbook with some light watercolor wash.

Please excuse the low quality of this image. I'd nearly forgotten about it and then saw it online when I was gathering links and a few photos of the sculptures from Facebook. I'm fairly certain this was before I drew issue 1––but I'm not sure when. I placed it here because I felt the proportions more closely matched the piece above and the sculpts below. Note Ran'd shield being silver/grey metal rather than copper––something we see next...

Sculpy Sculpts from 2003-4.
I did these for fun, still not knowing I was going to start drawing the comic when I started them. The bases are broken tiles we used as coasters at our wedding reception, the weapons are mostly made from found objects (sticks, nails, metal fittings––AND a scrap of copper for Rand's shield from the hammered leaf centerpieces I made for our wedding). Their cloaks are all scraps of fabric I either had or bought as swatches from a fabric store.

And lastly, the 2003 inked drawings I featured in the earliest Mouse Guard sketchbook (that still pre-dated the comic by a few months...and is available in my Digital Sketchbook Collection). As I've told many times, these were after a 'breakthrough' drawing I did without any access to reference (of photos, other artists, or even my own work) while at a Family BBQ. I leaned into my memory of drawing, my training in art school, and my printmaking background to draw/ink as comfortably as I could (later the main tenant in my lecture Drawing Like Yourself)

Hope you enjoyed that look back. I know I've changed a lot as an artist since that first issue in 2005, and the mice look different now as a result. That's what should be happening though...an artist whose work looks exactly the same year in year out would be stagnating, not growing, not pursuing, and not exploring.

We never arrived fully formed, and we shouldn't think any form we take is meant to stay.