Mice of the Guard

~Bad Poetry~Pen Brush Sword~Tributes

Nov 30

Written By Tiler 'Ti' Bradshaw

Ah, more fan art. At this point it seems hard to believe, but I actually don't typically feel good about making this kind of stuff. The thought of chasing other people's work means that no matter the quality of any such work that I may make, I will never make a thing that feels like more than a pale imitation of the original source, and that's presuming I don't opt to preserve my own style. Then if things are very close to the original work, it may feel like a counterfeit in some way. I don't like it.

But what I do like is Mouse Guard. A comic written and drawn by a wonderful artist, David Peterson who tell an array of stories set in a seemingly post-human world where the wildlife had become sentient and sophisticated to the level that they are like medieval people and live by roaming the world and engaging in adventures that span the same broad horizons of experience that any tale of human civilization can offer. I liken his works to that of Malory, Cervantes or Voltaire in terms of the nature of digestible antics and quests that Mr. Peterson seems to draw upon. He creates engaging and entertaining stories and populates his world with legends and mystery, all from a scale roughly 1/100th that of our own. It's beautiful, please look up David Peterson and his work for a very novel good time!

On to the thing I made. The thought to make this came from one of the auxiliary materials published as Mouse Guard canon-adjacent material, where artists and writers not part of Mr. Peterson's project can contribute to the world as characters in a tavern discuss legends and fables within their world, presenting the vehicle by which these extra tales can be formed. The collection is called "Legends of the Guard" and was inspiration for my decision to make this.

After patting myself on the back for the good and fun job I did with my throne defending swashbucklers with no context or meaningful action to speak of therein, I sought to address that by trying to make a single image that can, itself, tell a story. The thought to do this of all things largely comes from my love for the now [in]famous[?] Dark Souls family of games, which are eventually known for not telling you a story by way of expositive dialogue explicitly, but will allow you to walk into a setting that may seem innocuous enough, but could have details that belie a darker and more involved truth of events that took place in that same space (a wall with destroyed doors, or bodies piled in a spot immediately before a trap or ambush, maybe scorched earth where fire was used to defeat intruders, etc.) This is a method I like to use when making artwork, because it feels like it adds a level of engagement to the piece, a high bar of success for a single still image that may have no external information to cue a viewer to seek everything out and maximize the breadth of their experience with it.

In the image we have two Guardsmice with weapons drawn, rushing at a sinister-looking mouse armed with two swords blocking the way to a passage out of the chamber. We can see the degree of seriousness that the dark mouse does its work with by looking away from the well-lit areas of the scene to a spot less exposed-yet still hinted at by way of a couple pillars catching the light, and if you eye follows the direction of the volumetric light rays, you may land on the hidden proof that perhaps completes the narrative at work.

I was originally thinking to simply explore playing with exclusion as a painting technique for handling light and lit surfaces as well as layering lighting in perspective to help generate a sense of depth that remains sensical and thematically sound. This was a matter of brushstroke discipline that I realized I need to practice to further develop my skills as an artist who may need to solve problems and have useful and efficient techniques a I grow.

I wanted to practice getting terrain and structures down more effectively without relying on heavy use of line, as I did with the Dragon at the City Walls (one of the few criticisms I really have concerning that painting) I evidently didn't quite trust myself to make an interior off-the-cuff with minimal planning and not structuring it all with thick, sweeping lines that shoot off into every vanishing point. I wanted to keep the scenery line-free, but I sacrificed the detail greatly in the effort. Still more to learn. One last critique is that I was too heavy handed with the full black for dramatic effect (not necessarily as line, just blotching and stroking) This was a matter of using the pen to draw undiluted ink, which I hadn't yet fully figured out as a context-sensitive tool of good/poor taste. Should have painted the bloodstains rather than drawn them in this particular instance.

One final point of this composition that is terribly important to my honest development and growth as an artist who wants to get better during an explicit exercise like this project is, was to avoid using white ink for the scene lighting, which would have lost he lesson I was seeking to learn, though I did use it on the weapons.

I enjoyed making this and I am still very fond of it despite the gross volumes of detail I lost in the attempt. I learned a lot about my abilities and my sense of discipline, and the final product still looks pretty good, even at a glance. I did focus a lot on figuring out just how I wanted to execute the scene lighting for this painting, as well as the poses, which are a touch wooden, but I wanted them to play with the light as well too. Clearly, the volume of time and energy I put into planning everything I was worried about paid off well in my making a good-looking failure of a sort. I like it!