The Chad Frye - Illustration Guy
The other day as I sat at my desk, I had the inspiration to doodle another Frankenstein head. True, I explored a few approaches to this character which I chronicled in detail here on this blog, but the possibilities are endless, and my fascination continues. Frankie just couldn’t be contained.
So I grabbed some scrap paper, and with a brown ink line and some quick, well-placed brush strokes of watercolor paint, this little guy has come to life!
“A friend is very different from an acquaintance. The former is tried and true; the latter only a casual shadow in one’s life.”
– Anonymous
Sometimes when I open the pages of my sketchbook, I start the pencil down on one part of the page not sure of what is about to come out. In this case, it started with the head of the big guy, and the imagination just kept wandering from that point. Eventually added the little creature in his shadow, and put a more final line on everything with a brush pen and some other tech pens.
As every artist should, I often have a sketchbook handy for those idle moments that pop up now and then quite unpredictably. It is tough to pinpoint when inspiration will strike, or when one might have a surge of boredom. Nothing quite fills these voids better than having a sketchbook to launch yourself into another time or place, or sometimes just to document the time and place in which you find yourself. It is the latter of these two that I have been remiss in sharing with you. You’ve seen some of my imaginary doodles, but sketches from real life have been elusive on this blog.
I am about to take off on a trip, and to pass the time in airport waiting areas, there is nothing better than having your sketchbook by your side to draw the crazy characters that undoubtedly surround you at any given moment. There are folks of any shape or size, there are people with strange behavior, there’s a child acting out with an exasperated parent not doing anything about it, there’s the airport worker sweeping, there’s the elderly person being wheeled by in a wheelchair, and if you are looking, you may even see the casual celebrity walk by like Don King, Carlos Santana, or even Jerry O’Connell and Rebecca Romijn as I have.
So, today I am sharing with you a few airport doodles pulled from my sketchbooks. I’ll be adding to them this week, some of which may be worthy to share with you later. Sometimes you don’t get more than a moment to capture someone, so you have to be quick. And the real trick is to do it when they aren’t looking. You never want to get caught by your subject. They tend to not enjoy the scrutiny.
However, you have my permission to scrutinize the following doodles of regular folk all drawn from real life. Feel free to click on the image to see them larger.
Welcome to the conclusion of my photo albums showcasing the goings on at the 2009 National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Awards weekend that took place over Memorial Day weekend in Hollywood, California. The previous post ended with the actual Reuben banquet night. Today you will see more of what happened on Sunday, May 24 at the home of Cathy Guisewite, and then the karaoke party that followed back at the Hollywood & Highland complex.
A unique experience at this year’s Reubens that did not echo the usual routine from years past was a trip out to the lovely estate of Cathy Guisewite, the creator of the “Cathy” comic strip. Four touring buses picked up convention goers at the hotel in the afternoon and took them to her wonderful home nestled in a quiet, unassuming neighborhood that I’m sure had no idea that many of the country’s top names in cartooning were descending upon them. Cathy’s parents were there to greet everyone with a smile and a mini “Cathy” book as a gift. But I’ll let the photos do all the talking….
After the buses returned everyone to the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, things started up with a final party for the weekend with the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez performing with his band, after which the karaoke kicked in!
And on that note, I have come to the conclusion of my photos of the 2009 Reuben Awards. Many thanks to those whose photography is represented in this Part 4 Reuben Report: Cedric Hohnstadt, Chari Pere, Sean Kelly, Bill Morrison, Wendy Peng and even a few of my own.
And thank you to our hostess Cathy Guisewite for a terrific afternoon in her home. She was very brave to have a bunch of unpredictable cartoonists invade her private space. Casa Cathy will probably never be the same, nor will her 5 bathrooms.
And thank you to Jeff and Melinda Keane who spearheaded a terrific Reuben Weekend. Only 11 more months until the next one!
For more information about the National Cartoonists Society, please visit www.Reuben.org!
Welcome to part three of my posts on this year’s National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Awards weekend. Today’s post will focus on the actual Reuben Awards themselves! They took place in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, California on the evening of May 23.
For those of you not familiar with the Reuben Awards (named after the great Rube Goldberg), they are bestowed annually on the best and the brightest in the cartooning business. Awards are given in several categories of illustration, comic strips, animation, comic books, comic panels, and editorial cartooning. And of course, there is the very prestigious Reuben Award itself that is given to the Cartoonist of the Year. You can see all the categories and read about the history of the awards on the NCS website.
So, that being said, let’s get on with the photos, shall we? There are lots of cartoonists to see – cartoonists in ball gowns and tuxedos no less! You don’t see THAT every day!
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The Reuben night began with a cocktail reception outside the Renaissance Hotel’s ballroom where the annual Governor’s Ball for the Oscars is always held. On one side of us were the exit doors from the upper level of the Kodak Theater, and on the other was the ballroom.
Once the cocktail reception ended, the party moved indoors where guests were treated to a wonderful dinner prepared by Wolfgang Puck’s crew. Dinner was accompanied by a big band, and lots of shmoozing. Thankfully, there was a coffee table open throughout the night as the dinner and awards did not let up until close to midnight.
Even though the evening was late, many convention goers headed down to the lobby to continue socializing. They weren’t down there for long when Dave Coverly came down to round everyone up to head on up to the spacious Presidential Suite to join President Jeff Keane and wife Melinda. And so the party continued!
If you were hoping to find a complete list of winners from the night’s festivities, I invite you to check out my post in Part 1 of these Reubens Reports. All the winners are listed there!
Many thanks to illustrator Sean Kelly, and cartoonists Chari Pere, Rob Smith Jr. and Tom Stemmle for the use of their photos in this post. Come back again tomorrow when I will have my last of the 2009 Reuben photo spreads featuring the events on Sunday that include a late afternoon meal at the home of Cathy Guisewite and the evening karaoke party!
At the end of Part 1 of my Reuben Report, I promised you more photographs from the National Cartoonists Society’s 2009 Reuben Awards that took place this year during May 22-24 at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, CA. For those of you who have anxiously been waiting, the payoff is sweet.
While my first post was of my photos, in the weeks that have passed, many friends and colleagues have passed along their photos to me. I’ve picked some of the best at my disposal to share with you. Since I’ll be putting these in chronological order from the weekend’s activities, I’ll acknowledge my contributors right now! Many thanks to the following who have graciously allowed me to post their great shots: Sergio Aragonès, Sean Kelly, Chari Pere, Bill Morrison, Wendy Peng, Rob Smith, Jr., Cedric Hohnstadt, Tom Stemmle, and Rick Detorie.
FRIDAY, MAY 22
SATURDAY, MAY 23
On Saturday during the seminars, several posters and a large banner were set out for us to draw on that were to be given to various groups of the U.S. military. Over the past year, NCS member Jeff Bacon has been spearheading the efforts for NCS members to join with the U.S.O. in visiting injured troops here and abroad. He has led several trips of cartoonists that have been so very well received and appreciated by our soldiers. So, some of these are related to that project, and others to another troop project headed up by editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez. The following are some shots of those banners.
Well, this has been an awful lot of pictures today. There’s more where that came from. I shall post more shots tomorrow from the actual Reuben Award banquet, and on Wednesday, I’ll have my final post about the 2009 Reubens with more shots from Cathy Guisewite’s Sunday afternoon party followed by a few parting shots of cartoonists doing karaoke. I’ll close out today’s post with a few photos of Hollywood as seen from the Presidential Suite at the Renaissance Hotel.
Well, two weeks ago I announced a contest that was being held over on the Chad Frye • Illustration Guy Facebook Fan Page. The idea was simply to suggest a good caption for the cartoon drawing I posted. Well, after 95 caption suggestions, I narrowed it down to the five best and then let the fans vote on them.
Congratulations to the winner of our little contest! Bruce Higdon of Tennessee won himself a signed and sketched-in copy of my children’s book Jonah and the Very Big Fish. I have re-posted the cartoon below with Bruce’s caption, and then listed the other 4 finalists below him.
Many thanks to all who played along! Come join the Facebook Fan Page where more contests will be conducted in the future!
“And they say a quarter doesn’t go far, anymore.”
Submitted by Bruce Higdon
“Shouldn’t a let Bob install that ‘stimulus package’ . . . .”
Submitted by Luanne Jenkins Hurst
“Mrs. MacGuyver . . . I think I found your son.”
Submitted by Kate Adams Smith
“Oy! First, the mechanical pony breaks its leg and we have to shoot it, now this!”
Submitted by Bill Riling
“When you get caught between the moon and new stock boy Vinnie. I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.”
Submitted by Andy Heckathorne
In my last post, I shared with you the preliminary stages of a new illustration I did for the University of Dayton Magazine this past weekend. Getting to do an Indiana Jones type of character was a lot of fun. I enjoy coming up with humorous ideas for things, and in this case it was to make a point about the way our modern Western society holds the mundane in such high, sacred regard. We make idols of the most innocuous things.
If you read the last post, you saw the various thumbnail ideas and the final drawing submitted for approval. Approval had been given, so I moved ahead with the colored piece. This was going to be another of my watercolor/colored pencil hybrids. If you have read my step-by-step posts on the creation of my Where the Wild Things Are tribute painting, or the one a little further back about Frankenstein, then you know I like to do an underpainting to get some of the shadows worked out in advance.
You know, this piece will be reproduced pretty small on the page. It’s important for it to make its point as quickly as possible. The focus of the composition is that baseball, which is why everything points to it in just the bare drawing. The strap, the look of the character, the hand poised just above it…you get the idea. I need the coloring to do the same thing.
So, in this next step a whole bunch of paint has been slathered on the paper with that purple underpainting showing through. To draw your attention to that ball, I painted the watercolor in to look as though it is glowing. the baseball has become the primary light source.
Once the majority of the paint was done, I masked off certain areas and spritzed in some texture on the green background, and also some on the skin. I also deepened the tone of the edges of the green areas. Then whole thing was finished with colored pencils. And yes, I drew on Babe Ruth’s signature – but for accuracy, I traced it from a photo of a baseball he had actually signed.
Thanks for checking out my Indiana Jones inspired editorial illustration. And thanks again to the University of Dayton Magazine for allowing me to share this with you prior to their publication of the piece.