The Chad Frye - Illustration GuyAny time someone tells me they are a fireman, I don’t believe them unless they look like this. C’mon! THIS is what a fireman is supposed to look like, right?!
Spent some time doodling in my sketchbook this week. Went back to the well of one of my favorite things to draw – bears! Here’s a bear excited for the accidental meal he thinks he’s about to have. How this ends is probably not in the bear’s favor.
There seems to be a lot of mermaids showing up on the social media sites I frequent. That’s because of the efforts of my pal Tom Bancroft who started the #mermay hashtag a few years ago encouraging artists to post mermaid art each day in the month of May.
Now, while The Little Mermaid was the film that first influenced me to consider animation as a serious career choice, I am not actually a fan of mermaids. They creep me out. Half woman? Half fish? Yikes! I’ll take my women with legs thank-you-very-much. So, you haven’t seen me posting mermaids left and right here on the ol’ blog, or on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook.
However, I DO like puns, and the other day while perusing the latest batch of mermaids from everyone, a pun came to mind inspired by my all-time favorite comedy movie It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (which itself was full of puns). Made in 1963, it featured many of the nation’s best comic actors, and had cameos of the rest of them. It was truly epic. One of the featured players was Ethel Merman who played a loudmouthed brassy mother-in-law to the beleaguered Milton Berle.
So, here is my one entry for #mermay, Ethel Mermaid as she would have appeared in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Seaworld.
Here we are at the end of the week, which means we have come to the final post in this step-by-step explanation of my Indiana Jones and Rocketeer dynamic duo. Once again, if you are just joining this party, perhaps you should start back at Step 1 to truly understand the anatomy of this painting. CLICK HERE to do so.
While Indy and the Rocketeer were outlined with a black Prismacolor pencil, the nuances of their inner details utilized many colors. Lilac, parma violet, deco yellow, violet, cream, sand, some greens, various reds, pinks, and maybe more not coming to mind right now. The point is, colors are important to the success of the piece!
Take for instance this close look at the Rocketeer. There are so many colors working together to create his details. See the lighter highlights on his flight jacket? That’s deco pink! The same deco pink creating highlights on his hands and on his pants. It was a nice gentle light color that also happened to tie him in with the colors around him on the background. You need your figures to look like they belong in their setting, and to do that is to use the same colors as would happen in real life with the idea of reflected light. (I’m not going into a deep explanation of reflected light, but you can look it up.)
And with that, the piece is all done! Here is a scan (not a photo this time) of the final art ready to be framed and hung in a gallery.
On April 22, the Rocketeer art show opened at Creature Features in Burbank, CA. There were MANY great pieces created in all mediums such as oil paint, sculpture, latex, metal work, vinyl, watercolor, marker, acrylic, ink, and the ever popular digital media.
Yesterday I finished explaining the painting stage of this Rocketeer/Indiana Jones mash-up illustration. Today begins the explanation of incorporating colored pencil into the piece. This is when the details begin to come forth. If you are just joining our discussion, perhaps you should start with the first post for context. CLICK HERE to start at the beginning!
With the painting portion all done, and the focus having been on the central characters for a while, let’s look at our supporting cast – the Nazis. Now, I’m not in favor of glamorizing Nazis, but I sure don’t have a problem with showing them about to get their hindquarters kicked by a couple of legendary heroes. All that red paint has hidden our villains of the piece, so it is time to bring them back so our heroes can see who they are about to beat down.
I use Prismacolor colored pencils in my work. They sure are expensive. I remember when they were about 50¢ per pencil, while these days it can be $1.50-2.00 each! I buy mine in bulk which helps get the price down, and am happy to utilize rebates that Prismacolor often offers, but they are still very pricey even with discounts.
To get the Nazis going, I chose a violet pencil. Ultimately this color didn’t stand out enough on the red background, so I went over the lines later with a darker violet blue pencil. Using a purple color on the soldiers helps to tie the piece together with the central characters who, as you may recall from yesterday’s tutorial, were shaded with purple paint.
Once the soldiers were outlined, two pencils were used for the highlights. White? Nope, white wasn’t one of them, though your eye may think there is white in there. Working from back to front, I started with a nectar colored pencil, then lightly applied deco rose for some brighter spots. Both are shades of pink, and worked well against that red BG.
In keeping the soldiers primarily the red of the background, using these two highlight pencils makes it feel like you are sculpting the characters out of the scene. You are bringing them forth from the flatness of the paper by giving them a bit of dimensionality with well placed tones.
And just like that you have a Nazi army poised to cause trouble. Our heroes aren’t quite ready to respond in kind to their imposing enemy. They are still locked in the realm of nebulous paint. They require some definition, too.
Originally I was going to outline Indy and the Rocketeer with a really dark purple pencil called black grape, but when I started using that, their outlines looked a little foggy. There wasn’t enough contrast between the outlines with the color of the BG. I hesitate to use black pencil for outlining in a painting, but it was the only color darker that would work with the color choices in the piece. The lines needed to really pop not only because of that intense red, but because I was thinking about Dave Stevens’ masterful inking in his comics and wished to channel a little of that sensibility.
So, here we are for the continued explanation of the step-by-step creation of my recent Rocketeer painting. If you need to start back at Step 1, CLICK HERE! Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Now that the background has been completed, it is time to remove the liquid frisket from the central characters. To do this, you use a rubber cement remover/eraser. It is a rubbery bumpy square usually found in art supply stores. You rub this gently at first on the edge of the liquid frisket, and if needed, more aggressively as you can without damaging the painted areas. The idea is to peel up the edge of the frisket. Sometimes when you peel up the edge, you can just grab it with your fingers and pull it off. Other times, you need to keep applying the eraser.
Below is a close-up of the figures. You can see that there are specks of red paint all over them. I think this was caused by two things: 1. I shook up the liquid frisket before applying, and it had lots of bubbles in it. When the bubbles popped, it may have left tiny holes where the paint got in. 2. When I was using the rubber cement eraser, it picked up some of the red paint from off the frisket, and then smudged it on the paper where the frisket had been removed.
Since the paint is water based, the specks on the characters can be minimized before painting any further. Just wet a brush, dab it onto the affected areas, let it soak in for a moment, then dab it up with a clean paper towel. Repeat. It won’t remove all signs of a color as bright as this red, but it will minimize it enough to where it won’t be noticeable when you continue the rest of your painting.
Back when I was painting the background, there was time to mix up other colors while waiting for each layer of paint to dry. I buy these little Solo condiment cups and lids for paint. You can write on them with a Sharpie, and the paint stays wet inside for days.
The next step is creating an underpainting layer of shadows on the characters. I often use purple. When working with watercolor, the final color on top will allow this shadow layer to peek through. Paint these shadows darker in spots where a dark color will go on top of them.
Once your underpainting has dried. You can lay on your top colors. Because that underpainting was done with watercolor, putting wet paint on top of it can cause the underpainting to run if you are not careful. The best way to prevent that is to paint your top colors on very quickly. The dry paint underneath won’t have a chance to get saturated with the liquid which is why it would start to slide and mix in with your top paint.
I had a friend that would do a shadow underpainting with DW ink, which is acrylic based. Once that dries, it can’t move around with water put on it. They may make a purple DW ink, but so far I just used watercolor paint for my underpainting.
Today you will read about the beginning of the painting process of my latest illustration – an 18×24 inch piece featuring Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer created for a group art show in Los Angeles. If you are just joining us with this post, perhaps you would like to start at the beginning with Step 1 by CLICKING HERE!
Yesterday you read about the conceptualizing and planning stage for this illustration that pairs up Indiana Jones with the Rocketeer in their united quest to rid the world of Nazis. After working out the final drawing on the computer in Photoshop, that same drawing needs to be transferred to watercolor paper.
I printed out a muted version of the drawing onto Strathmore Layout Bond paper that was in the studio. It is sturdy enough for an inkjet printer, and thin enough that the pressure of a pencil will push its way through the paper and the graphite paper underneath to put the drawing on the painting surface.
Yes, graphite paper. I explained and photographed this paper in a previous step-by-step tutorial last year. You can CLICK HERE to quickly read about that process if it is unfamiliar to you. Go ahead. We’ll wait for you.
So, here is the final drawing on my nice Arches watercolor block paper. The graphite paper can come out light in some areas, but since graphite is just pencil lead, you can easily erase and draw with a pencil to darken it as needed, and change to your tastes. The pencil lines should be dark enough to be seen through the watercolor paint that will soon cover the piece. If you can’t see your lines anymore, then you’ve just crippled your ability to accurately finish the painting!
Okay, so you probably noticed a yellowy substance covering our heroes. I failed to snap a picture of just the pencil art without that goo on there. If you really analyzed that color comp from yesterday, you might have noticed some aggressive painting for the background – the color burst around the heroes, paint spatter emanating from the center, and also all that red everywhere.
Normally I would use airbrush frisket to mask off an area, but this particular paper is very textured, and the frisket will not adequately protect the central figures from any of the background painting process. So I used a liquid frisket. It is a liquid latex you can buy in art stores that resembles rubber cement in a way. You spread it on the areas where you don’t want paint, then let it dry. You can do your painting as messy as you wish, then later remove the now solid “liquid” frisket with a rubber cement remover. We’ll get to that later.
So, painting. With the needed red color fully mixed, and lots of it, I wet the paper generously with clear water and let it soak in. This will help watercolor paint to go down smoothly over a large surface. The first red layer is spread with a big soft brush, and while it was drying, I sprinkled salt in certain spots of the background. As the paint dries, the salt absorbs the paint where it landed creating interesting speckles on the surface. With two action heroes fighting enemy soldiers, my goal is to have a bit of a gritty surface.
Applying the red paint went through several layers, as also the application of more salt. After a layer would dry, the paint could look bunched up in spots, so then I would just wet my big brush and lay down some water to help smooth the whole thing out a bit. All in all, I think there were about 4 or 5 layers of red and water applied to the BG just to get it satisfactory.
In the image below, notice that there are some darker red splotches on the BG. Those were created by dipping a brush in the same red paint and dripped onto the canvas while the paint was all still wet.
The last step for today is painting that brighter burst in the middle. For that, I used my trusty old airbrush. I mixed two more shades of red with gouache this time (an opaque water based paint), each lighter than the last, and built it up dark to light. This can only be done once you feel the whole BG is working because it would be much harder to undo this if you had to go back to change the main BG later. This isn’t a tutorial on how to airbrush, but just letting you know the tool I used to create that burst behind the heroes.
By the way, in between layers of spraying that burst, I used an old toothbrush to spritz some small spatter with a lighter red color in the center. I also used a larger brush and did some controlled paint flinging to get larger drops to spread out from the center of the piece. A fun but messy stage that if you haven’t done it many times before, you should practice on a side paper before you risk ruining your picture.
I recently completed a new painting for an art show currently on display at the Creature Features gallery in Burbank, California. The group show is themed around the late Dave Stevens’ wonderful comic book creation The Rocketeer that many people also remember as a fun adventure movie of the same name produced by Disney back in 1991.
I have been enamored with Stevens’ character from his comics that absolutely oozed fun and excitement in the storytelling combined with the most amazing drawings. Dave painstakingly researched every little detail of the late 1930s time period, and then put all those details into his art including Art Deco sensibilities, every line and bolt in weapons, and every crease in the fabric.
Of course, when the movie came out featuring Billy Campbell in the title role, Alan Arkin as his mentor, Jennifer Connelly as his girlfriend, and that cool rocket pack all while resisting Nazis, the adventure was captivating!
When I moved out to California 20 years ago, I became acquainted with Dave, and was able to chat with him about his work. It was just an inspiration to be around him now and then. When the opportunity for this show came up, I had to be a part of it if not for any other reason than to thank Dave posthumously for the inspiration he instilled in me. It is hard to believe, but Dave Stevens passed away nine years ago much too young. Cancer.
When my old pal and fellow artist Andy Heckathorne heard I was working on this piece, he wanted to see a step-by-step progression during the making of it. It has been a while since I’ve explained my process here on the ol’ blog, so perhaps it is time to do so with this piece.
Whether you are a student of the arts wanting to know what it takes to do professional work, or perhaps you are a potential client wondering why a “simple” piece of art costs what it does, the explanation of these steps over the next five days will give you an insight into the complicated process of what it takes to create something from a blank piece of paper, some paint & pencils, and twenty-six years of professional experience.
When creating illustrations for clients, they will approach me with their ideas for what they want in a picture. You sketch out a couple of roughs of the concept for them, and then go through a period of revisions to get the idea worked out, and then multiple passes at the final drawing. When creating for myself, such as this painting, the process is a little more streamlined only because I don’t have to do revisions for someone else’s vision.
It all starts with a concept. To get myself in the right frame of mind, I re-read all of Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer comics, and watched the movie again. I even looked at old World War II propaganda posters to get a feel for the artistic time period. Then I started sketching VERY rough thumbnail ideas of what the piece could be. Clearly the Rocketeer needed to be depicted in in his full outfit, and I decided to draw Dave’s comic book rocket pack – not the revised version from the movie (as cool as it is). This was a show in tribute to Dave, so Dave’s rocket it was going to be!
These thumbnails are incredibly loose with no real attention paid to anatomy or detail. They are just meant to quickly get a rough composition down with the action/scenario in place, then to dash out another one as the ideas were filling my head. A recurring theme was creeping into several of these sketches – the Rocketeer fighting Hitler and Nazis.
As the Nazi thing was mulling through my mind, I remembered that Dave Stevens also created storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones also fought Nazis! Hmmm, what if the Rocketeer and Indiana Jones teamed up? This next sketch was the result of that musing.
By the way, all of these rough sketches were drawn on my Cintiq. The Cintiq is a computer monitor that you can draw on with a stylus. I use Photoshop as my drawing application because I can work things out on layers, resize bits and pieces, and just get it all figured out before taking the art to the traditional steps for a real bonafide painting.
After that last rough sketch, it is time to work out the details of the final drawing. I won’t bore you with all the stages of that, but just know that it usually takes several passes to get the sketch to the next level you see below.
After getting the drawing worked out, the next thing needed was a color comp (“comp” being short for comprehensive). Again, Photoshop is used for this process. It is convenient to work out any color problems on the computer, then I make a high quality print on my 8-color printer, and keep that at the drafting table where I will mix paint to match it.
You can see in my color comp, I decided to get a little artsy with the interpretation of the Nazis. The viewer’s attention needed to be instantly attracted to the middle where the two heroes are. Having all the soldiers looking and pointing their guns in that direction is an obvious way to draw the eye, but by keeping them the color of the background with just some highlights will end up putting even more emphasis on the middle. Also, by having a mostly red canvas, this piece will really stand out on the walls of a crowded art gallery. I wanted people in the room to be naturally drawn to this painting.
