Illustration Guy Blog – The Chad Frye

Creative musings about creative stuff by a creative cartoonist.

The Search

When you are on the hunt for your pal who appears to be missing, it’s always good to have your trusty dog on the case. Although, in this situation, having the “dog on the case” be quite literal may not be a good thing. This actually is a new take on a previous idea I…
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Cat Scratches

Some cat scratches today made with just a pencil and paper. Crazy that those tools still work in our digital age. As a character designer for animation (which I do from time-to-time), it is important to be able to really explore the needs of the story with your designs for just a single…
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The Artist Within 2 – Cartoonist Portraits

I rarely promote other people’s Kickstarter projects here on my blog, but boy howdy, I’m excited about this one! My friend Greg Preston is a photographer. Over many years he has been taking photographs of cartoonists, illustrators, and animators in their home studios. His first collection of them was published in a beautiful coffee table book by…
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Drawn & Quoted: Soup’s On!

“A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.” – Henry Fielding (1707 – 1754)
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Bernie Wrightson

This past weekend, the legendary Bernie Wrightson passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was a true master of the macabre with his monster work for comics and movies, with his take on an illustrated Frankenstein in 1983 being a benchmark that few have ever achieved with ink and paper. His work was simply…
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Spring Selfie

Welcome to the first day of spring!!! While many parts of the United States have already been showing signs of spring, others are still buried under snow thanks to a big storm that hit just last week. Where there is snow, there may be some hibernating bears you don’t want to awaken. If you happen…
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Mad Dog

You know how it is when you play fetch with your dog… He/she jumps up and down giddy with the anticipation that you are about to lob that tennis ball somewhere. As you release the fuzzy orb into space, the dog bounds after it with the energy of NASA rockets, snatches the ball before it comes…
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Lion & the Mouse

Back in September, I picked up one of those neat Toned Tan hardcover sketchbooks made by Strathmore. While not perfect for my way of working (I wish the paper had more tooth), I have been having fun experimenting a bit with sketching on this mid-toned paper with some darker, lighter, and colored media. Just felt like…
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