The Chad Frye - Illustration GuyDay four in this week’s Sketch Challenge brings with it the wrath and menace of a crazed cat behind the controls of a mouse zapping spaceship, enough to send a chill through the spine of Buck Rogers himself!
Hopefully you are also following the sketch posts this week by my challenger Andy Heckathorne, a fantastic illustrator and designer. If not, pop on over to his Twitter account to see what my competition is up to!
Okay, okay. So yesterday we started off with a bang (so to speak) with some cowboys in this week’s Sketch Challenge between me and my buddy, Andy Heckathorne. Andy drew me getting punched out complete with a black eye (which you can see by clicking here). Today, I return the favor by sending him a bear that will maul Andy, if the bear doesn’t tickle him to death first.
I love drawing bears. There are lots of them on my blog. It is almost like it is a necessity for me to draw them now and again. There’s something about being able to put a goofy grin on them, and they have that lumbering, plump exterior that you can twist and turn any which way you’d like. I drew this guy on some brown Canson paper with ink, with added drybrush touches of white gouache.
Come back tomorrow to see what Day 3 in this Sketch Challenge will bring!
I am a longtime member of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS), and recently the NCS has partnered with the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to help and volunteer where possible. What goes better with cartoons than children? NCS members around the country have been volunteering to draw for the kids at various hospitals in the St. Jude network, and they lend a hand with fundraisers.
If you aren’t aware, the folks at St. Jude are dedicated to the medical care of children, particularly of those facing terrible diseases such as cancer. They take these kids in regardless of whether or not the families can afford to pay, so fundraising for this organization helps them maintain their ability to help these kids through their toughest battles.
A fundraiser local to the Los Angeles area where I live will be taking place on October 24 at the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, CA. (Click on that last sentence to see details!) It is a black tie affair with dinner, entertainment, and an auction. That’s where I come in.
As a former artist on Disney’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show, I came to love drawing the characters. Who wouldn’t?! Of all the things I have worked on, these guys are most often what kids ask me to draw for them. So to help the kids, I created this 11 x 14″ watercolor and colored pencil piece for the auction they will have for St. Jude’s.
Some lucky bidder will go home in their tux or swanky dress full, happy, and with Mickey and the boys under their arm. Perhaps it will be you!
P.S. – If you’d like to see the rough drawing that was created in preparation for this final piece, come visit my public Facebook page by CLICKING HERE!
It seems that it has been awhile since I have posted some art here on the ol’ blog. I would apologize, except for the fact that I have been insanely busy working on a new children’s book! I can’t say anything about it for now, but it does involve a good 20 or so illustrations, and I am doing them all traditionally in watercolor and colored pencil. So there hasn’t been much time for anything else.
That being said, last night I experienced a little insomnia. Went to bed, then two hours later I was wide awake. Not good. So, I channeled my energy into doing a sketch in my sketchbook, which escalated into giving it a quickie coloring job on the computer.
With all the media talk of sharks and shark attacks this summer, I decided to doodle my own fierce shark with a baby seal to add a touch of desperation. Enjoy, and swim safely out there in the big oceans!
“Hey, ho, hey!” That’s the greeting of the NCS LA. To those not in the know, NCS LA means the National Cartoonists Society, Los Angeles Chapter!
The NCS LA reorganized this year to become a pretty busy group of professional cartoonists. We used to have one gathering a year in December, but since this past December, we have been doing monthly activities where professional cartoonists can socialize with colleagues, learn something, and hopefully soon will involve some volunteer drawing for worthy causes.
Part of what the NCS LA has discovered is some of the history of our group. Our mascot has become Cornelius the Bear because back in the day he saved the life of Los Angeles cartoonist George Herriman, creator of the comic strip Krazy Kat, from a runaway toboggan. Cornelius is no longer with us here in the City of Angels, of course, so he himself is depicted in angelic terms on our official crest. I recently drew my version of Cornelius as seen above wearing the NCS LA uniform of a plaid sports coat.
That image of Cornelius was used on a flyer I put together advertising to our membership a field trip we took a few weeks ago to Revolutions 2, a fantastic museum exhibit of original illustration art at the museum in the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, CA (go see it before it closes in early August if you haven’t already – it’ll knock your socks off!). Illustrator William Stout showed us around the exhibit, and was able to tell tales of his own art that is in the display. Afterwards, we went to lunch at a place where Walt Disney and his animators used to hang out (yes, that’s my Walt on the flyer, too).
If you are a professional cartoonist creating comic books, comic strips, illustration, animation, editorial cartoons, or any other genre in cartooning here in Los Angeles, or will be visiting our fair city in the future, please get a hold of me to find out when and where our next gathering will be! We’d love to welcome you here!
Some cats sit all alone in the moonlight, and can smile at the old days; they were beautiful then and remember a time they knew what happiness was, and they let the memory live again.* Other cats just like making new memories such as climbing on birthday cakes.
This was a little birthday piece I did for a good friend who has three cats. I may have made up their color schemes, though. Unless these are what Jellicle cats really look like, then the colors were very specific and intentional.
*Yes, those are lyrics borrowed from the song Memory in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s CATS.
Spring is coming. You can feel it in the air! Well, maybe not those of you on the east coast who have been hit with a dollop of snow in recent weeks. Here in Los Angeles, we have been setting heat records for this time of year with it being in the 90s. I tend to enjoy things a little cooler than that, but we make do.
So with spring around the corner, I felt like sketching a smiling little bunny rabbit. Perhaps you might enjoy looking at it from your sunny front porch, or from your snow fort – whichever the case may be.
Recently I started working on storyboards for a new animated film called Animal Crackers. I had some time between assignments last week, and just to keep busy, I started sketching. This bear came out of hibernation by way of my Cintiq screen. (That’s a monitor you can draw on with a stylus.)
While the film does include many animals, this is not one from the movie lest your hopes were up for a sneak peek. For that, you should visit the Animal Crackers Facebook page where you can see some of the characters as designed by the amazing Carter Goodrich!
