Hey! Today is Friday which means tonight it is the start of the weekend! Woo hoooo! Families will be getting together doing super fun stuff like visiting a pumpkin patch, apple picking, costume making for Halloween, and yard work!! Well, maybe the yard work isn’t so much super fun, but leaf pile diving sure is! Whatever your family activities will be, enjoy them together.
My monster family just took a family portrait. There always has to be one who can’t just do a simple smile, am I right? Sigh. At least Grandma can see them all together in one picture.
Five kids and counting – except that monsters can’t count. They think they have 19 like the Duggars.
The monster fun continues here again on Monday! Have a GREAT weekend everybody!
Last year I was approached to create a one-of-a-kind design for the back of the letterman jacket for a member of Burbank High School’s lady bulldogs water polo team. From what I was told, she wasn’t thrilled with whatever choices the school was offering for the back of the jacket, so her father hired me to create a custom image.
I worked up my own version of a bulldog, kept it tough and formidable and yet added elements of femininity to represent the team of ladies who would deliver water polo justice to their competitors.
And yes, this was for use on just ONE jacket. She has a very nice father.
Here is the original design done in five colors – black, white, pink, and two shades of blue. The dark blue background was just a placeholder for the dark blue color of the actual jacket onto which this would be embroidered.
Here is the final design as embroidered on the back of the letterman jacket. I was fairly pleased with it, though a little annoyed that they eliminated the black outline from the water that was intended to be there.
According to every third post on Facebook this week, apparently we had a Batman Day. (The other two thirds of the posts were about Comic Con and cats.) I was not aware we had a holiday to celebrate Batman, so I seem to have missed it.
I like Batman, so I want in on the celebration. I took a little time to reimagine the Dark Knight as someone who enjoyed the luxuries of his fame a little too much. By the time Bruce Wayne reached middle age, he probably was a little soft around the middle, needed glasses, and got to the point where he just didn’t care about shaving. The fact that this version slightly resembles me is in no way my fantasy of hurling myself through the night to rescue citizens in distress with cool gadgets while wearing an unwieldy cape. If I were to do that, I would go without the cowl and take all the credit as Chadman.
See, this is why I DO NOT cosplay. The costume wouldn’t look right, and I’d probably be going around trying to save London instead of Gotham.
Well, enjoy (or enjoyed) Batman Day. I have to run. Some spotlight in the sky just got my attention…
A few weeks ago some friends had me over for a dinner of ribs with good cartoonist company. I’m not sure exactly why this strange image came to mind, because there were actually no cows there eating themselves, and as far as I know, I was not inadvertently eating my own ribs. It just tickled my funny bone (and no, we didn’t eat any of those, either).
Personally, the ONLY time I’d want a rib taken from me is if it meant that when I woke up, a beautiful woman was made from it just for me.
This past Saturday night, March 1, was the opening of Moosylvania: A Group Art Show Tribute to Jay Ward(curated by Phillip Graffham) at Van Eaton Galleries in Sherman Oaks, California. Hundreds of people came to see the art by many local Los Angeles creators.
My Jay Ward Studio tribute piece focused on Rocky & Bullwinkle, but instead of “moose & squirrel” as so eloquently referred to by Boris Badenov, I painted “June & Squirrel”. My friend June Foray created the voice of Frostbite Falls resident Rocket J. Squirrel all those years ago, and continues to perform him today at the age of 96. She recently recorded him for a short cartoon that will run in front of Dreamworks’ new Mr. Peabody & Sherman movie. (June was also the original voice of villainess Natasha in the classic cartoons.)
“June & Squirrel” was created entirely in gouache with the big circles and necklace details in colored pencil.
June had asked me earlier in the week if I had a piece in the show, and I told her, “Yes, but you will have to come see what it is.” It was thrilling that she came out to the show Saturday night, and equally thrilling that she seemed pleased, and not offended, to have been portrayed in paint.
Chad Frye with the grand dame of voice actors, June Foray.
In case you are curious, perhaps you would like to see the preliminary drawing made in the planning of the painting. I usually work out my ideas in Photoshop where this was sketched and colored. Then I print it out and trace it down onto watercolor paper where it gets the full-on traditional treatment. And no, no compass was used for all those circles. They were hand painted and painstakingly outlined in freehand with a Lilac Prismacolor pencil on the final piece.
This is the rough concept of “June & Squirrel” worked out in Photoshop.
If you are in the Los Angeles area, please swing by Van Eaton Galleries to see all the art. Some amazing creations are on display until March 15 (beware the Ides of March). My favorite is a seven foot tall sculpture of Rocky & Bullwinkle carved out of a tree with a chainsaw by artist Johnny Daniels.
Together with a terrific committee of fellow cartoonists and writers at CAPS (the Comic Art Professional Society) in Burbank, CA, I have been busy helping put together a benefit auction and book (to be published in July by Dark Horse Comics) all to help our cartoonist brother Stan Sakai (creator of Usagi Yojimbo) with medical bills surrounding the care of his sweet wife, Sharon. Today, after months of planning & organizing, we released the official press release explaining the details of what promises to be an AMAZING sale! I even created a special painting just for this that I’ll post here closer to when it will be sold.
CAPS TO LAUNCH ART AUCTION FEATURING ORIGINAL WORKS BY MATT GROENING, JACK DAVIS, MIKE MIGNOLA, J. SCOTT CAMPBELL, ADAM HUGHES AND HUNDREDS MORE TO BENEFIT FELLOW CARTOONIST STAN SAKAI AND FAMILY
On Thursday, March 6, 2014, Southern California’s CAPS, the Comic Art Professional Society, will launch an ongoing series of eBay auctions of original comic art. Its goal is to raise funds for medical care for Sharon Sakai, the wife of respected cartoonist and longtime CAPS member Stan Sakai, creator of the samurai rabbit USAGIYOJIMBO. Sharon has been battling a debilitating brain tumor for some time; after an extended hospital stay and convalescence, she is currently at home, but her condition requires 24-hour care and medicine that costs more than the Sakai’s insurance covers. 100% of the proceeds of these auctions will go directly to Stan and Sharon Sakai to help pay their ongoing medical expenses.
The CAPS auctions will be conducted through eBay.com beginning on Thursday, March 6, with a new set of auctions every following Thursday. Each auction, sold under the seller name of “CAPSauction“, will be ten days in length with twenty to forty items in each set of auctions. The donations of original artwork and collectibles (including newly created art unique to this event, vintage comic book pages, comic strips, illustrations, animation art, limited edition statues, and IDW Artist’s editions books) number over three hundred with new items arriving every day.
Contributors include: Adam Hughes, Alex Maleev, Arthur Adams, Batton Lash, Eric Powell, Jan Duursema, Jerry Ordway, Jordi Bernet, Matt Groening, Michael Allred, Mike Mignola, Paul Gulacy, Sanjuliàn, Scott Shaw!, Jim Steranko, Tim Sale, William Stout, Bill Sienkiewicz, Cameron Stewart, Dan Brereton, Daniel Parsons, Dave Gibbons, Dean Yeagle, Doug Sneyd, Dustin Nguyen, Bill Morrison, Tone Rodriguez, Sergio Aragonés, Fabio Moon, Francisco Francavilla, Gene Ha, Geof Darrow, Gilbert Hernandez, Jack Davis, James O’Barr, Kevin Eastman, Jeff Lemire, Jeff Smith, Kazu Kibuishi, Liam Sharp, Tom Richmond, Michael Jantze, Olivia, Oscar Martin, Paul Chadwick, Richard Corben, Tom Mandrake, Walter Simonson, Charles Vess, Dan Spiegle, J. Scott Campbell, Chad Frye and many more.
My friend Jeff Smith created this great piece of his character Bone with Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo.
Many of the pieces featuring Usagi Yojimbo will appear in a new oversized hardcover book from Dark Horse, THE SAKAI PROJECT: ARTISTS CELEBRATE THIRTY YEARS OF USAGI YOJIMBO, which will be released on July 23, 2014. All proceeds from this book will go to Stan and Sharon Sakai. Much of the custom Usagi Yojimbo art created for this book will also be sold as a part of CAPS’ online auctions.
Known for his exquisite work with female characters, J. Scott Campbell created this wonderful ink drawing to benefit Sharon & Stan Sakai in the CAPS auction.
These fund-raising auctions will be promoted through ComicArtFans.com, and the CAPS – COMIC ART PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY Facebook page where you will be able to see updated information such as when certain pieces will be auctioned.
Christmas creeped up on me this year. I would love to share with you a brand new Christmas card, check but alas, life and work prevented me from being able to sit down and create a painting this year. These past few months have provided some freelance work, a vacation to Eastern Europe, long hours at the animation studio, and trying to prepare my home for a parental Christmas visit. So, for the first time in almost twenty years, a new card is not to be.
However, I would like to dust off one of my previous cards created before this blog ever existed. This is one of my favorites first seen in 2001 by maybe only 200 families. It really gets to the essence of what Christmas is all about – that God willingly came to earth in the form of a man ready to save mankind from our sins if we let Him.
For God so loved the world, even that fella in the lower right corner making a cameo in his own painting.
I know not everyone celebrates Christmas for one reason or another, but I do. Christmas is a holiday that means very much to me as one who believes the words of John 3:16-17. It is sobering to truly realize that Christ was born for us. From the bottom of my heart, I hope that wherever you may be in this world, and wherever you may be in this life, the reality of Christ will be yours. Merry Christmas.
