The Chad Frye - Illustration GuyHow about a little warmth during this season of cold weather? I’d like to think that real snow people might steal a kiss or two when humans aren’t looking.
A little ink and gouache creation on brown paper…
O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done marvelous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. 2 The Lord hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen. 3 He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. 4 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. 5 Sing unto the Lord with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. 6 With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King. 7 Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. 8 Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together 9 Before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.
Who doesn’t love a good double scoop of ice cream? Well, besides those of you who are lactose intolerant. (Tolerance is very IN these days. You need to get over your intolerance for lactose.)
Actually, nothing bonds people together – well, people and creatures – better than ice cream. These two figured that out. Once mortal enemies, ice cream has intertwined them together as brothers.
We can all get along if we just had more double scoops.
What lovely lady monster doesn’t enjoy a few baubles now and then? A girl needs to look her best, and she deserves every extravagance life has to offer. What could be better than to wear every shiny and sparkly thing she can get her claws on – all at once?
The story behind this piece is that my aunt was having a birthday when I was visiting the east coast of the U.S. earlier this year, and I wanted to do something nice for her. She does enjoy jewelry, and knows a lot about it having once been in the jewelry retail business. I was feeling the urge to draw a monster, so her birthday card combined my love of drawing creatures with her love of baubles, bangles and beads.
And I know what you are now thinking – NO, this is NOT a portrait of my aunt!!
A dear friend of mine recently celebrated her 90th birthday. To commemorate the occasion, I made her a little card. Why not a cute little pink birthday bunny overjoyed to celebrate the milestone?
Of course, if I came across a real pink bunny tossing flowers in the air with a candle balanced on its head on my birthday, I probably would run in the other direction screaming. But that’s just me.
Earlier this year a friend talked me into joining Instagram. I was apprehensive at first because it was going to be yet another thing to update constantly, but when I took a look and saw all the amazing creativity there, it felt like I should have joined that party long ago. So, I got on my computer and joined it, not realizing that the only way to post was to do so from a mobile device. As a non-mobile phone user, this complicated things.
Well, I got it worked out, and have been posting lots of art there. While some drawings only make it to Instagram, some also get posted here on the ol’ blog. So, I invite you to check it out if you also are an Instagram user, and follow me there. My handle is ChadFrye_IllustrationGuy (naturally), and you can get to it by CLICKING HERE!
You can also be whisked away to Instagramland by clicking on the image below that features some Instagram posts.
A couple of weeks ago I shared with you the fact that Paul Coker Jr. drew me into his story in the August 2016 issue of MAD Magazine. He later gifted me with the original art which I received two weeks ago. Since he poked fun of my Disney past (CLICK here to see Paul’s version of me), I thought I’d make him a thank you “card” that was Disney themed. So, it was time to draw the fellas again – Mickey, Donald and Goofy.
I liked how the finished piece turned out, so I thought I’d take you through four of the major steps in creating the painting.
STEP 1: Sketch the Image
I tend to sketch out all my illustrations on my Cintiq monitor. I draw with a stylus right on the screen using Photoshop. I am a sloppy sketcher. Lots of extraneous lines come out of my pen as I look for the right shapes. Quite frankly, when it is a piece just for me, I don’t need to be any neater. I know where I’m going with it. If I am working on something for a client, I would likely clean up the sketch by going over it one more time to make it less sketchy.
STEP 2: Underpainting
Well, before I start the underpainting, I need to transfer the art from the computer to actual watercolor paper. I print out the drawing in black so it is nice and dark, and I put it on a lightbox to trace it onto the final paper. It is at this time where I draw nice clean lines, and I finesse the drawing a little by making little tweaks to improve it.
Once the pencil drawing is on the paper, I did a purple underpainting of all the shadows. This is a little thing I picked up from Jack Davis who just passed away this week. (CLICK HERE to see the eulogy I wrote for the National Cartoonists Society’s website.) The idea is to let the purple do all the hard work of creating the shading when I lay down the colors in thin layers later.
STEP 3: Upperpainting
This is simply picking the final colors and painting them down quickly over the purple underpainting. I say “quickly” because A. you don’t want the paint to streak by drying before you can continue the color, and B. if you linger too long, you will start to smear the purple underpainting and get a muddy mess.
STEP 4: Final Details
This final step involved using colored pencils to give the characters an outline which tightens them up, and I added colored pencil here and there to accentuate the shadows and to create highlights. Very rarely did I use white. In most cases, the highlights were created with lighter shades of purple, pink, blue, etc.
So, there you have it – a super quick tutorial on how to create an appealing piece of art in a relatively short period of time. The more you do it, the less time it takes. Also, this fast technique creates a certain loose quality to the art which gives it more energy.
A few years ago, I was hired to create a portrait of Noah that was to be used as Noah’s profile picture on Facebook. Yes, you read that right. Noah was going to join Facebook.
Answers in Genesis, the organization in Kentucky behind the Creation Museum in Petersburg, had announced back then that they were going to build a full-scale replica of Noah’s ark. I was told by the ad agency hiring me that they wanted to set up a Facebook page for Noah where he could talk about the new Ark Encounter theme park, and answer questions from kids and the like. Well, tomorrow the Ark Encounter opens in Williamstown, Kentucky after all these years of planning and building. I’ve seen pictures, and think it looks pretty neat!
Sadly, I don’t think Noah ever joined Facebook. I never saw this portrait used there as it was meant to have been. So, five years after having painted him, it is time to let him “out of the ark” so to speak. His look is based on photos of Noah mannequins on display in the Creation Museum, but hopefully with a little more life and a twinkle in his eye. (Museum mannequins tend to creep me out a bit.)
This Noah was created with watercolor paint and colored pencils, just as they would have used back in Noah’s day. Well, maybe not EXACTLY like back then, but certainly no digital art methods were used back then.
Actually, come to think of it, it makes sense that they would have had WATERcolors available. (rimshot)
