It’s one thing for a kid to set up a lemonade stand in her front yard to make a little money, and it’s another thing entirely when she gets some big competition that can swallow her whole. Capitalism at work. It’s a common American tale kind of like what happened to my uncle’s camera shop years ago when a Walmart moved into his little town.
Yes, the monster’s tongue seems to do all the talking here. Haven’t you seen a tongue wearing a sun-visor before? (Click on image to see it larger.)
By the way, today’s beast is really more of a sketch than anything. Because I drew the whole thing from scratch on a Cintiq tablet on the computer, I was able to quickly dab in some color here and there for your amusement.
NEXT WEEK will be my final full week of monster art for this year! Don’t miss a thing as we approach the grand finale on Halloween!
A few weeks back I learned that my friends Abi and Harrison Craig were going to be leaving Los Angeles with their family and heading to Kentucky. Harrison has accepted a job working on the Ark Encounter, a Bible-based theme park that is currently in the planning stages. It is being put together by Answers in Genesis, the people known for the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
You may remember Answers in Genesis here on my blog. Last year I told you about an illustration assignment I did for their publication, Answers Magazine(click HERE to see it again). In fact, I believe it was just recently republished in their special 5th anniversary issue.
Well, Harrison wanted a drawing of his family to commemorate this big change in their lives. His kids have only known California, and they are excited about this grand new adventure that they set out on this week. I thought I’d share with you the drawing in it’s three stages: rough sketch, final inked art, and the full-color final piece.
Working from photographs, I worked out the rough drawing with blue pencil on tracing paper. It went through a couple of alterations as per Harrison’s request, then I made a few spacing and size changes with Photoshop on the computer.
Click on image for a slight enlargement.
You may notice some details like Noah’s ark on the pennant since they are going to work on the Ark Encounter. And if you noticed a chicken in the van, that’s because while the Craigs lived here in L.A., they had a chicken coop providing them with plenty of fresh eggs daily. Originally I had thought to add some chickens chasing the van, but then the idea of leaving palms for pines came to me and seemed like a better idea. So, one chicken made it into the van, although I don’t believe the same could be said about the real life chickens. Well, leastwise not sitting next to the bellies of those boys. (cough cough)
The next step was to print the blue lines out on a piece of 14×11 paper, and using a piece of graphite paper (similar to carbon paper but using pencil lead instead) under the print, I traced the drawing down onto a nice clean sheet of Bristol board. It was on this piece of Bristol that I hand-inked the art using a Pentel brush pen (a most excellent tool I don’t know how I ever lived without) and Prismacolor black tech pens.
Click on image for a slight enlargement.
Then, it was time to color. Scanning the art into the computer, the color was added in Photoshop. I chose to keep things fairly flat, only really shading the skin tones of the people. The grass and van have some gradations, but by focusing the shading on the skin tones, it draws attention to the characters rather than to the environment.
Click on image for a slight enlargement.
Well, there you have it. The A to Cs of a cartoony caricature drawing of one swell family.
For those of you just joining the blog this week, I have been showing you some art each day that I submitted to Disney back in 2002 in an attempt to get on Gnomeo & Juliet as a development artist. I had been working for the Feature Animation division for five years at that point as an in-house instructor of creative computer programs. My background had been as a children’s book illustrator prior to working for them, so I was itchy to get involved once again in creating art.
Today I share with you TWO gag pieces that were more verbal in nature than the others. The first was a quickie just to get out a little Fantasia joke…
Sometimes lawns have ceramic mushrooms decorating them as well. Fantasia’s Hop-Low character makes a cameo in this “Made In China” joke.
….and the second piece plays on the fact that these gnomes are also breakable with Grandpa referencing some dog attack from his past…
Talk about a trick knee!
Just in case you can’t read it, the girl is saying, “Mommy! Mommy! We can hear the ocean in Grandpa’s knee!” Grandpa adds, “That there is from the Great Canine Calamity of ’39.”
Come back again tomorrow to see another Gnomeo piece!
We all have them in our lives – a person who is there just to suck every last bit of childlike wonder we have inside. They say things like “You wouldn’t eat THAT would you?” just as you are about to take a bite. “Those haven’t been in style since MC Hammer!” as you are walking around in your favorite pants. Or “You can’t drive BACKWARDS on the freeway!” when you clearly are navigating your vehicle quite well on your own.
All I have to say is, don’t let them bring you down!
There’s always a killjoy in every sewer, isn’t there? Sheesh.
This past weekend I spent several nights sleeping in a hotel in the Phoenix, AZ area. While the room appears clean when you first arrive, you always wonder what those cleaning ladies may have missed. With the current bed bug scare in the United States, you hope desperately that the preceding traveler didn’t leave behind little guests of their own that enjoy room service.
Thankfully I didn’t have bed bugs (that I know of), but it still didn’t stop me from sketching this drawing right there in my room of what could have been. Oog.
We all see them – homeless fellas standing at freeway ramps and street corners with their signs requesting your financial assistance. However you respond to them, perhaps it’s best in this case to definitely avoid making eye contact…..
Honesty in marketing is so rare these days.
(Feel free to click on the image to see a slightly larger version.)
Ever have one of those days when Murphy and his infernal law seem to plague you? You walk by a puddle and a car splashes you. You jump onto an elevator and just as the doors close the kid next to you pushes all the buttons. Or you take a bite of a tasty garlic dish just as the woman of your dreams walks into the room.
Yes, we all have those encounters with Murphy’s Law. Monsters are no exception….
As the swift cool breezes of fall waft through the amber leaves of the neighborhood trees, it delivers the delights and mischief of creatures strange and mysterious who venture out to taunt all good citizens like yourself. (Well, here in Los Angeles the temperatures hit 113°, so the leaves are amber from having been burned.)
Welcome to the return of MONSTER MONTH here on the Chad Frye • Illustration Guy blog! I have been busy like a mad scientist hunched over in his laboratory slinging pencils, ink, paint and pixels to terrorize and amuse you each day during this fine fall month of October. You will get to see a variety of approaches to the beasties as some are watercolor paintings, others fully rendered ink and Photoshop cartoons and illustrations, some pencil drawings, and others are simply doodles and sketches from my sketchbook.
To kick off the month, here is a piece I created with ink and Photoshop using myself as a model for the Wolfman that reminds you that while some things may go bump in the night, there may be other reasons why you would have to watch your step….
