Category: Illustrations

Indiana in Ohio – Part 2

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date June 10, 2009

In my last post, I shared with you the preliminary stages of a new illustration I did for the University of Dayton Magazine this past weekend. Getting to do an Indiana Jones type of character was a lot of fun. I enjoy coming up with humorous ideas for things, and in this case it was to make a point about the way our modern Western society holds the mundane in such high, sacred regard. We make idols of the most innocuous things.

If you read the last post, you saw the various thumbnail ideas and the final drawing submitted for approval. Approval had been given, so I moved ahead with the colored piece. This was going to be another of my watercolor/colored pencil hybrids. If you have read my step-by-step posts on the creation of my Where the Wild Things Are tribute painting, or the one a little further back about Frankenstein, then you know I like to do an underpainting to get some of the shadows worked out in advance.

The "Indiana Jones" illustration with a watercolor underpainting of purple and other colors to assist in the shadows of the piece. — The “Indiana Jones” illustration with a watercolor underpainting of purple and other colors to assist in the shadows of the piece.

You know, this piece will be reproduced pretty small on the page. It’s important for it to make its point as quickly as possible. The focus of the composition is that baseball, which is why everything points to it in just the bare drawing. The strap, the look of the character, the hand poised just above it…you get the idea. I need the coloring to do the same thing.

So, in this next step a whole bunch of paint has been slathered on the paper with that purple underpainting showing through. To draw your attention to that ball, I painted the watercolor in to look as though it is glowing. the baseball has become the primary light source.

This stage of the illustration is the rest of the watercolor painting. You can see the shadow tones peeking through the transparent overpainting.

Once the majority of the paint was done, I masked off certain areas and spritzed in some texture on the green background, and also some on the skin. I also deepened the tone of the edges of the green areas. Then whole thing was finished with colored pencils. And yes, I drew on Babe Ruth’s signature – but for accuracy, I traced it from a photo of a baseball he had actually signed.

Here is the final piece that will be seen in the magazine. The rough edges seem to add to the composition, so they will remain uncropped.

Thanks for checking out my Indiana Jones inspired editorial illustration. And thanks again to the University of Dayton Magazine for allowing me to share this with you prior to their publication of the piece.

Indiana In Ohio – Part 1

This past weekend I was working on an illustration for the University of Dayton Magazine from Dayton, Ohio, to illustrate an editorial column by Thomas M. Columbus. It actually was quite a challenge. Thomas’ editorial deals with a lot of ethereal ideas about what we consider a relic in today’s society, often calling them “sacred”.

It was quite tough to pinpoint a direction for an accompanying illustration that would pull the page-flipping reader in to read what he has to say. He was talking about the average, everyday person as being a possible sacred relic. So, my initial thumbnail sketches explored that concept. I drew lots of mundane faces with halos. It felt kind of corny, but I could see it working in color.

Some preliminary thumbnail sketches for the University of Dayton Magazine’s editorial page.

I sent the above sketches to Art Director Frank Pauer because the deadline was looming, but it kept gnawing at me. While Frank was pondering the initial sketches, I was chatting with a friend about it when the idea hit me to sketch an idea that was less esoteric and more story-driven – why not have an Indiana Jones type character coming for a baseball signed by Babe Ruth? It’s more of a modern day type of relic, and made more of an editorial comment that complimented Mr. Columbus’ written words. So I worked up the following thumbnail:

The initial thumbnail sketch inspired by Indiana Jones from the famous scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

As I sent that off, the Art Director came back with the suggestion that I rework sketch C without the halos. So, while he pondered Indy, I did the following color thumbnail sketch of just four faces with a central halo-ish effect. (And yes, for those of you who know me and are wondering, that is me in the upper left corner.)

This is a second stab at the C idea from above. This time with some color splashed in with Photoshop.

As I sent this one off, the Art Director got back to me saying they liked the “Indiana Jones” angle. I was glad because that was clearly going to be the most fun for me to illustrate anyway. So, next, I worked up this final pencil drawing for approval. It got the thumbs up.

Here's the final drawing prior to beginning the painting. You can click on it to see more detail. — Here’s the final drawing of “Indiana Jones” prior to beginning the painting. You can click on it to see more detail.

Check back with me later this week. While the piece is all finished and turned in already, I’ll show you the painting stages and the final piece in my next post! Thanks to the University of Dayton Magazine for allowing me to show you these images!

Art: Preliminary Sketches Illustrations

Wild Thing – Part 8

Post author By Chad Frye
Post date May 22, 2009

The Terrible Yellow Eyes are watching…..

Thanks for following along with my progression reports on my Where the Wild Things Are tribute illustration. After seeing all about how this painting was created, now is the time for the grand unveiling of the final. So, without further ado, please visit TerribleYellowEyes.com right now where the final illustration now resides.

If you would like to go back and see the other posts that led to this moment, feel free to do a search for “Wild Thing” here on the ol’ blog.

And as an added bonus, below are a few photos of my working environment during the production of this illustration. Enjoy!

My desk at the conclusion of the Wild Thing painting prior to adding the colored pencil work.

Paints and water. Yippy skippy. And my angelic airbrush. Don’t let the halo fool you. It sticks all the time.

My drafting table looking the other way towards my computer. Sometimes I have movies playing on that while I draw or paint.

If you are a fellow Facebook enthusiast, I invite you to come on over and join my Fan Page there. My blog posts are regularly updated there, and from time to time I run contests from there with real, genuine, non-virtual prizes. I’m planning to get a new contest started within the next week or so and would love to have you come be a part of it.

Art: Colored Pencil Art: Watercolor Illustrations Monsters

Wild Thing – Part 7

Just a quick up-close and personal look at the colored pencil stage of my Where the Wild Things Are tribute watercolor painting for TerribleYellowEyes.com.

You can see that the Wild Thing’s skin received a variety of pencil colors applied in a hatching manner.

The background leaves only received a light purple outline that helped define them, yet remain in the background.

For the hair, I darkened some areas with an Indigo Blue pencil, and threw in some light purple highlights in other areas.

Here’s a horn with some purple pencil and some yellowish pencil and some brown for good measure. While the outline is dark, it’s still just a dark blue. The only black (whether paint or pencil) in the whole piece is in the pupils of the eyes.

And the arm. I have about four different pencil colors at work here. An orange, yellow, pale yellow, and purple.

Thanks for following along on these progress reports about my Wild Thing. One more post to go in which I’ll reveal those terrible yellow eyes!

Art: Colored Pencil Art: Watercolor Illustrations Monsters

Wild Thing – Part 6

In yesterday’s post about the creation of this Where the Wild Things Are inspired piece, I mentioned that once I laid in some colors on the beast, those background leaves seemed to be a bit competitive with the characters. The green color is just too bright. Those leaves need to support the characters, not distract from them. So, my new task is a road I didn’t want to go down. Yes, I’m talking about Frisket.

Why don’t I want to go down this road? The potential to mar the painting is great. Let me explain. Frisket is a fairly transparent plastic film with a gentle adhesive on one side. You stick some down on your artwork (it doesn’t hurt the art) so that the whole piece is covered. Then comes the tricky part – with a brand new Xacto blade, you gently cut holes exposing only parts of the painting while protecting the rest. If you cut too hard, you can have deep grooves in the paper that will be hard to disguise with a medium that paints transparently like watercolor.

Why would I do this? Because paint was about to fly. I cut away the leaf areas exposing them. With my handy dandy airbrush that doesn’t get out much anymore (I used to do LOTS of airbrush art), I mixed a cool blue-ish green tone to spray evenly over the leaves to soften them up a bit. Then I took a light purple and spritzed it all over the leaves with a toothbrush.

You can see that the left side has the more brilliantly toned greens in the leaves. The right side shows the cooled down version that the piece ended up with. It's subtle, but necessary for the overall coloring to work well with each other. — You can see that the left side has the more brilliantly toned greens in the leaves. The right side shows the cooled down version that the piece ended up with. It’s subtle, but necessary for the overall coloring to work well with each other.

A close-up of the leaves’ texture.

You can see that the effect made a difference! The leaves are now “pushed back” a bit in space, even though we’re talking about a two dimensional medium. Since I had the Frisket out, I recovered the leaves with the pieces I had pulled away, and this time exposed the face keeping only the eyes, nose and teeth covered. The toothbrush thing is just too much fun. It’s as much Jackson Pollack as I allow myself to be. I flicked pink, yellow ochre, and purple onto the skin for a little fun texture.

A close-up of the monster’s skin showing the texturizing paint flicks.

Now, somewhere in there I added color to Max, and painted in the stripes on Wild Thing. The lighter area of the fur on top of the arms was achieved by painting with just plain ol’ water and dabbing up the paint with a paper towel.

The Wild Thing’s arm with highlights created by wiping paint away.

With watercolor paint, the removal of paint can be very effective in molding your subject matter. As you can see below, I employed this method again with pulling out some highlights in the monster’s mane.

The hair on the left with highlights created by removing paint. On the right is how it looked prior to that technique.

Well, that’s it for my painting explanation here in Part 6. Come back this afternoon when I’ll do a quick post in Part 7 about the colored penciling of this illustration. Just one more short tease before the grand unveiling of the finished piece tomorrow on TerribleYellowEyes.com.

Art: Watercolor Illustrations Monsters

Wild Thing – Part 5

Often when creating an illustration, planning is always a good idea, especially when you have a client to please. That means at minimum creating detailed thumbnails, a detailed drawing, and a color rough for the client’s approval. This also lets the artist play around with things fast and easy to find exactly what he wants the art to look like. When left to my own devices (as I am for this project), I sometimes throw caution to the wind by not doing all that prep work in advance.

I’ll always start with a thumbnail as I showed you in Part 1 of these Wild Thing posts, but I bypassed the whole color rough stage. I opted instead to wing it color-wise. There’s something inherently dangerous about this approach. Perhaps it makes me feel a little more artistic by playing things more spontaneously in the moment. It’s just a little wild – kind of like my subject matter.

So, I say that because as I choose my colors for this piece, I only have two things to go on: 1. Maurice Sendak’s colors from his original book, and 2. the image lodged in my head (which often looks grander and more lush than can ever be possible here in real life). I know my colors are going to be a little more bold than the original Where the Wild Things Are. Mr. Sendak’s palette was a little subdued which worked really great for his story. I want mine to pop a little more, but even I don’t subscribe to the bright primary colors. They’ll still be a bit tamed. So, I’m off to find that balance.

Enough pontificating. On with the art!

The Wild Thing with his skin tones painted in along with a foundation color for his torso.

Compared to the last image I posted in Part 4 of these progression reports, you can see that the above painting has entered the realm of color for the characters. The monster now has some skin tone on his face, and a base color applied to his torso. You can see that the purple underpainting is holding nicely for the shadows of his face. They will be accentuated a bit more later on in the colored pencil stage. This is when it starts getting exciting for me as things are just now coming to life.

In the image directly below, you can see that now the mane of the Wild Thing has been painted in with tones of blue and brown. Yes, it did cover a bit of the purple underpainting, but you still can see hints of purple poking through.

The Wild Thing now has hair, and a darker tone applied to his torso. Max remains pale.

Also, I felt the light shade I laid in on the torso in the top image was too light. So, here I added a darker yellow/orange tone. This did cover the purple too much, so the purple was darkened a bit. He is a striped beast, so later a series of orange stripes will be added.

Now that I look at these base colors, that background does seem a little too brilliant. I may have to tone it down a bit so that it is more complimentary and less competitive with the foreground figures.

Come back tomorrow for Part 6 which will be my final progression report before the unveiling of the final painting on TerribleYellowEyes.com on Friday.

Art: Watercolor Illustrations Monsters

Wild Thing – Part 4

Today in the progression of my Where the Wild Things Are tribute painting being created for TerribleYellowEyes.com, the time has come to show you the background.

In Part 3, you saw an explanation for the purple underpainting. Now I want to start laying in the actual colors of the piece. My intent with the leaves is to ultimately paint them each with a cool green (cool means a little blue-ish in tint) slightly different from one another. Mr. Sendak did that in his book on the spread that inspired this composition. I’m not really trying to mimic, but rather maintain the tone – the feeling – of the original.

So, before I hit those leaves with a cool green, perhaps spreading a warmer wash of yellow/green would be good. Since this is watercolor, a transparent and wet medium, this tone will not only bleed through the next layer a little, but will also mix in to the next layer of wet paint that’ll be applied. It’ll help give a little commonality to all the leaves despite the fact that I’ll be using about five or six different shades of green for them in the end.

My "Wild Thing" piece with a yellowish tone painted on all the background leaves. — My “Wild Thing” piece with a yellowish tone painted on all the background leaves.

So, now that the foundation for the leaves has been laid, it’s time to mix the shades of green to be applied next. You’ll notice in the image above that the purple underpainting is still showing through. I may have painted that underpainting a little light now that I look at it. Another layer or two is going to be applied to that area which may cover that purple. Ah well. I rarely look at a piece and think that something was a mistake. The painting is a living breathing thing with no one solution to solving a problem. I’ll keep pressing forward and see what happens.

Next, the application of all the various blue-greens. The greens are going down a little hot, and a little warmer than intended. Hard to tell yet if the background will compete with the characters. If it does, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. No big deal.

The background now with all the leaves painted in. In the final stages of the illustration, colored pencil will be employed to add details to them.

Come back tomorrow to see Part 5 in which I’ll share with you the beginning of painting the characters. It all leads to seeing the finished piece at TerribleYellowEyes.com on Friday!

Art: Watercolor Illustrations Monsters

Wild Thing – Part 3

If you have been following the progress of my Where the Wild Things Are tribute illustration, you would have seen the conceptual drawings in Part 1, and then the preliminary and final drawings in Part 2. Now, in Part 3, I’ll be showing you the beginning stages of my painting process.

Watercolor paint is a transparent medium. That means, it doesn’t completely cover what is below it. If you don’t want a lot of errant lines in your underdrawing, then you have to draw pretty cleanly, which is what I did earlier when tracing down my drawing to the paper. But it also means that I can paint in my shadows first since they will show through the next level of paint that will be applied.

So, with a little Winsor & Newton Ultramarine Violet, mixed with a slight amount of Olive Green to cut down on the brilliance of the purple, I laid in a bit of an underpainting. I won’t get into the gritty details here, but if you care to read about this process at length, you can visit my post on painting Frankenstein.

The beginning of the Wild Thing's underpainting started with the leaves in the background. — The beginning of the Wild Thing’s underpainting started with the leaves in the background.

I really don’t care if the paint gets on top of the colored pencil lines of the drawing at this point. Prismacolor pencils have a waxy consistency (they are fancy crayons, really) that repels the paint depending on the pigment. I tend to mix a little gouache (an opaque water based paint) in my watercolors sometimes, which will always cover more. Regardless, if the lines get covered, it’s not a problem because I’ll go back in after all the painting is done to do final line work. And because watercolor is transparent, this purple underpainting will show through the final layer of paint.

After the leaves, the characters got a bit of a purple monochromatic painting treatment. You can see that I am starting to define the shapes and fur with some shading, and determining where my light source will be. In this case, it’s more of an ambient light hitting them from above left center.

No, it's not a Purple People Eater. It's just a purple monochromatic shadows pass in watercolor. — No, it’s not a Purple People Eater. It’s just a purple monochromatic shadows pass in watercolor.

Come back for Part 4 to see the progress of the painting which is all leading up to the big reveal of the final piece on Friday at TerribleYellowEyes.com.

Illustrations Monsters