The Chad Frye - Illustration GuyYou’ve seen several Monster Month posts this year of sketches and drawings I did while nestled in the cold cockles of the heart of a Russian winter last January. I got to thinking that none of those monsters seemed particularly Russian in their design. So, I grabbed my trusty brush pen and white paint (with some red accents), and created this Russian Rascal on some Canson paper for the eve of Halloween!
You know those job interviews where the interviewer can just tell by looking at the applicant that they wouldn’t be a good fit in their office environment? Yeah, this is THAT guy.
It just seemed funny to me that this monster thinks he is being turned down for his tattoo, when really it is likely due to the fact that he won’t be able to fit into a cubical, or control his oral excretions.
There’s also probably several folks whose dander allergies would be set off working side-by-side with Norman. (He just looks like a Norman, doesn’t he?) Anyway, he was accomplished traditionally in ink, watercolor, and gouache paint.
Today you don’t get just one, not two, but THREE monsters for the price of admission!! How about that, huh?!
These are three monsters that I drew in just good ol’ ink for some folks who worked at LA Studios in Hollywood when I worked there on the movie Animal Crackers a couple of years ago (the TRAILER is out now). LA Studios is really a posh recording studio, but our Blue Dream Studios production was in some spare offices on the second floor where we were working on story. Two of the folks these cards went to worked the kitchen and would make drinks for us, as well as for the actors and folks who came in to record in the many studios they have there. Many a time I was made a frothy coffee or a special iced tea. The third was for the valet. While employees like me parked down the street in a lot, I enjoyed the daily conversations with Brandon, and made him a card, too.
Since giving them the cards, I decided to go back this month and do a bit of shading on them. No, I didn’t ask for the cards back. I kept scans of the art, painted the shading on new watercolor paper, then married the two in Photoshop.
And why do I call this post “Coffee Monsters?” The paint was COFFEE! Genuine liquid coffee. Creme Brûlée coffee to be precise (don’t lick your screen). You can actually see some of the grinds in the paint within the characters. A former drawing teacher of mine when I worked at Disney, Walt Stanchfield, sometimes would show us paintings he would do with coffee when he was in diners. He’d illustrate other customers and shade them with his coffee. I never did try it until now. Kind of a fun experiment!
Again I am revisiting a monster from last year in this new version. Remember the Snot Monster from last year’s Monster Month? He just stood there with a schnoz ready to blow. After I did that drawing, I thought of an fun application to draw him again, though slightly more cartoony.
I was writing a letter to a good friend, and decided to have some fun on the back of the envelope. Yep, that little snot monster seemed like a perfect choice to help seal the envelope shut. Good times.
Last year my Hipster Frankenstein debuted on the ol’ blog. (CLICK HERE if you need a reminder.) When a drawing like that is born, it comes from reflective study. One does not often just spit out a sketch and there it is. Several sketches are explored to find the perfect look for what the artist is trying to achieve. Thus was the case with ol’ Frankie.
So, here is a page from the sketchbook where Frankenstein’s monster was sketched in a variety of ways looking for that perfect hipster persona to apply to the creature. A whole page of Frankies, each unique in their own way, and none exactly like the final one from last year. These were necessary to inspire the final look.
Dragons are often misunderstood. They rant and roar, and breathe fire all over the place, but this is really because they are lonely. If only more people like Adelade here would take them in and give them some love, the world would truly be a safer place.
Everybody deserves a little love, right? How would a zombie really find his match online? No human is going to trust him, of course. They’d go out for dinner and one would come back without any brains. So, zombies really need their own online dating service.
Introducing E-Harm.com, where monsters can safely find a mate compatible to their lifestyle.
After the effort of making a dating website page for good ol’ Don here, it seemed a shame to not let you see him a little closer. He’s good looking, has a decent job, and is into small pets – or are they into him as it were? So here he is…
How does that saying go again? “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”
Well, today’s monsters have something old that we are borrowing for this year. Do you recognize that monster on the bottom with the little tyke pulling his hair? That was a monster I featured in full color last year (which you can see by CLICKING HERE). It was an inked drawing from my sketchbook.
I never did show you the whole page from that sketchbook last year, so it seemed like a good idea to bring it back complete with the two menacing monsters leering above the family duo. Just some blue was added in Photoshop to give the ink drawings a little extra pizzazz.
