Some faces are such that only a mother could love. While there is little evidence to confirm this, we like to think that Igor’s mother truly loved his face. However, judging by his willingness to serve Dr. Frankenstein with the doctor’s hideous experiments, love may not have been a part of Igor’s early years. Perhaps he stole brains and dug up dead bodies under the cover of night all in the hopes of getting the parental acceptance he so longed for that was deprived of him during his childhood.
Yet, in all the sadness that he must have felt inside, Igor remained a positive person, always ready to lend, or dig up, a hand with a smile on his face. If only we could all be more like Igor.
Welcome to the creepy, spooky, and altogether ooky (I may have borrowed those words from somewhere) very first post of this year’s Monster Month here on the ol’ blog.
You may have noticed that last year I did not do any Monster Month posts because scary as it may sound, I was so preoccupied with work that it had slipped my mind that October had come once again.
There has been no mental slippage this year! Get ready for a new monster to be posted each weekday during the month of October. You will see twenty-one sketches, ink drawings, paintings, and various other artistic expressions of strange things that go bump in the night.
What better way is there to start such an entourage of entwined entities than with one of the greatest classic monsters who has been fearing fire since 1818, your undead favorite and mine, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster!
Frankie is just waving a Monster Month welcome to you!
Frankenstein’s monster has made so many appearances over the years on my blog that he has his own category on the home page. If you would like to see other iterations of him from the past, CLICK HERE! Regarding this new one, this Frankie is a traditionally drawn ink sketch from my sketchbook that was later color tinted in Photoshop.
Okay, I rarely get personal with my posts online, but today I shall make an exception. Today is the 40th birthday of my brother Blair!
Now, normally I wouldn’t go all public with the age of someone because many people are sensitive to such things, myself included. However, Blair has his birthday, including the year, on his Facebook page. So, I figure I am safe. I may no longer be safe, however, when he sees this post.
So, without further ado, I thought I would share with you the birthday card I made for my brother that is a portrait of him at the age of 40. He has held up pretty well, considering…
For those of you doing the math, yep, Blair was born in the year of our country’s bicentennial. So if you think Blair is old, the U.S. is now 240.
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.
Some of the many pieces posted on my Instagram. Click on the image to check them out!
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.
A few sketchy characters.
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.
It’s kind of neat to see them in this monochromatic stage, but this is just one step in their quest for color.
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.
Almost done. Colors are in place, but now for some final touches.
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.
Here are the fellas all finished with colored pencil and a little paint splatter tossed on for interest.
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.
If you are just joining us, please know that this is the last page of a 10 page series being posted here on the ol’ blog. Please CLICK HERE to start back on the first page to see a full explanation of what this art is all about. Thanks!
Page 9
Nuthin’ says “good job” like a high five with your teammate! OH YEAH!
And that’s the end of Max Visits the Hospital! Hope you enjoyed it. Even with a couple of years to reflect on it, I’m pretty happy with the results of this two-week rush job! It was a fun challenge. I believe I finished it late one night, and the next morning I was on a plane off on a long-planned trip. Got it done by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!
Now for the final word on what this book was actually selling when it was handed out at that 2014 convention for which it was created!
If you are just joining us, please know that this is one page of a 10 page series being posted here on the ol’ blog. Please CLICK HERE to start back on the first page to see a full explanation of what this art is all about. Thanks!
Page 8
Those are some pretty happy customers. Now the kids are back playing with their toy, which might actually be how it came to be broken in the first place.
