The Chad Frye - Illustration Guy“And that’s why I’ve asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort — because nobody messes with Joe.”
– President Barak Obama addressing his first joint session of Congress on February 24, 2009
Grabbed my sketchbook during the President’s speech on February 24 and doodled “live”, which is always tough when the subject is moving around a bit. So to further capture his Obamaness, I worked on it a little more at my desk.
“A dragon is just one more stranger in search of a friend.”
– Helen Reddy, Pete’s Dragon.
Many times when I sit down to my sketchbook, my mind is a blank. I just start doodling until something springs forth. Thus was the case this time. However, I happened to have the soundtrack to Pete’s Dragon playing in the background, so my mind started wandering to thoughts of the large, yet friendly version of these beasts even though mine doesn’t have “the head of a camel” with “the neck of a crocodile.” Dragons are just a lot of fun to draw! Where the paddle and ball came from is anyone’s guess.
Just thought I’d write a quick note along with posting a quick color sketch inspired by film composer Michael Giacchino’s appearance last night as Music Director for the Oscar telecast. I feel compelled to do so in light of my very second post on this blog just a few short weeks ago about the Star Trek Scoring Sessions with Michael.
Perhaps one of the hardest jobs in show business is having to handle the musical duties for a live broadcast in front of a room full of people with whom you have worked and hope to work with in the future. I did not envy Giacchino’s position last night, but thought he did a wonderful job. His take on having the orchestra on stage and playing in the style of big band was really terrific! Seemed to give the show a bit of a boost energy-wise. Of course, it’s hard to maintain that energy when prolonged video tributes suck the wind out of the room. Michael had his work cut out for him.
Michael Giacchino being introduced during the 2009 Oscar broadcast by host Hugh Jackman.
So, the sketch – it’s based on the one fleeting moment during the program when host Hugh Jackman introduced Giacchino who looked like he was in the middle of working and didn’t really have time to be recognized. And Hugh’s pronunciation of Michael’s last name seemed shortened a bit.
Along with Star Trek, Michael’s musical talents will be heard this year in Land of the Lost, Pixar’s Up, and he continues to work on LOST as well as the show Fringe I believe. All stuff I look forward to listening to while I draw!
Bears. Certainly ever since the days of Teddy Roosevelt when he refused to shoot a captive bear cub while on a hunting trip, (stuffed toy bears have since been called “teddy bears”), bears have held a fascination for cartoonists. Clifford K. Berryman famously represented that Roosevelt incident in one of his cartoons. I have my own fascination with them as an art subject, even to the point of once developing a newspaper comic strip about a bear – but that’s for another article at another time.
When fictionalized, bears are often big, fluffy, huggable, loveable, silly old bears. There’s a certain warmth and comfort that can be achieved with a bear. They look like gentle giants in real life, so when drawing them, many artists tend to give them a sympathetic and friendly look. Yogi Bear was constantly working it to get the pic-a-nic basket. The Jim Henson Co. creation Bear in the Big Blue House was a big, soft, friendly bear that the pre-school set really fell in love with. Even the kung fu wielding Kung Fu Panda was big, soft and loveable despite the fact that he could reign down some mighty painful kung fu awesomeness.
This past week I set about to do a series of bear character studies. I took about eighteen pages of my sketchbook to draw bears of various shapes, sizes, and styles. The goal was to explore multiple ways of creating a bear and still retain it’s friendly loveable beariness. I was pleased with the results, and plan to try it some more in the future. It was clear that there is an inexhaustible amount of ways to imagining this creature as an appealing cartoon character design.
When you are through taking a look at these studies, feel free to check out my bear-themed watercolor painting on my website: http://chadfrye.com/Illustrations/Bears.html
Just a short post today honoring a very tall man – Abraham Lincoln: sixteenth President of the United States, born today in 1809. For those of you astute in the mathematical sciences, good ol’ honest Abe just hit the bicentennial mark! This month he is appearing on new postage stamps, new coins, new books, documentaries, and apparently even in my sketchbook.
I recently attended a performance of the play Arsenic and Old Lace which brought back memories from when I had acted in it myself when I attended college. This specific performance was particularly special as it was directed by and starred my friend Daniel Roebuck who is a ginormous fan of the late great Boris Karloff. Danny’s role was, of course, the part originated by Karloff on Broadway many years ago.
If you are not up on your classic movie trivia, Karloff is forever etched in the memory of horror buffs as playing the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster in the early 1930s. In Arsenic, there was the running gag that Karloff’s character (Jonathan Brewster) looks as scary as Boris Karloff – a joke made funnier with Karloff actually in the role. So Danny had make-up that transformed his face to resemble Frankenstein/Karloff. What made the evening even a little more special was that Karloff’s daughter, Sarah, was in the audience.
Anyway, I tell you that only because that experience put my mind on a Frankenstein kick for the past few weeks. I’m toying with the idea of doing a couple of final pieces featuring the monster. For now, though, I wanted to explore how my monster might look.
Often when I begin a project, I have an image in my head that cascades forth onto the paper. Sometimes it doesn’t elegantly cascade so much as blort out, but after one or two attempts, I run with it. In approaching a character as famous as Frankenstein’s monster, a broader visual exploration seemed more tantalizing. Everyone has an idea of what this character looks like because of Karloff’s flat headed, bolts-in-the-neck, heavy lidded creepy monster. What can I bring to it?
So, the following head studies represent my own Frankenstein experiments to see what will come ALIVE! I’ve been playing around with size of nose, forehead, jaw, etc. Some are mean, some scary, some even smiling. It’s amazing that no matter what part of the face changes from sketch to sketch, each one is recognizable as Frankenstein’s monster. Goes to show there are always more solutions to a problem than the original thought in the artist’s head.
