All posts by unclefragos

Pig Charcoal Stage Complete

January 6, 2016Animals, Blogunclefragos

So maybe you can tell I did one of the things I swore I would never do… make a New Year resolution. So I’m going to be pushing hard to be better at posting to my blog with new art this year.

Here is a small pig for my animal collection, only about 9″ x 6″, at the charcoal value stage. I tried something a little different on this one, pushing in with white colored pencil in a few places before spray fixing. Probably won’t do that again as the charcoal darkens a lot with the spray fix and the white colored pencil remains stark so there ends up being a gap between the lightest of the charcoal values and the white. No biggie. I could push after the spray fix dries to build back in that light range. I think I’ll just save the colored pencil until after the spray fix in the future.

I don’t have a backstory in mind for this fellow yet but I’m sure he will work into the novella at some point. For a name I’m considering Piercival Pigglesbottom. With a name like that how could something not occur to me?

Nightingale Charcoal Stage Complete

January 3, 2016Animals, Blogunclefragos

On reviewing my work goals at the end of last year, it turns out I set myself to complete my animal series by August. Yikes! It is do-able though I still do have a good number of animals to complete. I decided to do another one a little larger so this proper nightingale is going to be 11″ x 14″. As in keeping with my technique, I’m working charcoal on gessoed canvas, sealing it with spray fixative and then coming back in with white colored pencil to push a few places a little lighter and add in a bit more detail. Since I’m in the groove, I’m considering completing the final animal digital mock-ups and charcoals all at once and then trying to get them painted at the same time. We’ll see how that goes. Hopefully it will speed up the work flow a bit and I can still have some time to write.

Christmas Card Illustration 2015

January 1, 2016Blogunclefragos

In keeping with the workflow I’ve set over the past four years, I painted another page for Franklin and Nunu, making that into this years Christmas card. I had the brilliant idea a few years ago that since I complete a new Christmas card illustration every year, I should start working towards an end result. I figure in about 8 to 10 years from now I should have the book done unless I decide to take some time and just get the whole thing completed. That might be a better way to go since there is a considerable effort at the end of each year to try to match what I did before and not fall victim to the natural progression/evolution in my work. I can already see some areas I’ll have to adjust when it comes to putting the final book together. There were subtle changes to the way I handled the design of Franklin and Nunu. Oh well. That is the perils of waiting a year between panels. Here are the sketch. I blew up the strongest of my thumbnails and did a draw over to tighten up the details and work out some of the lighting and shading. Below it is the final painting.

Karate Space Pilgrim

October 23, 2015Blog, Lunchboxunclefragos

Some of you might remember me working on this one last year after the lunchbox drawings. Then, as always, other things got in the way and I had to put Mr Karate Space Pilgrim on a back-burner. Luckily I got motivated to finish off all the little one-off paintings hanging over my head before I jump back in on another larger project. It feels good to finally be tying off some of these.

So this is a painting I did from the lunchbox drawing series where I decided to try some more stylized, cartoony illustrations. I wanted to see how they would turn out, since my direction of late has been in a more realistic rendering direction with my painting. I think this one came out nicely and right now it is gracing my wife’s desk at work. For this design, I wanted to push that lighting we see from classic sci-fi movies like Alien and Outland where you have that severe upward lighting from the interior helmet light. Fun!

And here is the original lunchbox drawing that prompted it’s creation.

Corgi Painting Complete

October 20, 2015Animals, Blogunclefragos

It really feels good to be back to painting. There was a time in the middle of this where I had pushed this guy to about 80% and was slogging my way through the background environment wondering why in the heck I decided to do bricks that I was having to really push. Once the background came together and I got to push the color saturation on him, I was really back to enjoying it. This one proved to be challenging with all the little details of the patterning on the jacket and the lace work on the cravat and, of course the brick but I liked pushing those little details that I hadn’t pushed in my other animals. Anyway, I look forward to adding him to my wall of animals and who knows, sometime soon maybe I’ll finish the series and have a show and maybe get that alphabet book done.

Corgi Charcoal Stage Complete

October 7, 2015Animals, Blogunclefragos

I finished the charcoal stage on my latest animal painting. I’ve started completing this stage in a few steps now as well. I am now getting about 90-95 percent complete with my first stage charcoals, spray-fixing heavily, and then coming back in with white colored pencil to push my whites and details further. I might also start incorporating black colored pencils here in the future as well just to give myself a little more precision in places. I’m a little concerned with the block patterning in the background and will probably end up pushing that back with value and cool colors, just to pop Mr Corgi out a bit. Now, on to color studies!

Working on the Animals Again

September 29, 2015Animals, Blogunclefragos

I’m starting work on my animal series again and hoping that I can get the bulk of it finished in a few more months. Not sure if I am still intending to do an ABC animal book or not but we’ll have to see how things play out. I’m working on a Corgi right now, still pretty small scale at 5″ x 7″, and just plugging away on the charcoals. You can see a little of my process here where I’ve gridded off my toned canvas and am working up from my digital comp. As I go I make small alterations to lighting and details to try to unify all the various elements and direct the viewer eye as best as I can. For purposes of the novella to go along with the work I’m also trying to incorporate more backgrounds now, applying the advice I give to my students that a good environment is key in establishing a place in space and time and can affect the appearance of the subject quite a bit. I’ll try to keep posting the work as I go.

One Year of Lunchbox Drawings

August 20, 2015Blog, Lunchbox, Special Projectsunclefragos

Last year my wife and I drew a picture for our daughter’s lunchbox every day (mine are the ones on the right.) Just speaking for myself, it turned into quite an undertaking. I would wake up an hour early every morning and use it as an opportunity to work on my craft. Near the end it started to get a little difficult coming up with ideas, though we did draw on sight words and things that Ruby was learning in school at the time. It was a great exercise and while Ruby seldom mentioned them, I think she appreciated them.

Thanks to my wife, Dolly, for also taking the pictures every day and putting together the awesome video.

Back to School with Ruby June – August 8th

August 3, 2015Blog, The Amazing Adventures of Ruby Juneunclefragos

We’re having a Back to School art show with a few of the paintings from “Ruby June and the Voice of the Sea.” It will take place in the kids section of Bloomingdales at the Mall at Millennia on Saturday, August 8th from 11:00am – 2:30pm.

The itinerary is as follows:

11:15 – 12:00 Introduction and book reading.
Amaze at the artist stumble over his own words! In his defense, headless mannequins carrying his books unnerve him for some reason.
12:30 – 1:30 Ruby June drawing lesson and drawing contest.
Learn the secrets of drawing! Sure to astound and impress your friends and cause your enemies to re-think their life decisions!
2:00 – 2:30 Second book reading.
A second chance for the artist to re-tell Ruby’s tale of adventure! Looks like two hours has made the artist more comfortable with the well-dressed headless!

Throughout the event there will also be coloring and activity pages to work on. We hope to see you all there!

Raven Bear Charcoal Illustration

May 27, 2015Blog, Special Projectsunclefragos

It has been a terrible long time since my last post. I’m prepared to blame it on being hacked and having to reconstruct my site from the ground up (the hacker that got into my site had some serious coding skills and really did a good job of hiding what he did.) So now I’ve installed some security which I hope will do the trick of keeping the wolves at bay. Now, onto the post at hand.

I’ve been splitting my time between a lot of different things lately, not the least of which is a RPG I’ve been working on for some time. The rules are getting pretty solid with what meager play-testing I’ve been able to accomplish and so now I am talking to a group of really talented artists who are planning to help me out with supplemental art. Each artist is exceptional in their style and bring some really great work to the table. One of the things I’m trying to do, in addition to painting a pretty clear, vivid picture of the setting, is to have a variety of styles represented in the game. I always enjoyed seeing a bunch of artist’s interpretations and styles in previous games which seems to be something that has gone away in some part. I hope to bring that back for my game.

I did this value pass for this little painting of a bear with a raven’s head and have intentions to finish the painting sometime soon. I will, of course, be bringing my painting technique to add to the mix. I bounced around the idea of learning more digital technique for the game illustrations but I have re-thought that since my original idea was to have a wide variety of styles and I think my work would be a nice addition.