Hello Everyone!
Just wanted to share another page that I worked up, and this time I managed to catalog some more extra steps. Again this technique worked for this painting but it might not work on others. I will post in the future some other illustrations that had an entirely different thought process.
 Again there is the rough small thumbnail.

As you can see its all big giant shapes, it had to be treated as such because there are so many characters, they have to be thought of us one solid mass. I made some small notes for my brain on the side with the colors that I needed to work with. 

The next step is the pencils, here I put in a bit more work than usual, again because of the characters that I wanted to catch. I am letting the drawing evolve, putting in tons of stuff that later might change. The important thing running in my head is, how can I get the characters to read as a mass but keep their different traits.

Here is the raw umber underpainting, its just enough to keep it loose for me, and tight enough at this stage that I can tell who the faces are, at this point I take a break and walk away.. I find its always good to break and clear the eyes. I put some tape at the sides to clear the borders and I am ready to paint. I am not crazy about that blue tape, but I had run out of the other I used, and it was cheap and laying around. That blue can throw your values off a bit so its good to color correct as I go forward.

Now we have the first layer of paint, its all big and loose and the washes are applied lightly at first but with big strokes. My concern is to cover as much as I can right now and get rid of the white. Sometimes I would throw in an entire tone to to this, but in this case I decided to just move on with it. I did not want to sit around and wait for it to dry.

So I am working wet into wet, and moving forward. Right now, at this stage, one can give up, many times I have done just that. But this is Acrylics its very forgiving, so keep working on it.

Now here is the fun part, I have painted over things that I took time to draw, in this case the skeleton was bothering me, it took over the picture so I decided to leave it until the end. the same thing happens to the foreground bottles, and the blackboard, again my thinking is to keep it simple. So I concentrate on the figures and let things breathe. 

At this point I break and walk away. Much thinking to be done before I can paint again, without thinking.

So finally I decide where the skeleton is going to go by just throwing the paint down. the glasses are moved to the other side. Again the decisions are based on instinct, and making sure the eye has an entrance point. At this point the painting is done, but.. there is more, the final painting will have oils on top, to smooth out some transitions and soften things up a bit. As soon as I do that I will certainly post it. Then again, it might be fun to see it when its all in the book. 

Hope this helps, and more on the way. By the way Victor Frankenstein is the fellow with the bright scarf, I needed a visual hook for the audience to recognize, Victor from far away in other illustrations. 

Have a wonderful day, its raining in NYC.. again.

Best.

Frank.

Hello all, I managed to take some shots while working on this Frankenstein page.
 I will take more shots that take every single step into account, but right now here is
breakdown of how I work the page through.

Now keep in mind, that I like to treat every page differently, what works for one page
might not work for another. I think that is the way my mind works, it would be nice to
have a set way of working, but it would also be a bit boring for me. Sometimes I might
bypass a step or add another, or simple ignore everything and just start with the palette
knife and see where it goes from there.

 So in step one, there is the small thumbnail, basically one of the most important links
in the chain of creation. This little sketch is the atom that everything hangs on. Even when
you want to digress from it, you have a point from where to digress from. So I put a lot of
work in these small roughs. I make notes, of the colors and what works and what doesn't.
 Sometimes, after doing that small sketch I put it to the side and work on the painting and not
even look at it. Just to keep it fresh. I figured by that time its ingrained in the head, and in
the hands.

After this step comes step two, a rough pencil drawing, this is one of the steps

that can be very detailed, or very loose, or not at all.. In this case I did a rough

pencil just to make sure I get the size of things correct. In comics we do very tight 

pencils, but when you are working on your own stuff, and doing the inking,

plus everything else, this will mostly do. Again for this page it was very loose, because 

I had a clear view of where I wanted to go.

In step three I start to do a quick line drawing in Raw Umber. 

I like Raw Umber because its sort of this nice undertone color that can be

painted over and still be soft. This stage can be very tight if you need it to be

but again for this page, it was lose and it was mainly to keep the shapes mapped

out for the painting. Sometimes I go a bit much with all the shadows and tones, here 

I kept it as a line drawing. India Ink would work just as well, but Raw Umber fits is 

just as nice and can be graded to give shades.

And now we get to the fun part. The painting, big bold strokes 

and then coming in with more careful smaller choices of shapes.

One of the reasons to keep everything loose at each stage is to

give yourself the freedom to explore, one never knows until it is 

all finished.

Anyway hope you enjoyed some of this process I know I do. Multiply it by sixty 

and you got yourself a book, kid.

Later I will put up some of the oil studies I was playing with. I wanted to use

oils in a project I was doing to give it a very unique look, but that project fell 

through and I will be using it on this Frankenstein book instead.

Best to all.

Frank.

Hello Everyone, excuse the very long long delay between posts. Something called the "real world" happen to show up. Its a very long story and one day I will chat about it.
The good news is that I am working on a new project that I think will be an exciting means of getting my graphic novels out much quicker and more direct for everyone.

 One of the crazy things that happened was I had to update my OS, and in doing so, found that my photoshop and illustrator were so old, that the were useless. The side effect of that was that my scanner was not talking to anyone. So now everything is back up and running and soon I can start posting on a regular basis. In the meantime here are some iPhone pics of the project that is currently being worked on.

 It is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein! I am hoping it will have about sixty or more full color illustrations and It should finish it by the end of next month. There are also some children's books that will be coming fast down the line. A project I was working on fell down the tubes, and I have a bit of time on my hands to do this new one.

I am sorry for taking so long to post, but I like to believe that you guys will not just take off because of some delays.

Best to you all.

Frank.

Happy New Year from mars!

A happy New Year to all.

May this year bring about all the good stuff you really need and not the crazy stuff we dream about. Plus lots of health to everyone.

Back when I was living in L.A I heard that Kerry and Kevin Conran who had done Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow were going to helm John Carter of Mars.

Now at the time, Rocketo had not been published yet, and me being a John Carter super freak stopped working on Rocketo, and launched myself into the world of Barsoom.

I think for about three weeks all I did was paint, sketch, storyboard, and design almost the entire film. I finally did get some great face time with both the brothers and we got to chatting about my sketches and storyboards and tons drawings I did. Sadly nothing came of it. To this day, I never heard back from them, and then the project just dropped off the face of the Earth. As things would go, I got back on Rocketo and was able to create a world of my own.

Well, Pixar is jumping on the Barsoom express , and for some reason as fate would have it, I came across one of the CD's with some of that old 2005 artwork.

I did a tremendous amount of work on this project for no reason than, I loved the world that was created. At some point in the future I will find the rest of the CD's with more of the artwork, but here is a small taste of some of the rough sketches and ideas I had way back before Rocketo was ever born.

Some of my thinking for Tars is that he is a bit more martian insect than what has been done with him so far. Because he is more insect like he can twist that lower torso around almost 360 so he can fight you with those swords facing forward, while the lower arms fight behind him. I thought it would be visually fun to animate.

Carter has that old school belt, something that desert people usually wear, its that giant belt that holds a couple of Radium guns at a time, plus swords. I gave him a sort of Gladiator outfit mixed with all sorts of stuff, but my thinking was to actually give him Superman's colors. As John Carter is really the first Superman only backward.

Again this was all my rough first pass at this stuff, and I wish I had worked on it for a couple of months. Then again I wish I had three more arms.. See its better to get what you need, instead of what you wish for.

Enjoy and again Happy New Year to everyone.

Frank.

high tech finger paints

I been playing around with the Iphone a bit these days. My computer was having its DVD drive repaired, so I had a bit of time to draw with the phone. Strange, to draw with the phone.. Dick Tracy himself could not have predicted that one.

So I got a bunch of drawing Apps and thought I would put each through its paces for a while. Each application has its strong points and its weak, and I should go over in detail each one, but what can one expect for a buck or two? The Rocketo and Luna Lake and the old man, drawings were done with Sketchbook mobile, its a nice app. Great brushes, and very nice control over the layers and colors, although going back and forth between brushes and color is a bit hard on the fingers. I did not do any tight drawings with this program but one can basically draw as tight and as loose as you desire. Its a nice app to play with, again my only complaint is the back and forth, it would be nice to have a more organic way to pick colors and brushes.

The other drawings, that have that charcoal feel are doing with the Sketji app.

Its a great app for those quick and tumble sketches, sadly... no zoom feature, so you can draw anything with any real detail, its all big giant strokes, but the strokes are organic and lovely to look at.

Anyway enjoy everyone and have a great day, back to my Image book.

Frank.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Just wanted to wish all of you a great and happy Thanksgiving.

Thank you all for taking the time to look around in this insane little blog of twist and turns.

Playing around with the Iphone this morning and did a quick little sketch of good old John Carter of Mars, and that other character with the laugh.. When I get my DVD driver working I will post some old Carter drawings I did years ago.

May you all eat well today, and be with your loved ones.

Frank.

Nightmare high tech at twenty thousand feet

In the words of the wonderful Shatner.. "There is an APP at the wing of my plane!!"

Fate finally made me take the plunge. My phone broke down and I had to get a replacement, so I got one of those insane Iphones. Naturally I have now joined the wild horde of app crazy addicts. It happened at a good time, just before my trip to Stanford so I had some good time during the flight to play around with all the gadgets.

Couldn't help thinking what Jules Verne would say if he saw a couple of hundred people sitting in the belly of this giant metal bird that was flying at twenty thousand feet. He would look around and see people reading, sleeping, playing games, his mind would explode, then again, he might just say.. " I knew it all along!"

Imagine Columbus playing with the star app.. or the compass app..

So here I was trying to figure out a way to learn to draw with my giant index finger on this little screen. I have to handed to the designers, because after a while I actually began to understand it a bit.

One of my favorite books is Moby Dick, recently it has dawned on my mind to want to illustrate a version of it. In my opinion nothing beats the black and white illustrations done by the master Rockwell Kent. But I wanted to take a different path, while Kent worked in black and white, I want to work with symbols and colors and shapes. The book is all about symbols and metaphors and my drawings would try to take that to the limit. So here are some very early Iphone sketches of Ahab and Queequeg who is my favorite character in the book. As I get that time I will play around more in Melville's wonderful world.

And to all the Rocketo fans, I have added some concept art for the Mapping Guild, although in the book its going to be ten times more massive than in this sketch.

The girl, well she was just fun to draw.

Enjoy and have a great day everyone.

Frank.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Hello all.

I just got back from Stanford University where I got to meet some fantastic professors, and a great comic artist and fine artist, Marcella Trujillo, who managed to make a quick sketch of me while on a train to visit the San Francisco comic art museum.

The trip was amazing and the scholars who gave their lectures on Latino comics and creators gave me some wonderful insights that I will carry with me for a very long time. So hats off to Hector Hoyos, Angela Becerra, Haerin Shin, Hector Fernandez, Juan Poblete, Vanessa Chang, Ramon Salvidar and Frederick Aldama they made my stay at Stanford feel right at home.

So now I am back and its back to work! I will post more stuff this week.