Cormack McCarthy’s The Road

The Road was my first McCarthy book and the only one I’ve read, but I don’t think I’m jumping the gun when I say he’s my favorite living author. I dig the spartan prose and the way he discards all but the most important details letting you fill in the rest. He …

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Rosemary & Co. Kolinsky Sable Brushes

Well, I’m a total traditional art convert. I hate being tethered to my computer now; it’s so freeing to once again be able to do my work anywhere it might strike my fancy. My new obsession is buying art supplies. Sweet, sweet art supplies.
I just bought a bunch of …

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L.A. Weekly and Paste Magazine

What do they have in common? Me! They were a couple of semi-recent commercial gigs. I haven’t been posting / blogging a lot of commercial work. I’m growing a bit disenchanted with it. All I want to do is find the time to work on comics and video games (the latter …

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Cintiq 20WSX Snow Leopard Workaround

Here’s the problem. Snow Leopard is seeing the Cintiq’s default refresh rate higher than its native 60hz. Using a third party app named SwitchResX, I created a custom 1650×1080@60hz resolution. I rebooted my MacPro, applied the resolution setting in the Display …

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Cintiq 20WSX No Worky in Snow Leopard

In case you didn’t catch my twatting on Twitter, the Cintiq 20WSX’s display goes googly-moogly after upgrading to Snow Leopard. It’s not like Wacom had months of anticipatory development time to ensure it’s compatibility or anything!
Apple support forum …

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Buyers Remorse

Now that I’ve gone traditional, using my Cintiq is a drag. The 1/4″ of offset between the stylus and my cursor paired with a fair amount of lag makes for a frustrating drawing experience.
I’m glad I started digitally. It afforded me the luxury of mistake making …

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Billabong? Billawrong!

I’ve said before that it’s become increasingly difficult to make an honest living as an illustrator. Print is dead, taking a large swath of possible clients with it. The tubes move too quickly making custom illustration for articles an unlikely occurrenc, further …

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Now for something completely different...

I've been trying my hand at value/mass drawing a bit. I want to do a series of posters with an almost airbrush like quality that mix flat, 2D elements with painterly ones.

Proof of concept/rough attempt at the style. I just needed to get the concept out of my head and …

The Stages of Transformation

Lately, I've been thinking about grief and loss. Specifically, the psychology behind dealing with death. I read about the stages to grief and the process has been on my mind.

The titular stages of grief assigned to the stages of a werewolf's transformation popped into …

410BC and Me

410BC is a clothing company after my own heart. I've worked with them a few times in the past with each collaboration being a positive experience.

I was happy to see a request for three more designs in my inbox over the holidays. Comments in the brief were along the …

Earthworm Jim: I Was 8Bit

I never got around to posting my diptych from I Am 8-Bit. The image fits together when hung side by side.

Almost no one besides other presenters knew who Jim was! My faith in today's youth was diminished!

Black Tide "Warriors of Time" Viral Animation

Motherland, a swell heap of gents as well as a "...Motion, Animation & Entertainment Company..." asked me to provide art for a series of viral shorts for Black Tide (seen below).

Black Tide "Warriors of Time" No. 1 from Ray Frenden on Vimeo.

Black Tide "Warriors of …

Voorhees a Jolly Good Fellow

I think anyone reading my blog has sense of humor in line with this series of webcomics I made sometime in 2006 starring Jason Voorhees. Done using a single color MS Paint like app. Obviously, the art was not the focus on these!

The first ten or so are pretty weak, …

Drake Brodakl Draws Dreamily

I found Drake through Stylus, a haven for wayward illustrators and private forum. You really ought to check him out. His updates these last few months have been ridiculously keen.

73 x 143 cel vinyl acrylic on watercolor paper

EATTHERICH: Frankenstein's Modern Monster

Inks so far. I wanted to set a cyborg monster against the traditional backdrop and typical marauding villagers. There's something about the juxtaposition of old and new that twists the original narrative enough for me to find it worth revisiting!

I diverged a bit from …

EATTHERICH: Frankenstein's Modern Monster Tee

Egads, two updates in one day! It's nice to have work that isn't under a NDA to show for a change.

Here are the colors for the Frankentein's monster tee I mentioned earlier today (I have a heap more colorways on my Flickr page if you're my friend there):

Placement:

Voor-he's Back (Punny!)

Editorial illustration about the forthcoming re-start of the Friday the 13th series:

There's something about the imagery of Jason Voorhees that really grabs me. I always saw him as a tragic figure and, as a pudgy, nerdy, sci-fi lovin', comic readin' kid, infinitely …

ROKK "Maiden" Tee Design

Rokk Clothing requested a 'Maiden inspired design for UFC Fighter Josh Barnett. I've done a few attempts for them, the first shown actually being the second produced. It's a four color design. Yellow, pink, blue, and green.

Process:

The final design, one I like a …

Eat the Rich Apparel Illustration

This tee was designed with flexibility and ease of production in mind. In addition to a high-falutin'-six-color version, there is a single and three color offering. I've also offered a myriad of tee color choices. I'm partial to the three-color design on white, but …

Retro Movie Poster Inspired Design

The text is still a bit placeholder, but I have the inks just about completed. Some exposition and gushy personal stuff after the jump.

The brief called for a design that could be colored or printed as lineart. I'm happy with the level of detail on this one and can …