30 Day Blogging Challenge (2009) – Part 2 (Days 16-30)

Editor’s Note (2026): This compilation was assembled in 2026 from posts originally published in 2009. No new material has been added beyond comment highlights.

This post collects the final 15 entries from a 30-day blogging challenge from January 2009. Most days are intentionally small: one image, a sentence, and whatever conversation happened in the comments. I’ve separated each entry by posting date and excerpted a few comment highlights when it felt worthwhile.

Click the day heading to view the original post (and full comment thread) in context.

Day 16 – Jan. 20, 2009

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Day 17 – Jan. 21, 2009

This is my work from yesterday…

I made some changes to the Tiger’s head, I like it much better now. Also, I continued flatting and played around a bit with colors.

Also, here’s another drawing I started. Will keep you updated!

Comment highlights

iwasink (Jan 21, 2009): You sir, are on a roll! Really liking these constant updates. Keep it up! -Oskar
seajay (Jan 21, 2009): keep posting! i enjoy distracting myself when i should be drawing… wait, i just realized you’re like a reality tv show, except its once a day instead of once a week. and i actually thoroughly enjoy watching your reality show(of progress).
Puente / Bridget (Jan 22, 2009): What an incredible New Year’s resolution…its been fantastic to watch the evolution of this work. Such an engaging blog…please don’t stop after the 30 days is up!

Day 19 – Jan. 22, 2009

the drawing I did on Wed., day 18 was kind of crappy so I’ll spare you guys. Here’s the octo-piece in progress. Still a ways to go, but close.

Comment highlights

Dominic Bugatto (Jan 23, 2009): NIce one Frank. Love the fluidity of forms. This may seem like a silly question , but is there an advantage to working in the TIF format , as opposed to just a PSD one? Just curious.
Frank (Jan 24, 2009): Dom and Aaron, I work in .tif with LZW compression because it keeps the file size smaller.

Day 21 – Jan. 24 2009

Yesterday was hectic; the first day since starting the challenge that I didn’t actually draw anything for myself 🙁

One of the many errands I ran was picking up my Yuki-Onna and Amanda Crow pieces from the framers and dropping them off at the Society of Illustrators for the Book & Editorial show, which opens January 28th. I’m going to be at the awards ceremony on Feb. 6th to celebrate. Hope to see you there!

While I was dropping off my editorial and book pieces, I took a couple of pictures of my piece in the Sequential exhibit, and had the rare opportunity to be the fly-on-the-wall as two older ladies looked at and discussed my ESPN comic. Some of the stuff they said was comical to me, but it was all flattering.

Also, I received my easel in the mail from my parents on Friday. WOO! I’m so excited to have it here with me. So many hundreds of hours have been spent standing or sitting in front of it. It’s funny how something I used to take for granted now holds so much sentimental meaning to me. I can’t wait to bust out the oils.

Lastly, here are today’s sketches, drawn at Starbucks. I was really enjoying myself and could have spent all day there, but decided to head back to the studio and take care of some errands.

Thanks for reading,

frank

Comment highlights

Andrew R. Wright (Jan 25, 2009): I third that! Can’t wait to see some oils as well. The Yuki-Onna piece looks great in the Beasts book by the way.
Eric Orchard (Feb 23, 2009): I love your piece! I was there and can’t believe I didn’t get to meet you, I was staring at everyone’s name tags!

Day 22 – January 25, 2009

DAY 22
My buddy Doug came over today and agreed to sit for a quick portrait drawing… but somehow along the way it became a painting.

When he asked “What are you using?” I replied “I think it’s either gouache or watercolor or a mix.” I painted this by re-wetting dried puddles of paint on a palette I dug out of a box. The colors used were ultramarine, yellow ochre, and a bright red that I think might have been cadmium. Oh, and some white gouache.

FLATTING
Also: for some reason I’ve been getting a lot of emails about how to do flatting. I’ve mentioned before in past posts that flatting is a coloring technique for comic books and there are already tons of great demos online about how to do it. If you google “comic book flatting,” the tutorial that I learned it from is actually the first thing that comes up, here.

Have a great day!

frank

Day 23 – Jan. 28, 2009

continued…

Comment highlights

pasto (Jan 29, 2009): Amazing work. I just love it. What a pleasure (and frustration for me…) to see you marry complexity of elegant details and clarity of action with such a talent. Bravo.

Day 24 – January 30, 2009

Figure drawing day!

Comment highlights

Kyle T. Webster (Jan 30, 2009): Love those hands, Frank – are these drawn with Charcoal pencil?
Frank (Feb 1, 2009): Kyle, I’m not sure what I’m using here, either charcoal pencil or a conte pencil or something. It’s black, whatever it is.

Day 25 – Feb. 1, 2009

Swordsman MonsterSlayer.

Day 26 – February 1, 2009

This lady sat too close to me on a half-full subway, preventing me from moving my drawing arm today.

This drawing is my revenge.

____________

Here’s some advice I gave someone via email about drawing today:

…

Draw Draw Draw!

Remember that no matter how you do things to do it your way. If you want to get good fast, you have to remember that even when you’re in workshop and you’re working on volume, gesture, or whatever, you’re doing it YOUR way.

You should always be having fun.

There isn’t one way you should be doing things and another way you shouldn’t.

Learning principles of drawing and painting is EASY by comparison to finding your own unique voice. It basically will take you between 3-5 years to become really good at those principles, but you’re going to be spending the rest of your life trying to find your own voice. And in the end, your own voice is all that matters. So whatever you do, you have to own it.

That said, don’t worry about “style.” You already have it, and in fact you can’t get away from it. The people who spend all that time in workshops but don’t seem to be improving are trying to cover up their own style. You have to let it come to the forefront if you want to really see improvement quickly.

The most important critique you will ever receive is your own. Ask yourself what you like about this piece. Then, ask yourself what you could do to make yourself like it more (be specific).

Crits from other people are helpful, but they aren’t as important as your own. Crits from others can help you to see things for yourself objectively, but ultimately they are just someone else saying what THEY would do. And that isn’t necessarily the best thing.

Another thing to remember: if you’re drawing for practice–i.e. in the workshops–keep in mind what you’re trying to get out of it. Are you trying to learn to draw figures out of your head? (try it and see; if you can’t do it, you should change how you approach figure drawing)

I heard this from Scott McCloud’s talk on TED recently, and I agree with it 100%:

1) Learn from everyone
2) Follow no one
3) Look for patterns
4) Work like hell

I hope that’s helpful to you. I have a blog post a while back called “how to get better” that says the same thing a little differently. I hope you get some enjoyment or usefulness out of it: HOW TO GET BETTER

–frank

Comment highlights

Tobias Schwarz (Feb 4, 2009): thanks for putting your thoughts down on “paper”. Even while working in big studios and having to keep “on model” these points ring true. In classical animation many people use the description “too stylized”, meaning the style is taking over for no good reason. I like your part about finding your own voice. That is really, really hard.
Jed (Feb 7, 2009): You know, my anatomy is reasonably good. I’ve got a pretty good foundation. When working from reference, I always seem to be able to interpret what’s going on under the skin pretty well, and am able to elaborate on what’s missing, but I’m very heavily reliant on reference to get naturalistic poses and I take TONS of digital photos before I do any figure work if I want those figures to resemble humans in a less than symbolic way. Often I don’t even use the specific poses that I shoot–I try to avoid rendering the photo–but I just can’t seem to draw figures with any great facility spontaneously out of my head. You seem to be really good at inventing figures out of your head, and I know there’s no “secret”, but I thought maybe you might have some advice. I’ve had some really shitty figure classes over the years, and have always learned more from the model than the teacher–most of my figure teachers have had no real grasp of anatomy and most of what I know about anatomy has been from studying on my own, sitting down and copying images out of anatomy books. There was even an online anatomy course that I followed for a while. It’s just never magically come together for me as I always hoped it would, and has always been a struggle. Any practical advice whatsoever would be appreciated.
Frank (Feb 8, 2009): The super short version of the answer to that question is that inventing figures out of your head isn’t about anatomy at all. I’ll do a post about drawing figures out of your head in the near future.
Jed (Feb 8, 2009): Thanks Frank! Much appreciated. Your answer is as intriguing as it is perplexing. I’ve always thought it was all about anatomy! At San Jose State, when I was attending, it was assumed that you’d get your fundamentals elsewhere in the lower division courses, but the focus of the school in general (by no fault of the illustration department) was never particularly on fundamentals. I think that that’s since changed, but unfortunately I ended up with what I feel are some significant deficits. I never learned how to render particularly well (as in paint realistically), my perspective aint too great (lately I’ve been making up for that one with Google sketch-up), and I’m no good at all at inventing figures out of my head, not for a lack of trying. My one notable skill–a facility with pen, brush and ink, is one I cultivated on my own. But I never gave up or stopped learning, and I’m finally to a point where I can look at things I did 5 or 6 years ago without embarrassment. Everything before then I’d like to bury. This, to me, attests to the fact that it’s not everyone who reaches full maturity as an artist in their 20s. At 35 I think I’m just starting to get a little confidence. I’m sure everyone feels like their still learning, but it takes longer for some than others to build that confident foundation.