I finished up the first OilCan Drive short comic book story sometime in the spring of 2002 and gave a bunch of them away at the first official Free Comic Book Day (if you're lucky and do a Google search I've actually found there are still a select few of these books out there for sale.)Shortly afterward a friend of mine, Stuart Anderson, who runs a music fanzine called The New Scheme asked if I'd draw the band for the cover of his newest issue.
And this is what I came up with.
It's still hard to look back on some of these earlier images of the band. I still hadn't figured out quite how to draw them all yet and my art style, at the time, was going through some kind of change. So, when I look back at some of my old work all I see is the mistakes. But, I guess that means things are always getting better. I'm sure I'll look back in five years at the things I'm doing today and wonder what the hell I was thinking.
But this was the first time someone, outside of myself, had put any of my own personal work on a project. It wasn't a commission or an assignment where a client wanted me to draw something for them that was their idea. No, this was someone who said, "I've got a space on the cover and I want to put your band on it. Do what you want."
Not a bad feeling to know someone out there liked the cartoon band in my head early on.
3 comments:
I don't really see what kind of mistakes you talk about, it's a beautiful piece anyway, as usual. I love the black blocks for the background, If I had been on your seat, I would have made interferences somewhere for sure lol.....
Thank you, Manu. I'm glad you like it. I just see the little things that I don't do anymore. Like some of the ways the faces look and how big Ryan's ear is. But, I think that's the first step of getting better at anything: Realizing what you don't like and what you're doing wrong. The hard part sometimes is knowing something is wrong but not knowing how to fix it yet.
Life, an ever learning adventure.
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