And The Last

Here are the last two test panels I colored for the newest OilCan Drive book.

As you can see by these two pieces and the ones I colored yesterday I really love drawing and painting the faces of characters. It's actually one of my favorite things to do. So, when it came to doing a few colored panels for the project, coloring the main characters' head shots was a no-brainer for me.

The interesting thing now is taking the black and white illustrations I had originally intended for color and re-purposing them for a toned black and white book. I need to go back now and add a few details in the art here and there to fill in some of the spaces I intended to deal with in the color stages. I'm hoping once I get past these few pages and get the art corrected I can once again get a good roll with some new pages.

It is interesting how much things change when you are drawing for a strictly black and white book as opposed to a color book. You'd think drawing would be drawing and it would all look the same but there are different decisions you make in the art when you are doing one or the other. I never really knew how much until I was faced with using the original art I intended for color for the black and white pieces.

But, I'll figure it all out and hopefully, once it's all done, you won't even notice the difference.

I also found out yesterday that another of the instructors from my Kubert School days passed away the day after last Christmas.

John Troy was my teacher through all three years of my time at the school. He taught a humor class and initially I thought all John could do was draw funny cartoons. But, the man could do so much more. During my second year I would often ask John his opinion on work I was doing for other classes and by my third year I was talking to him about everything from perspective, to human anatomy, to the philosophy of art.

There are still quotes that ring in my ears all these years later. My favorite of his is, "every line you put down on the paper is the truth." I still haven't quite figured out what that one means yet but I really love it.

I kept in touch with John over the years and he and I would frequently send letters to each other. I found out too late that he had been living in Colorado for a while but by the time I learned this he and his wife had moved to Florida. I would have loved to have seen him when he was closer.

In the last few years I was sharing the work I was doing on OilCan Drive with John. I sent him a package with both the art and a CD of the music I was messing around with. John, with his typical dry humor, wrote back, "The music was great and it really made me move...quickly to the stereo so I could turn off that racket!"

I still have a few of the hardback books John sent to me recently. He wrote to me on the inside front cover and told me he was proud of me and the work I was doing. It really saddens me that he is gone now and the world is a much grayer place without him.

And, if you're interested, you can read his obituary HERE. It's hard to read in a few paragraphs the total of one man's life when so much seems to be left out.

Thank you John Troy for all you did for me over all the years, inside and outside of school. I might have met better men in my life but right now I can't remember when.