Drew Vaughn Jones

 

​My name is Drew and I've been through a lot to get to where I'm at with myself and my work. I'm a fighter and survivor of the slings and arrows of life. Don't be deceived in thinking my smiling bio pic here is an expression of ivory tower complacency and nothing but the product of abundant privilege, it is not. I've survived extreme childhood adversity, poverty, houselesness, and repeated opportunity denial to get properly compensated for my work in this society, having gone through all this to finally get to a place where the smile you see here is a smile of sheer dedication to the arts and a complete determination to achieve the greatest success with my work possible this lifetime. This is also a smile of someone who's truly gotten to know myself through holistic self-realization.

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​I was fortunate to have had the chance to attend the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and learn a good deal about practical special effects in movies through the Industrial Design Technology program, graduating with an Associates of Science Degree. Even though I was acclaimed top of my class as a designer and sculptor by my reputable instructors, I was not afforded proper job placement the school promised students enrolled, with the school later going bankrupt due to predatory loan practices. Today, I'm at least utilizing what I learned at art school to apply these skills to my creator-owned graphic novel project by continuing to sculpt prototypes of all the main characters and creatures in the story as detailed maquettes I intend on using as promotional displays at Comic Cons to stand out amongst the crowd and subsequently professionally photograph them for innovative hardback cover art.

 

As for my experience with comics, I started drawing short cartoon strips when I was an adolescent kid but didn’t know then quite where to take my storytelling. It was only after discovering the corner store, on the other side of the block I lived, had a comic book spinner rack filled with Image comics like Spawn, Savage Dragon, Wild Cats, Cyber Force, The Darkness and Gen 13 in the early to mid 90’s, that I knew then what I had to someday do: develop the skills to create my own high quality illustrated story someday.  It wasn’t long after my in depth study of these Image titles (the line work, the compositional layout, how to creatively use panels and dialogue bubbles, etc.) that I found another corner store a few blocks away had stashed in the back of their magazine rack some sci-fi Heavy Metal mags. When I got old enough to buy them, I immersed myself in these provocative otherworldly stories that led to my studying the phenomenal art of the European artists like Moebius and Massimiliano Frezzato. My work today on my graphic novel project reflects my years of study and dedication to dynamic and high quality sequential illustrative storytelling and design.

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