Why is there an alligator in the picture that is supposedly of a 1948 Ford coupe, you ask? Why are there ravens in that picture of the old rusty car in the "woods?"

Why don't the cars and trucks look more like they do in photographs, rather than as if a lot of imagination went into those pictures?

These are good questions, and I can answer them.

I don't do these things in order to "jazz up" the pictures, though it's fun to add them. I did them because that's just what happens sometimes when I'm working on a picture -- For example when the alligator walked onto the scene, and when the ravens just appeared out of nowhere. These ideas do come out of my imagination, of course, but they are suggested strongly by the scene -- sometimes just by the vehicles themselves, and sometimes a combination of the vehicles and the landscape they're in.

I believe that if someone wants to see junkyard cars and trucks look just exactly as they appear either in "real life" or in photographs, then they can look at them in real life, and there are thousands (probably millions) of photographs of them available to see on the web. I love to look at those photos myself.

Also, I realize that some people want to look at artwork (paintings, drawings, etchings, etc.) that shows the rusty, dilapidated cars and trucks looking just as they do in real life, without animals, for instance, and with all the details there, and nothing added to the scene that wasn't in the actual scene to start with, and I like to look at those pictures, too.

I think of my "junkyard" drawings not as drawings of trucks or cars, but as drawings "based on" trucks and cars. They are "artistic interpretations." However, this isn't to say that I don't try to get the basics of the particular vehicle(s) down as well as I can -- That is, I don't make up the cars and trucks; I use photographs (which I've been given permission to use for drawings), and I very carefully try to get the essence of the vehicle, and not make up a "new" vehicle out of my imagination -- I just emphasize some things and downplay others - and occasionally I change the colors if I think it will help the picture...and then, sometimes, an alligator might walk onto the scene (and how could I not put that in?!).