My world got smaller when artist and art teacher Gary Faigin died this past September. Gary was not just a colleague that I knew for over 40 years, but he was also a personal friend. He and his wife Pamela knew me and Eve in New York, and we kept in touch after Gary and Pam moved to Seattle and Eve and I moved to Portland.

I first met Gary when I signed up for his four day intensive perspective drawing and lecture workshop at the New York Academy Of Art in December 1983. That workshop taught me a lot about perspective, planting the seeds of an interest that would eventually result in my three instructional books on the subject.

Not many teacher/student relationships have become friendships for me, but somehow it did with Gary. In the years when Gary and I both lived in New York about 10 blocks from each other, I became a regular at evening life drawing sessions at his studio. It must’ve been around then that I drew this pencil portrait of Gary:

This portrait of Gary’s wife Pamela with their oldest child Sarah must have come from around that time:

Gary made his true mark with a pioneering book on facial expressions, which has never been out of print since it was first published in 1990.

Gary was directly helpful to me in introducing me to his editor, Candace Raney, who eventually edited my first book on perspective. Years before I eventually came up with the idea for that first book, Gary invited me and Candace out to lunch, where she told me that what she’d really like was an instructional book on comics. When I told her that I was mostly an illustrator and had hardly done any published comics, Candace was unfazed. She said “If you were any good, you’d be too busy to do a book like that!”

After leaving New York, Gary went on to found Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art with Pamela, where they kept alive a tradition of traditional art instruction in anatomy and classical painting technique. In his own painting, Gary very early left the figure behind. He said that since nudes were no longer quite an acceptable subject for art, or maybe because they’d been done to death, he would paint sensual pictures of pears and apples instead. Eventually, he moved on to a series involving steam trains. Even when painting fruits and vegetables, Gary could still find ways to work in perspective:

Gary was very generous over the years in giving me tips and pointers, especially on facial expressions. Earlier this year, I sent him scans of a 3-D reference model I was constructing for a character in my current Vortex book. I was having some trouble constructing a convincing smile, and Gary sent a sketch back with his notes:
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In July, I had once last chance to visit with Gary and Pamela, when they invited me to come down for the day to Manzanita, where they were renting a place at the beach. Gary and I walked around the beach a little- very little , because it was one of those very windy days- talked a bit about art stuff, including the opportunities and menaces around AI, and played a game of croquet with his grandson, which Gary naturally won. I don’t know if Gary knew how close he was to the end. I’m glad I didn’t, because this was not a maudlin occasion, just the latest chance for two old friends to catch up.

In November, Eve, Ben and I drove to Seattle to attend a memorial event for Gary. These words came from the brochure handed out at the event:

Over the next year and beyond, if you would like to remember Gary through action, here are some ideas for you:

Commit to your studio practice. Gary painted almost every day. Choose a schedule and commit to it.

Draw! Draw! Draw! Gary filled hundreds of sketchbooks with drawings. Record your world in sketches.

Feed the birds. Gary loved his flying friends. Buy a birdfeeder and fill it regularly.

Love deeply and truly. Once Gary committed, he never looked back. Tend to your heart and your people.

I’ll do my best, Gary. The birds may be a low priority, but I have taken the bit about draw, draw, draw, to heart. Since I can always stand to improve my facial expressions, I have been filling pages of my sketchbook with my own renderings of facial expressions I see around, mostly in instructional books and on Facebook: