George Trosley
George Trosley began drawing cartoons at the tender age of five. Professional cartooning came 17 years later. After more than 30 years, Trosley’s humorous automotive renderings are an illustrated slice of Auto-Americana. He’s recognized as one of the major contributing artists in CARtoons magazine, Hot Rod Cartoons, and CYCLEtoons. However, many other national magazines and newspapers have bought and published Trosley’s humorous art including Rod & Custom, Car Craft, Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review, National Enquirer, New Woman, and Hustler.
A free-flowing style and right-on appreciation of the human condition is what attracts automobile magazine editors to George’s work. A master at composition and line quality, Troz, as his friends call him, has his finger on the pulse of the car-crazy community in all its rabid devotion and peculiarities. It’s most likely due to the fact that George often illustrates his personal passion for automobilia. He can instantly relate what’s funny about his own unusual habits, as well as that of other car nuts.
Here’s what George has to say about himself and his profession:
“I was born to hard-working, middle-class parents, George and Hazel, from Woodlyn, Pennsylvania. As a middle child, I grew up with my older sister, Beverly, and younger brother, Harold. I’m told I was drawing from the time I could hold a crayon. Mom claims she could always keep me quiet with a pencil and a piece of paper.
Cars were always a major interest for my brother and me and I drew our “dream machines” all the time. We built model cars while growing up; I could come up with wild customizing ideas and my brother had the patience and body-working talent to turn them into prize-winning creations. Before long we had our driver’s licenses and real cars to fool around with. My first car was a ’47 Plymouth sedan that leaked a quart of oil a day and smoked two more out the tailpipe. That was followed by a ’55 Ford Tudor with a 312ci T-Bird engine and a severe rake. I lettered “Village Vandal” on the trunk lid, much to my mom’s grief. After I graduated from high school I attended the Hussian School of Commercial Art in Philadelphia and commuted in my recently acquired ’39 Ford Deluxe Tudor. I spent the next four years learning about commercial art by day, and the workings of a prewar Ford by night.
After art school, I landed jobs in various art studios in Philadelphia. But in the evenings I was working on some comic pages to send to Petersen Publications HOT ROD CARtoons… and then they bought them! That’s all I needed… I quit my big city art studio job, moved into a small apartment and started selling pages to CARtoons and CYCLEtoons too! I eventually created two characters, KRASS & BERNIE, largely patterned after my brother and me. They chopped, rebuilt, ripped apart and smoked their tires through the pages of CARtoons for decades… and I loved it! K&B presently do muscle car burnouts in Car Craft Magazine and they are still building wild rods!”
Trosley’s current passion is another really nice ’39 Ford Deluxe Tudor which resides in his garage in Pennsylvania and creating Custom Art Portraits of Hot Rods, Rat Rods, Trucks… anything that moves. You can even get Your Car on the Cover of CARtoons… CHECK ‘EM OUT!