In 1965, after graduation from high school, Drew went to work as his father's artist assistant at Hannah-Barbera studios. For the next 4 years he worked summers in animation and the rest of the year attended college at the Chouinard Art Institute (now Cal Fine Arts), often called the “best art school in the country…west of the Mississippi”. Drew received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1969.
Over the course of the next 40 years he developed a remarkable career as a multi-skilled animation artist working continually at one studio while freelancing work at 2 or 3 other studios. Drew became known as a top echelon conceptual designer, working from a script to create the “look” of new shows, and was constant demand for theatrical animated movies, direct to video features, and T.V. shows. A short list of credits range from The Flintstones, Batman, Scooby-Doo, Bugs Bunny, The Smurfs, Yogi Bear, Johnny Quest, The Land Before Time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many others as well as animated feature versions of Kink Kong, The King and I, and the Care Bears feature.
While working for animation studios, Drew did his personal work of abstract figurative personas, and kept hundreds of these drawings in notebooks. Years later this trove of drawings would form the basis for his long and large print series. He also did paintings and sculpture. He occasionally sold pieces and was a part of gallery shows.
After a 44-year career in animation that officially ended in the Spring of 2009, he has been able to return to his original passion and creative impulse of creating fine art. Drew says “I had a full a wonderfully rewarding career in animation, something I can feel very good about, but by the time it ended, I was more than ready to do so… and I had a serious itch to do my own art.”
Drew and his wife Sara moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas in the Summer of 2007. Where Drew paints, draws, and sculpts in his spacious studio and exhibits his fine art.