Several years ago, I was leading an art critique.  As the students placed their work on the board, we went through each one, and I invited the other students to weigh in with their opinions.  One student’s statement immediately struck me for its simplicity, clarity, and truth.  In appraising another’s work, he said: “It makes me want to draw.”   When I really enjoy someone’s art, it inspires me to pick up a pencil and create.  It’s like someone captured your muse on a page.  Until this week, I carried that statement with me as the highest praise an artist can make about another artist’s work.  Then I saw this image by cartoonist, Evan “Doc” Shaner, on his blog:

Whatever Evan Shaner saw in my strip, it moved him enough to not only draw, but he drew one of my characters!   No one’s ever done that for me before, mostly because I never really created anything for the public before.  It just absolutely floored me, because Shaner not only drew it, but he drew the HELL out of it.  I love Pastor’s expression, the brilliant composition, the use of the single, flat yellow that is synonymous with the site, and the small, white accents to pop the objects that had a shine to them.  As is evident in the image above, Shaner is an avid student of classic illustrators like Alex Toth, Jack Cole, and their spiritual descendants like Darwyn Cooke and Jeff Parker**, so for him to find merit in my work really meant a lot.

- JEP

**Jeff Parker’s not just a great writer.  Parker illustrated his self-published graphic novel, Interman, which had one of the best surprise endings I’ve read in years.