The first year I met Jon Muth at San Diego, he did this
Scarecrow piece for me. Allen said that it was just something Jay (which is what we all referred to Jon as) did for me while he was relaxing on the beach at Coronado, but I think it probably came at Allen’s prompting for all the
Moonshadow art I had been buying from him. LOL! Jay and I talked quite a bit at that show and I think we grew pretty comfortable around each other. So the following year when I saw him again, he did this Moonshadow sketch for me. It may have still been at Allen’s prompting, but since I didn’t really buy any art from them that year, I feel a little better about the chances that maybe Jay just wanted to do something nice for me.
About the piece, and the scan in particular. The piece is done on a very large sheet of sketchpad drawing paper, maybe an inch or two taller and wider than your standard art board (approx. 12 x 19). It’s also a very, very, faint drawing. As such, I really had to darken the scan quite a bit just to bring the linework out to a visible degree. You can see in the Additional Image section another version where I REALLY went dark. But then I decided to pull back just enough so you could make out the drawing and the personalized inscription. The drawing itself is pretty loose and a little rough. But I really like the work Jay put into doing the face, especially around the eyes. The piece is signed twice. His regular sideways signing of just the last name inside the image area, and then just a straight hand signature at the bottom right.
As mentioned above, this was only the second time I had met Jay, probably my third or fourth Comic Con. It’s been tucked away for quite a while, so it’s really nice to see it again and share it with all of you. Thanks to Allen for all the great art and to Jay for his talent and generosity.
