This is another "HD Remaster" of an older concept. The original, below, was drawn on a whiteboard sometime back in the fall of 2020. I took a picture of it and later colored it in Paint.net. The new one took a lot longer, but there was a ton of experimentation with Sketchbook Pro, so it took longer than it should have. The quote is from R. C. Chapman. He has the honor of being the first person quoted twice on here. 

I drew this for Inktober in Oct of 2019, but revived it for this A. T. Pierson quote. If you're curious about church history, check out Pierson's account of this period. It's a pretty short read and lots of good stuff in it. 

​In C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, Lewis imagines a seasoned demon instructing a rather inept pupil. Rarely has a book so perfectly captured the nature of man. In this particular admonition, the elder demon encourages the inflammation of "all extremes, except extreme devotion to the enemy [God]." These include both patriotism and pacifism. I find this important to understand in today's political and social climate. Extremes become our guiding principles, pushing our Faith into the realm of simple support for our extreme.  

This was the first post where I had both Draw Near as a "real thing" and a didactic message in mind. It really pushes the limit on how much text I can fit in this format... but it also closer to what I really hope to make Draw Near into. My wife Christina suggested the colored backgrounds on the second and third images, which was a brilliant idea and really brought the whole post together, artistically speaking.

The passage it's based on (Jeremiah 3:3-4) was one that I came across during my morning Bible reading. It strongly convicted me, especially in the area of responding to stuff on the internet, where I could spend 25 minutes crafting a YouTube comment response that only two people will ever read. Alternatively, I could pray for a missionary friend... or make a new DN blog post. :) 

The first two images were another artistic experiment. I used a (mostly) non-pressure sensitive brush, kind of like using a Micron pen instead of a brush pen. I also stuck to 3 tone (base, shading, and highlights) coloring with no blending. It made drawing a lot easier and still looks good. Not sure yet how it's going to look on larger images.