If a pic­ture is worth 1,000 words, what is the value of a draw­ing? For John Vestevich, Torch res­i­dent graphic artist and car­toon­ist, it’s worth $10,000.

That is because Vestevich, a stu­dent in the Graphic Design pro­gram, was recently awarded the Charles M. Schulz Award by the Scripps Howard Foundation for his illus­trated work for the Torch, and a cash prize of $10,000. The annual award is given to the nation’s best col­lege cartoonist.

“I had to read it a cou­ple times,” said Vestevich, refer­ring to the award announce­ment. “It’s still slowly sink­ing in.”

Vestevich, cur­rently in his sec­ond year at Ferris, has been illus­trat­ing comics for most of his life. Though more famil­iar with con­ven­tional graphic nov­els, his work with humor­ous edi­to­r­ial car­toons has drawn an over­whelm­ing amount of attention—including that from Scripps Howard. The prize is notable for being awarded to syn­di­cated car­toon­ists from larger uni­ver­si­ties across the nation.

Vestevich will be in Cincinnati on May 3 to accept the award at the offi­cial cer­e­mony, for which he will give a short speech.

“I do it because I enjoy it,” he said in ref­er­ence to his new­found recog­ni­tion. “Doing it is the reward. This is just a neat bonus.”

At age 27, Vestevich is a grad­u­ate of Michigan State with a degree in Finance. After grad­u­at­ing in 2006, he set out to cre­ate a career in comic book illus­tra­tion, spend­ing time devel­op­ing such works as Youth is Sweet, a graphic novel that revolves around a retired spe­cial ops agent. Though a reward­ing expe­ri­ence, he is not sure whether or not he wishes to con­tinue this pur­suit professionally.

“I’ll always do it,” said Vestevich. “But it might not be my career.”

To view Vestevich’s pub­lished car­toons, check out http://​www​.fsu​torch​.com/​s​e​c​t​i​o​n​s​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​s​/​c​a​r​t​o​on/