Magical glowing trees

They were better in reality 

Unusual sky

 

It was better in real life

This is why you should walk, not drive

Cormorant

Saw this in Pollok Park on Easter Sunday.

I thought cormorants only lived by the sea, but evidently not.

Cave art

By Pline [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons

The evolutionist stands staring in the painted cavern at the things that are too large to be seen and too simple to be understood. He tries to deduce all sorts of other indirect and doubtful things from the details of the pictures, because he cannot see the primary significance of the whole; thin and theoretical deductions about the absence of religion or the presence of superstition; about tribal government and hunting and human sacrifice and heaven knows what. [...]

When all is said, the main fact that the record of the reindeer men attests, along with all other records, is that the reindeer man could draw and the reindeer could not. If the reindeer man was as much an animal as the reindeer, it was all the more extraordinary that he could do what all other animals could not. If he was an ordinary product of biological growth, like any other beast or bird, then it is all the more extraordinary that he was not in the least like any other beast or bird. He seems rather more supernatural as a natural product than as a supernatural one.

GK Chesterton

Psalm 8

Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory
    in the heavens.

 Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.

 When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?

 You have made them a little lower than the angels
    and crowned them with glory and honour.
 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their feet:
 all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
 the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

 Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth! Psalm 8

PowerPoint here.

Premature

I know the bits in the middle of daisy-style flowers are seeds...

But I don't think they're supposed to sprout when it's still in the vase!

Pretty

Creation of Adam & Eve

I've been working on this for over a month now (interspersed with other things), and it's finally done! I enjoyed this. Needed lots of thought. 

One of the reasons I particularly wanted to do this story just now is to give children confidence that marriage and gender are not just subjective human inventions but part of God's good creation.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

God breathes life into the man

Adam

Eden

Adam working in the garden

You may eat from any tree except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil

Naming the animals

Adam in a deep sleep

Eve

Adam meets Eve

For this reason a man shall leave his father & mother and be united with his wife and the two will become one

Because I redesigned my Adam & Eve characters, I also had to adapt the Fall PowerPoint, so they matched - and took the opportunity to add three pictures:

Eve takes the fruit

Hiding from God

He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

Irony

I came across a page about the updating of the Answers in Genesis logo.

My first thought was: It's evolved
:-)

Curse

I thought it would be good to add some illustrations to my Fall PowerPoint. Specifically the curse/promise.

The snake bit is easy:

‘Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life. 

And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
    and you will strike his heel.’

Adam is easy:

‘Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life. 

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field. 

By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.’

Eve, on the other hand...

‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
    with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
    and he will rule over you.’

No-one even seems to agree about what this means (never mind it being tricky to illustrate for kids.)

Two commissions

Just noticed something. Is it just me, or are there very obvious parallells between these two passages?

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”
 

     So God created man in His own image;
     He created him in the image of God;
     He created them male and female.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.” God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This food will be for you...

Genesis 1v26-29

Then Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28v18-20 

• Just after creation/new creation.*
• God/Jesus has authority.
• He sends people out as his representatives.
• They are to fill the earth with God's people (by having children/by making disciples).
• They are to bring God's rule on the earth (rule animals/teach people).
• He will provide what they need to do it.

---

*By which I don't mean the final new creation, but the resurrection and the fact that 'if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation'

Literal? Symbolic?

an analogy or type used in Scripture can be both literally and symbolically true

~R.L.Copple

This is what I've been thinking lately. Some of the speakers I've been listening to recently - good guys who are extremely helpful - seem to too easily dismiss the literalness of some bits of the Bible that have obviously very important symbolic meaning. Sometimes I'm sure they're right. And there is an opposite error of not seeing the wood for the trees. But sometimes it's OK to see both.

P.S. This quote is from a very interesting article and discussion about creationism here, which I'll need to read more fully, but I'm not specifically quoting it in reference to that topic - just in general.

Adam & Eve's ethnicity in picture books

Out of all the pictures I looked at in my previous post, only two seemed to show Adam & Eve as non-white - one looked a bit middle-eastern, but only one (Jane Ray's beautiful book) gave any indication that these were meant to be the ancestors of the entire human race.

This is astounding! I can understand this in secular books, where they are just telling a traditional story and haven't really thought about it - although Jane Ray herself is non-religious.

But Christian publishers and illustrators should certainly be thinking a bit more.

I'm aware that people have different views of the literalness of this account. But even if you look on it merely as a Hebrew folk-tale, it's a Hebrew folk-tale about the ancestors of the human race, and ancient Hebrews were obviously well aware of different ethnicities!

If we say everyone is made in the image of God, but then show the ancestors of the human race with genes that could only produce white people, what are we actually telling kids?

How people draw Adam & Eve

The tricky thing (or one of them) about drawing Adam & Eve, is that you have to draw two completely naked people in a way that you (and your customers) feel is appropriate for children.

So I did some research. I looked at every children's Bible story book that I could find in my church - and a couple I have at home - and took photos of the Adam & Eve pictures.

It was interesting to see the different solutions. Some more successful than others. My definition of successful is if it looks natural - it just 'so happens' that you can't see anything you're not supposed to. You want to give the impression that they 'were naked and felt no shame', while catering for the fact that it's not like that now.

Of course, different people have different ideas on what is appropriate. A couple of the ones below actually show Eve topless, which I don't have a problem with myself, but would not want when teaching other people's children :-)

My comments below are based entirely on the success or otherwise of the censoring, not whether I personally like the pictures.

Plants

 

By far the most common solution. Understandable - they're in a garden. Rarely looks natural, though.

Either they seem to be skulking waist/chest deep in bushes, or individual plants just 'happen' to be in the right place - but nowhere else. E.g. pic 9: it would look natural, except that there are no other similar clumps of plants around.

Sometimes it would make sense to cover up more than you need to, so it looks more accidental. Pic 10 is the most convincing.

Could be a good solution in extreme moderation - instead of being the default.

But actually often the same result could be achieved by...

Cropping

Many of the above pictures (e.g. 8) could simply have had the figures a little closer up and cut off at the waist.

Here are some good examples:

It's perfectly normal to draw clothed people from the waist up, just head & shoulders, etc. It looks very natural. So I'm not sure why more people don't jump at this easy solution when drawing Adam & Eve.

Careful Posing

This is another good solution. Usually looks quite natural. Trickier to achieve, of course. Some really creative ones here - like pic 4 and 8.

It also depends what you're happy showing, and the more realistic, the less appropriate people might think it was.

Animals

I think this is much more successful than the plants, because animals are mobile. Also, they can interact with them.

Long hair

Giving Eve long hair can be successful. As long as she has a style of hair that would naturally come forward like that. These ones all look pretty good, though I've seen much less convincing ones.

Back view

If you're happy with bare bottoms, an easy solution that is surprisingly little used. Also good for Eve.

Although if you only had one picture of Adam & Eve in the book, it would want to be a front view.

 

Water

Does the job, and creates a paradise feel. But I wouldn't use it unless (like pic 1) I had lots of other pictures of Eve. Otherwise seems a bit too much like she's hiding.

Holding things

Really good solution - hardly any examples except animals. I wonder why.

Top view

Very clever, but only works because the book has lots of other 'God's eye' views of clothed people too.

Eve has the body of a toddler, with nothing to hide.

Just no.

Some other interesting observations

 

I looked at pictures by 13 artists.

Of these, only three showed Adam with a beard, and only one gave him long hair (one was slightly long). A few did have Eve with short-ish hair.

Only one showed Adam & Eve doing work of any kind.

Out of all the pictures, only two seemed to show Adam & Eve as non-white - but that will be another post!

[Edit: Here are my final pictures of Creation (chapter 1 - second last slide, and chapter 2) and the Fall]

Two gardens

Adam in his Garden said, "Not your will but mine" and brought death.
Jesus in his Garden said, "Not my will but yours" and brought life.

~Sam Allberry

Perelandra

I'm reading Perelandra to get some inspiration for my Adam & Eve illustrations. Not  to get concrete info, but to imaginatively get into a pre-Fall world*.

C.S. Lewis had some imagination!

I really like this cover. Only improvement could be some green. And a more interesting font for the title.

---

*Pre-Fall in Venus, but post-Fall and post-redemption on Earth, which makes a lot of difference to how the story works out...

Adam was a hipster before it was cool

A picture from my childhood Bible story book.

Adam & Eve

Different ways I have drawn Adam & Eve through the years :-)

Sorry I don't have dates for the earlier ones. First one I'm guessing was around 2002*.

I'm now thinking of making Eve an exact clone of Adam (save obviously the necessary chromosomes).

---

*I started illustrating for GT in 1998 - illustrations were black & white, and teachers had to colour them, which is what I've done here. The Visual Aids started being printed in colour in 2003. That was Abraham, so this would be the beginning of that syllabus cycle. If you care :-)

Thoughts on Genesis 2

Work

Adam was not put in the garden just to frolic around on an endless holiday, but to work. (Totally fulfilling work, of course.)

We talk about 'unspoiled nature'. But actually a managed estate was more like what God was aiming for in his creation.

Guard

Adam was also put there to keep/watch over/guard it (depending on translation). Not sure that allowing someone to inveigle your colleague into disregarding a direct command of your employer, and then following suit, comes under that job description...

Interestingly, the same word is used for the cherubim at the entrance to the garden after the Fall. Adam was put into the garden to guard it - now God has to send cherubim to guard it (specifically the Tree of Life) from him.

Rule

 

We often hear that Adam & Eve were only given one rule. But we don't know that. We are only told of one rule - because they broke that one. Maybe there were others.

Helper

Eve was created to be Adam's helper. People often read this (either approvingly or disapprovingly) as meaning Eve was subordinate, inferior, a mere assistant or even servant. But the word `ezer is used 21 times in the Bible. Twice referring to Eve; three times for other people, and the remaining 16 times referring to God himself being the helper of a human or humans!

Suitable

This is clearly a difficult word to translate, as it is translated in many ways: 'meet', 'comparable to', 'just right', 'suitable', 'fit for', 'corresponding to', 'his complement', 'his counterpart', 'his like'. 

Looks like either likeness or perfect compatibility (or both) is the point.

Of course, 'like' does not mean 'identical', as should be obvious just by looking :-) Equal and complementary.