Romans Drawing part III

You've read about it, you've been scintillated by it, now it's time to continue on your journey into my MFA thesis drawing. So far, we've made it into several chapters of Romans and we have left off with Abraham being shown a vision of pregnant Sarah and a sky full of stars.

Not zombies.

We must progress! This part looks a little funny. St. Paul never once mentions zombies (or walkers or biters or lurkers or roamers or geeks or zeke). You'll have to keep in mind that this was waayyyy, waayyyy back in 2001/2002. No one had ever heard of The Walking Dead and the televised zombie apocalypse was still several years in the future. I realize it may not be possible to see this drawing and not think of zombies, but, I promise, that never once entered my mind as I was working. No, these living skeletons are based on the idea of being "dead in trespasses and sin" as it says in Ephesians. I coupled this imagery with St. Paul's use of the term "the old man" and "the body of this death" as he talks of his pre-Christian life (for more of my drawings on this, see here). My idea was simple, the skeletons clutch fruit (remember Adam and Eve at the beginning of the drawing) and then release it as they encounter the lambs. They also begin to come alive. That's why some of them are growing flesh.

Interestingly (to me, anyway) I occur as a model throughout this drawing. I am clean shaven in the beginning and slowly grow a beard by the end of the picture. As I said, it was about two months in the making. So look for the guy with stubble and then a beard and you'll see me!

This line of skele-people continues along the background for a long time. It's meant to correspond to St. Paul's very descriptive account of sin in ch. 7. The folks up front are Hagar, Ishmael, Abraham, Isaac and Sarah. This is to show how the covenant progressed and through whom it did not progress.

We're about half way through the drawing at this point. Stay with me! We'll get to the end together!