Romans part IV

So here we are, roughly 2/3 of the way through this drawing. We're following Abraham's line on through Rebecca to the twins, Esau and Jacob. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our first child and I had babies on the brain (this seems to be a theme with our family, almost 13 years later and we just had another little one!). So I was at pains to draw umbilical cords, women in agony and... water jars. It seemed to fit with all the boil some water, get some newspapers and clean sheets advice I had always heard on TV. And it also was a nice way of not-too-subtlely referencing the Romans 9 vessels of wrath and vessels of honor.

So what about the ram on the altar? It was a nice counterpoint to the lamb on the altar that we saw earlier. It also serves as a visual for Isaac between Abraham and Jacob. The Hebrew inscription says "The LORD will provide". Or at least that is what I was told!

The procession of people in various stages of temptation are slowly making their way to the foreground and will be resolved in the next part of the drawing.The very strange skeleton man on the right will have to wait until next Monday!

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!

Romans Drawing

This is the second part of where I talk about my thesis drawing from college. If you will recall, it was an allegory of the the New Testament book of Romans. I'll be brief here because many books have been written about Romans and I don't want to add another one. Besides, drawings are not books!

I spent about two months on this piece working about 40 hours a week. (As a lengthy aside, when will I ever have time like that again? Probably never. I was told in high school that it doesn't get any easier than this. I thought the people saying that were nuts; then I got to college and realized they were right. But then I was told by my professors that I would never have the kind of time I had at that point to work on my artwork. I thought they were nuts. Then I had children... I've never had it as easy as I did in college! College is a weird place that tempts one to become very, very selfish. Nowhere on earth is a person so encouraged to follow his own, stupid little whims as he is in college. It's like a seedbed of narcissistic solipsists. I'll stop here since I seem to be veering down some strange road that will dead end in a rant.)

As I was saying, I spent about 40 hours a week for two months on this drawing. The medium is charcoal with ink on a roll of Rives BFK paper. I used myself as a model, my wife, various students, folks from my imagination, characters from art history.

The portion of Romans covered in these sections of the drawing is chapters 1-4. St. Paul talks a lot about universal condemnation, grace, and a covenant through Abraham.

Look for Tio Paquete as I lifted him straight from Goya. Also, there is more robbery of Goya here!

This is a anthropomorphized lamb, am I right?

The action moves along from Adam and Eve way in the background and snakes its way up to the foreground through Moses and along to Abraham as he has a vision of his offspring. The falling fireballs are a convention that I took from Albrecht Durer and his Apocalypse woodcuts. I won't say much more than that. Read it here. Or read it at your house, you have a bible at home, right?

An Oldie. A Very, Very Oldie

In recent weeks I have had a couple of requests to dig up an old drawing. It's a drawing I did about 13 years ago for my MFA thesis project. The title of this behemoth is Romans: An Allegory of the Gospel According to Paul. It is, as you may have guessed, an allegory. Of Romans.

To say that this is a large piece that is difficult to get photographed and on this blog doesn't give you the full feeling for the situation. This drawing is 42" tall by something like 36' long. You'll notice that I wrote a ' and not a " behind that number 36. That means feet. So the drawing is 42 inches tall by 36 feet long. This is like that scene in Spinal Tap where the guys want a giant model of Stonehenge on stage but they get a tiny little model instead. Whoever came up with the plans used " instead of ' when they made their drawings. Funny stuff, watch it and be amused.

There are a great many things that I would do differently if I were to make this drawing again today. For starters, I would retitle it to read something like Romans: The Gospel According to St. Paul. Not much of a difference you say? Maybe not, but I have grown to dislike allegories and I certainly am not on a first name basis with St. Paul. If anyone was a saint, he was. And if you're uncomfortable calling him Saint, maybe you could at least call him Mr. Paul?

As a sort of teaser for what's to come, here's the postcard that I sent out for the show.

It's B&W not because I was a cheapskate, but because the original is B&W! I
mean, I AM a cheapskate, but that's not what was going on here.

Over the next few weeks on Mondays, I'll write more about this piece and what it means and what it has meant for me. So that means you still have the normal, random results of my wandering pencil to look forward to on Thursdays, so don't panic! Stay with me here!