Drawing Dead Theologians
My first professional sketching job was drawing simple line art to be engraved on tombstones. For example, I did an outline of a school bus in memory of a bus driver. If you want my early portfolio you will have to visit a small cemetery in central Illinois. It was a little morbid, but it was enough to spark my entrepreneurial and artistic ambitions.
But when I sensed a call to ministry I thought I was leaving my sketchpad behind in order to pick up some theology textbooks. I was well-intentioned. I was wrong. God doesn’t waste any of our passions. I wrote about my journey back towards sketching here in this Touchstone Magazine article.
This last semester I had the privilege of doing sketch illustrations of several dead theologians for LifeWay Christian Resources, perhaps a nod to my early days as an artist. The illustrations are of eight different Christian leaders of the past for the Legacy of Faith Series. The sketches are all viewable with the author/books they represent at legacyoffaithlibrary.net.
This is a great collection of books, by the way. They are all leather bound and come in a little wooden crate like bookshelf to display. They only do one print run of the series so they will only be available for a limited time. You should check them out.