Chief O'Brien Freelance Work

Hello everyone. Today I have a freelance illustration I completed last month. I got a message from a friend I hadn't talked to in years about an illustration she needed and let me tell you it was definitely God's timing as I really needed the work.

Linda needed a drawing of the Star Trek Next Generation character Chief O'Brien for a friend's upcoming birthday. I tend to stay away from charicatures because they aren't really my strong suit. I know that may sound lame, but when I work for pay I always want to do my absolute best, and so I am a very harsh critic, and that always leaves me feeling like a charicature could have been better. ANYWAY, I took the job and got down to work.

The Chief needed to be in his wetsuit and kayak(which we see him with a few times when he is in the holo-deck on the show) that was the easy part. Getting it to LOOK like O'Brien was where I spent most of my time, and sweat bullets over the several klunkers that I scribbled out in my first pass. It took me 3 different drawing sessions (on my breaks at my day job) to capture him, but I finally got there. I get a lot of work done in the one hour of breaks i get over the course a 10 hour day at work(GE Aviation). Be on the lookout in the coming months for an illustrated guide to the Gospel of John that I illustrated almost entirely this way.

I think the step in the creation that took the longest on this illustration of Cheif O'Brien was the color work in Photoshop. Painting the color always takes longer than I budget the time for. I always try to create a dramatic, visually appealing black and white drawing that stands alone. This time though the color really helps to sell what is going on in the scene, I think it came out well. I like the way the purple kayak jumps out at you from the river scene. I went with soft, gentle colors and tones for the rocks and boulders. I love the round shape of the boulders, they remind me of the stylized hills I drew in the children's book The Little Leaf by Jairo Penaranda.

I finished this job up and my client was happy with the finished product (thank you again Linda!). I hope the birthday recipient enjoys it too. Thanks for stopping by and reading about this project, I hope you enjoyed it. God bless you.

Looking Through a God Lense

Hello my friends. Today I have a sketch from the sermon we had at Northside Baptist church last week. Joshua Pope delivered this message about how the Bible tells us we are to view ourselves, and how we view God. You can listen to the complete message here.

UPDATE:

I had time to do a quick color version of this illustration. The idea is that when we look through the lense of Jesus we see the world as it is, hence the color where Jesus overlaps the globe.

We want to get to Heaven and spend eternity with God. The first thing we need to do is be honest with where we are. You can't figure out how to get someplace if you don't know where you are. Be honest. What shapes your perspective? Is it the world? Are you listening for the call of God? Where are you? Who do you hang out with? Are they a good influence? Do they pull you away from Christ, or push you towards Him?

We are all seperated from God, because of the sin we choose. God cannot abide our sin. God had a plan to fix it though, He sent His son Jesus to pay the price for us through His death on the cross. We need to look honestly at ourselves and see the need we have for God's grace. Talk to God about it. Ask forgiveness, and then to live for Jesus, the instructions on how to do that are right there in your Bible. If you want to learn more about choosing Christ please send me a message.

In my illustration here we are looking at the world through a Jesus lense. Just as it should be. I wanted to add color to the part of the globe that you see through Jesus, but I ran out of time. Maybe I can knock that out quickly after lunch.

I hope that you have enjoyed my synopsis of the sermon, and my illustration. Please go and listen to the sermon by Pastor Josh. I hope that you are challenged or encouraged by my post, and that you will open your Bible and learn more about God and how much He loves you. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me, if I don't have the answer I'll ask my pastor and get back to you. May God richly bless you my friends, until next time.--Ryan

Sunday Sermon John 2:13

Hello everyone. Today I have an illustration I started last Sunday in church. We find ourselves in the second chapter of John this time. In this sermon Jesus is in the temple for the Passover. You can view the full sermon here.

The people come to make sacrifices to pay for their sins. In order to do this because they had to travel on foot (mostly) to get to the temple it was more convenient to purchase your sacrifice once you get there. Because they were traveling for some distance some needed to exchange their currency. The trouble is they had the money changers, animals, birds inside the courts. Animals (doing animal things like pooping and peeing where ever they please) people yelling and haggling. They were also charging exorbitant prices becuase they knew the people had to have these things in order to observe the Passover. All of these things defiled the house of the Lord because it was taking place inside the temple courtyards.

Jesus makes a whip out of cords which took time. He thought about what he was doing, it wasn't a split second reaction like you and I make when someone cuts us off in traffic. He was not out of control. Jesus thought this out. It was a reaction based on how they were treating His father's. They were desecrating the temple. A holy place.

Using the whip Jesus runs the animals and people out, flips over the tables, breaks up the cages, saying to them (in verse 16) "Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade." His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."(verse 17) One of the lessons to take away from this message is not to make worship convenient to you, lift God up, worship Him, remember it's all about Him.

Another lesson to take away is that Jesus is telling them (verses 18-25) that He is replacing the old system of blood sacrifice to pay for the sins of the people. He will pay our debt. His blood pays for all our sins, making THE way for us to get to His father.

I hope that you have enjoyed my synopsis of the sermon, and my illustration. Please go and listen to the sermon by Pastor Ryan. I hope that you are challenged or encouraged by my post, and that you will open your Bible and learn more about God and how much He loves you. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me, if I don't have the answer I'll ask my pastor and get back to you. May God richly bless you my friends, until next time.--Ryan

Sunday Sermon Series John 1:35-51

Hello everyone. Today I have an illustration I created last Sunday in church. We have been working our way through the gospel of John. In this sermon Jesus calls his disciples to follow him. You can view the full sermon here.

The week before John introduced us to Jesus. He was the voice crying out in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. Pointing everyone to Jesus, just as we should be doing. In the selected scripture this week Jesus extends an invitation to some of the disciples to follow him.

The disciples were not nuetral or undecided on Jesus, they dropped what they were doing and followed Him as He began His ministry. They left life long occupations, family and friends, comfort and established lives to follow the messiah. So begins the roughly three year journey to the cross. Imagine hiking along with Jesus for 3 years, seeing miracles, listening to His teaching, seeing Him crucified, and then raised again, and then His ascension!

Here we see Jesus, I've been pretty good lately about staying "on character" which means my drawings of Jesus look like the same character each time. I'm planning on my next book project being a Jesus picture book. I want to do some resesarch and see what kind of knapsacks they used in those days. I know they didn't have extensive wardrobes like we do, but it seems like they would want to carry previsions of some kind.

Here we have the disciples. One is dropping a fishing net, so I suppose that is Andrew, or James or John. I already have a character model for Peter. I was seriously channeling Chevy Chase when I drew the one on the far left. Remember in the movie Fletch, where Fletch is undercover on the beach, as a roller skating hippy dude. hahaha... yeah, I know, back to the point.

I hope that you have enjoyed my synopsis of the sermon, and my illustration. Please go and listen to the sermon by Pastor Ryan there is good truth revealed in this scripture about following Jesus. I hope that you are challenged or encouraged by my post. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me, if I don't have the answer I'll ask my pastor and get back to you. May God richly bless you my friends, until next time.--Ryan

Mary and the Angel

Merry Christmas everyone! Today I have an illustration from a sermon I heard a couple weeks ago about Mary, Jesus' mom. The sermon was about Luke 1:26-38, and you can watch/listen to it here.

I got a bit off track on this illlustration. As I listened to Josh's sermon about Mary's story I thought about the different descriptions of angels we are given in the Bible, and thought about how I would approach it. In the past I have drawn a man with wings, which seems to be the most acceptable version these days. But then I got to thinking I always try to stay as close to scripture as I can so I really should strive to be correct with this drawing. While listening to the sermon I worked on Mary, and then over the course of the next several days I drew up the different versions of angels and came up with what you see here and what I hope is a fun and different way to present them. These two are from Ezekiel 1. Then I remembered that angels are described in the new testament as shining or glowing men, but they don't describe wings. So maybe I should go that route next time. I sure had fun with putting this all together.

While the angel is definiteyly not the focus of this story (the impending birth of our Lord and savior is) I hope you like what I came up with.

I hope you have enjoyed this illustration, and that you will go and listen to Josh's sermon, it was really good. God bless you all, and merry Christmas!

Sunday Sermon Series From the Book of Acts

Hello everyone. Today I have a couple of illustrations from sermons I heard last spring, when we were working through the book of Acts. Usually I have complete, finished illustrations to show you. Sometimes I take the time to color them, I really miss doing that, but I just don't have the time anymore. These are rough, not completely finished illustrations. The scripture covered in the first illustration is Acts 13:13-52, and the scripture covered in the second illustration is Acts 15:1-41. I have another good sermon and illustration inbetween these two and while I love the concept I came up with it was in to rough of a stage to present here.

In this first piece of scripture Paul lays out a succinct, complete gospel message in Antioch and Pisidia. From Egypt, to David, to John the Baptist and then Jesus. The people BEGGED to hear more of this teaching as they went out, and the next Sabbath huge crowds turned out, which filled the Jewish leaders with jealousy and anger. Go and read verse 46 to see if Paul and Barnabus were intimidated, haha... yeah right. They tell the Jewish leaders if you won't hear it, we'll take the gospel to the Gentiles(and the Gentiles rejoiced!).

I really enjoyed drawing this scene, and love the way it came out. It's a different sort of a scene than I usually draw. Most often I try to draw an action. Something exciting, to draw the viewer in. This time Paul is preaching, the others are sitting and listening. I really like how the characters came out, and how they I was able to stay "on character", or make them look like my other drawings of Paul and Barnabus.

The second piece of scripture covered here is Acts 15: 1-41. Here Paul, Barnabus and the Apostles and elders get together to settle the circumcision of the Gentile believers, with Paul and Barnabus saying all you need is Jesus, not Jesus plus the law, or circumcision, or anything else. James agrees with them, and backs them up in verses 13-21, the entire group agrees, and sends Paul and Barnabus out to spread the news. Then we come to the split. The group also agrees to send Silas and Judas(AKA Barsabbas) to help on the journey. Barnabus also wants to take John Mark along on the trip(who if you remember left Paul and Barnabus back in Pamphylia in the beginning of the story), and Paul is against it. A sharp disagreement ensues, and the parties split up with Barnabus and John Mark going to Cyprus, Paul and Silas to Cyprus. I leave you to ponder that whole situation, perhaps at some point I'll get to hear a sermon about how they work it out in the end, but that's a story for another day.

As you can see here this drawing is as I said in a rough stage. Their feet aren't even completely finished, and some of the textures are not as refined as I usually like to get them. I really wanted to share these with you all, so I hope you don't mind.

The characters we see here are Paul and Silas, Barnabus and John Mark (That's the same John Mark that left them and went back to Jerusalem back at the beginning of chapter 13, which really cheesed Paul off). This sermon is the last one our family went toat NW Gospel Church in Washington before we moved to Kansas. June of 2023 seems like ages ago. While we miss our family and friends in the Pacific North West, we have found a terrific, strong church family to join at North Side Baptist Church.

I hope that you have enjoyed my synopsis of the sermons, and my illustrations. to hear the sermons please go here(Acts 13), and here (Acts 15). I hope that you are challenged or encouraged by my post.

As always if you have any questions please feel free to drop me a line, if I don't know the answer I'll find out for you. May God richly bless you my friends, until next time.--Ryan

Sunday Sermon Series Maturity of Faith

Hello everyone! Today I have an illustration from a sermon I heard pastor Ryan Whitley preach last month. October 1, 2023 to be exact. The scripture covered is Ephesians 4:7-16 and the audio can be found here.

Pastor Ryan begins by explaining that spiritual growth and maturity in believers is our goal, not just a larger flock. Living a life worthy of the calling we have received. Paul tells us that we should not be babies anymore, infants in the faith. God wants us to mature. We should not be tossed back and forth by the waves. We should be stable, of sound judgement. What does that look like for us, how do we mature? 1. Spirtual gifts to serve the body. That means using the gifts (skills and abilities) that God has blessed you with, for the benefit of the church, the body of Christ. 2. God gives us spiritual leaders. Leaders who challenge, encourage, equip the body and point us continually to Christ and the power/promise of the gospel so that we might go out into the world and share it. 3. God gives us unity so that we can work together. We can't all serve on the worship team, but if we show up willing and ready to do what we can, to serve the body then we grow into maturity.

What then does maturity look like? We become Christ like. We serve others, we show love one another. We are the hands and feet of Jesus. Showing non believers love while remaining grounded in our faith(see John 8:3-11). We leave behind our life of sin. We do our part individually, cooperating/serving together.

So why the drawing of the man in the boat, and Jesus reaching out? Because to be mature we must be be stable regardless of the waves that come in the storms of life. Jesus is there the whole time. The last few months have taught me that. "Hold fast, and trust in Him." has been on my mind daily. God is using our circumstances to force us to grow, to mature, to be strong in our faith. To trust in Jesus for EVERYTHING. To put GOD first.

I hope that you have enjoyed my synopsis of the sermon, and my illustration. Please go and listen to the sermon by Pastor Ryan there is good truth revealed in this scripture for new Christians who want to learn what is next, and for older Christians who need to know what the goal is. I hope that you are challenged or encouraged by my post. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me, if I don't have the answer I'll ask my pastor and get back to you. May God richly bless you my friends, until next time.--Ryan