Artist Needed!
Do you draw comic-book or cartoon-style people? We need a few cartoon-style or fantasy-style illustrations done for a children’s Alternative Herstory/History Bible my daughters and I are creating as we go along in our Christian homeschool curriculum.
The Mystery School once had a young-lady who can draw comic-book figures but she moved to Spain or something and I can no longer get a hold of her. Here’s what she drew for us ten years ago “back in the day” — when our Mystery School was still being converted to online format. Â I have always loved the way she did Jesus’ face. She was 16 years old at the time, very gifted.
My daughters are ages 5 to 13 and we are writing this book of alternative “complete” Bible stories together. I told them we could even publish the end result via Lulu or another self-publishing outfit. They want to illustrate it with scenes from the lives of missing Bible ladies/girls (such as the mysterious Norea, first daughter of Adam and Eve, who appears in Gnostic writings, but was edited out of the Old Testament) and plucky children like the pair of twins born the day the Ark landed. Don’tcha know, Noah’s daughter-in-law was pregnant when she got on the ark and had boy-girl twins the very day they disembarked. The twins received rainbow names because the rainbow was in the sky when they were born. The boy was Indigo-Elam and the girl was named Scarlet. Indigo-Elam is mentioned in the Bible as Elam, a word meaning “Nation”, but the girl-twin is not. We tell the story of their childhoods, games they played, journeys they made such as to the spot where the Garden of Eden once stood. No, they did not marry each other but one of their (younger) cousins. We tell those stories too, all the while drawing from Hebrew tradition and folklore to make the OT stories far more fascinating to children.
Here is another example of the simple style of artwork my daughters respond to (presumably other children will like it too). It’s basically comic book or coloring book style figures. Look at the bottom two images of Sarah, wife of Abraham. The top picture on this page is a classical painting, ignore that one (altho it’s very pretty painting of Sarah as a girl) but the bottom two are sort of comic-book / children’s illustration style — just what we are looking for. I can provide other links of art we like if you are interested.
We’re telling Sarah’s story alongside Abram’s in our alternative Bible stories book. Her name is Hebrew for “Princess” and she was once “taken” by Pharoah, so great was her beauty. As the website above says, “She is the first woman of the Bible to be spoken of as ‘a fair woman to look upon.’ She is also the first to teach us about how the power of faith can deliver us.” Girls like these kinds of stories and are tired of seeing Sarah shown only as a grandma-having-a-baby in most illustrations. They want to see and read about her when she was their age, when she got married, etc. They want to hear about other children like Seth, Son of Eve, like Enoch, a unique boy with an awesome mother.
Everything from the Mark of Cain and Satan, to Eve’s necklace (that mysteriously survived the Flood), Adam’s magikal alphabet, to Job’s secret matriarchal family legacy, to why God and Mother-God created Earth in the first place, including the Plan to fix humanity post-Fall is explained — all for children.
We wrote a cool story about Enoch as a boy, revealing how it was he came to “walk with God”, his teen years, the girl he met and married, her decision to leave her village and go out to live with him in the outlands because Enoch built their house himself right near Eden’s Gate.  My girls’ favorite part of that story explains why Methuselah (Enoch’s son) ended up being the longest lived person. While the young Mrs. Enoch was expecting Methuselah she went into early labor. Enoch, who had already been “walking with God” took her to the site where the Garden of Eden once lay  hoping to pray to God and Mother-God and help his wife and unborn child. Eden had been taken back up to Heaven a few centuries after Adam and Eve left it. Enoch and his wife lived next to the now flat spot of white sand where nothing had yet grown. The couple went out onto the magical white-sand site the night she went into early labor. Suddenly, the moon came out and so did God-the-Mother and God-the-Father, just like they had once walked with Adam and Eve at the same place. God-the-Mother asks if they would like to see the spot where the Tree of Life once stood and led them to it. The white sand seemed to glow there. Mrs Enoch stumbled, doubling over with another premature labor pain. As she caught herself going down into a sitting position on the sand, one hand touched the ground palm flat where the Tree of Life once stood. She felt something go up her arm and into her body. The labor stopped and the baby Methuselah was born healthy 3 months later. My girls make me tell that story over and over. It leads to other stories, Enoch’s Village grows up around their house, the lost Book of Enoch is stored in the house and given to a daughter to preserve when Enoch “ascends” to heaven (the bible says “god took him”). Eventually Noah is born in the same house since Enoch is his great-great-grandfather.
In this way we are adding a bunch of “forgotten” and left out family stories into the traditional Bible stories. We would love to have an illustrator.
If you are an artist or know someone who is, do please send me some examples of your artwork. I can offer major tuition credits with the Seminary and Mystery School and of course your work will be fully credited.
Sincerely,
+Katia Romanoff
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Rt. Rev. Katia Romanoff, Ph.D.
Director, Bishop
Esoteric Interfaith Church, Seminary & Mystery School
http://northernway.org