New Video: “Literary Styles in the Bible”
The third episode of The Bible Project‘s series How to Read the Bible came out last week, analyzing some of the overarching subgenres of biblical literature. Check it out:
From the beginning, we knew that we wanted to use three different artistic styles to represent the three categories of narrative, poetry, and discourse. But we didn’t want to leap into it haphazardly, so TBP gave me an extra week to fill up a wall will inspirational images and “visual development,” and to establish “rules” for how these different visual worlds would function. (TBP’s art director, Robert Peréz, is really into creating these “rules.)
Reflections on “Read Scripture”
For the past year and a half, I’ve been illustrating for The Bible Project, a non-profit here in Portland that creates short, educational, animated videos about the bible. Though this is a contracted position, it’s effectively a full-time job for me. It’s the gig that finally pried me away from my editorial position at Dark Horse Comics last September.
Specifically, I’ve been drawing for the “Read Scripture” series, which examines each biblical book’s structure and message. That means I drew an enormous, poster-sized diagram for almost every book of the bible! (The exceptions: Exodus, Joshua, Samuel, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Matthew, 1 Corinthians, and Hebrews were drawn by the incomparable Mac Cooper; Ruth, Esther, and Ephesians were drawn by Robert Peréz.) You can view all the videos that have been released so far HERE.
I don’t write these videos; the extensive research and voiceover are the work of Tim Mackie (who also officiated my wedding!). Also, I’m not responsible for the videos’ lively animation…a team of awesome motion graphics artists are responsible for making my static drawings come alive. It’s a collaboration for sure.
I just finished drawing Revelation last month (the video won’t come out until 12/15), so I’ve been trying to gather some of my thoughts on what this experience has taught me. The lessons learned are too many to even list, but a few stood out.
Read MoreBlitzen Trapper music video storyboard
I was privileged to draw storyboards for the music video “Mystery & Wonder,” by the experimental country/folk/rock band Blitzen Trapper, which is based out of my town of Portland, OR. Special thanks to local director/videographer Laki Karavias for the opportunity.
A lot of time passed after Laki & I hammered out the storyboards, to the point where I actually forgot a lot of what I had drawn. When I saw the video months later, it was uncanny! Not only did the barn look almost exactly like the barn I had drawn, but the actress cast in the role of the “muse,” Y La Bamba‘s Luz Mendoza, was a dead ringer for the figure in my sketches.
Temple Dog!
This short, sweet story was part of Cloudscape Comics’ Mega Fauna anthology. It was written by Angela Melick and features a baby elephant!
Read MoreX Pinup
One of my greatest joys and privileges in my “other life” as an assistant editor at Dark Horse Comics has been working on the superhero comic X. One of the most successful characters (along with Ghost) that Dark Horse created during the heady years of the mid-1990s, X is an archetypical vigilante antihero – a borderline-insane bruiser with a fanatical zeal for enforcing his own law in the nearly lawless city of Arcadia. The comic was re-launched in 2012 with a (slightly) more grounded, 21st-century recession vibe, but it’s still a gleefully violent mess.
This scene I illustrated is from X #12, my favorite issue of the current run, in which mob boss Carmine Tango lures X into a triple-trap where he’s ganged up on by Gamble, a swaggering, luck-obsessed hitman, Deathwish, a suicidal maniac obsessed with X’s punishment, and Tango’s own lethal secretary, Ella. X loses this fight BIG TIME!
I kinda pushed outside my “comfort zone” for this illustration. Realistic proportions don’t come easily to me, and most of my characters end up about six or seven heads tall instead of the standard superhero eight. I also tend to drape my characters in baggy clothes, which disguise those parts of muscular anatomy that I’ve never really learned. The jumble of sixteen different limbs was actually really hard to arrange without creating tangencies. If I had to do it all over, I’d try to compose a more daring angle, with more foreshortening – as it is, the figures look a little too parallel to the plane of the page. But with all those caveats, I’d say it’s not bad for my first true “superhero” drawing.
Read MoreJosé y Maria
This was our Christmas card for 2014, depicting Jesus’s parents in a modern setting. I was inspired by a number of evocative “imagine what it would have been like”-type sermons I heard earlier this year, and also (as usual) by the work of Will Eisner, who so often depicted, with religious reverence, noble individuals enduring the many minor discomforts and petty indignities of urban America.
The main goal of this illustration was to pack as many clever biblical references into the scene as possible. I won’t list every one (there are at least a dozen), but a few that I’m proudest of are: the verse from the prophet Ezekiel in the graffiti on the phone kiosk, the way the “Save More!” behind Mary’s head looks kinda like “Ave Maria!,” and the two ads for “Glad” and “Tide” on the newspaper (get it?).
Read MoreDream Thief Pinup
This is a pinup I did for the Dark Horse comic Dream Thief, which is written by Jai Nitz and drawn by the incredible Greg Smallwood. Dream Thief recounts the misadventures of John Lincoln, an Atlanta slacker/stoner who steals an aboriginal mask from a museum that causes him to be possessed by the vengeful ghosts of murder victims while he sleeps. As the Dream Thief, he keeps waking up in new, unfamiliar places with a headful of someone else’s memories (and skills) and usually a dead body or two lying around.
The first arc of Dream Thief, last summer, took this poor guy to a drug den in Wilmington, a Klan rally in Tupelo, and a high-stakes card game in Memphis. The second arc, coming out this summer, is mostly in Georgia and Florida. Will Dream Thief ever make it to New Orleans? My illustration speculates how it might go down.
There are a lot of things that still bug me about this drawing – the colors in particular look odd from monitor to monitor. To be fair, the visual over-stimulation of Mardi Gras is pretty hard to color tastefully. But I did enjoy playing with the cartoony iconography, and the chance to depict a small slice of the city where I was born and raised, with all its diversity and dilapidated charm.
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Symphony Number Six!
My newest comic, Symphony Number Six, is finally here! Click here to read this spooky, atmospheric horror story set in the world of classical music!
Read MoreBUzZKiLL Pinup
I drew this pinup for the Dark Horse comic Buzzkill. This four-issue miniseries, both one of the funniest and the saddest I’ve had the privilege to work on as an assistant editor, is about a superhero named Ruben who derives his powers from drinking alcohol and who enters a 12-step program to get clean.
I really enjoyed throwing together this motley group of generic supervillains. The cowboy hippo in the upper right has been a big hit. Because of the way the colors fade, he looks a little bit like a ghost cowboy hippo. “Roooooben! You may have killed me, but I will haunt you till the end of yer daaaaays!”
Read MoreSavage Nobles in the Land of Enchantment
My first graphic novel, which was originally syndicated on its own website, now lives here at everettpatterson.com!
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