One of the Bible stories I will be illustrating soon is the 'Temptation of Christ', This will be a difficult one to illustrate as I will need to interpret the Devil in some way. When you look through different children's Bibles at the story of 'The Temptation of Christ', you realize that few Bible artists agree on what the Devil looks like. The example shown above is just one interpretation from a children's Bible that I have.
Frank Hampson, in 'The Road of Courage' depicted Satan as a simple shepherd. Some show the devil in a female form, as did Mel Gibson in 'The Passion'. and others still as an Angel.
No doubt Satan could take on any of the above forms and more! But, I can't see any good reason why Satan would appear in any other than his natural form, when standing before Christ. After all, there was no way he was going to deceive Christ as to 'who he was!' The question is, what is the natural form of Satan?
It's safe to say that the usual images we see of Satan, like the one above, are inaccurate. The red, hoofed, fork carrying, figure with horns resembles more the mythological creature Pan.
We do know that Lucifer was a fallen Angelic being, a spirit being who was beautiful in appearance and powerful. There's a lot of debate going on as to whether Satan was a covering cherub or not, according to Ezekiel 28. Any comments on that debate might be helpful.
Because we know that Satan was an angelic being I should point readers to the 'Drawing Angels' post, as I have gone into more detail on the subject of angels there.
Norman de la Cruz had been commissioned to work on a new children's Bible for the Philippine Bible Society. Like me, Mr De la Cruz came from an animation background and so was normally able to rough out many pictures a day.
Everything was going well until he came to illustrate the book of Job! An extract follows from an interview with Mr De la Cruz on the 'Asia Pacific' website.
“And things went fairly well until I got to the Book of Job. Then I ran into trouble. I came to the part where Satan asks God to curse Job. I knew I had to illustrate this somehow, but I became stuck. I realized that for most of my life I had been illustrating evil, violence, but here, faced with the originator of all evil, I was powerless to come up with anything. I just sat and stared at my pencils.
I can draft up to 100 illustrations in a day, but I was truly stuck here, unable to lift a pencil. I wondered if I would ever be able to draw again. That was when it came to me that I needed prayer".
I would be interested to know what his final interpretation looked like. If I'm able to get a copy of this Bible from the PBS, I'll let you know! I would be interested to receive any comments on this subject before I begin work on the story.
