"Happy New Year" to all the readers of the Bible illustration blog!
My apologies for not posting recently but things have been extremely hectic here!
I hope everyone had a very pleasant Christmas.
There have been lots of exciting things happening during the closing weeks of 2008 which I would like to share with you. We have now officially teamed up with 'New Tribes Mission' with a view to redoing their Chronological Bible picture set which will now comprise of around 164 pictures. The present set of 105 pictures were painted in 1985 by Caloy Gabulo, an artist from the Philippines. These pictures are used by NTM missionaries to present the Gospel message to primitive people groups around the globe.
This is an exciting and challenging project and many things will have to be taken into consideration as we prepare these pictures as many of the tribal people who will be viewing them have never even seen a picture before!
In one particular tribe, if only half a person is shown in a picture, (e.g. the other half is out of view,) they think that the person must only have one arm and leg! This is just one of the many aspects that need to be considered. We enjoy pictures with dynamic perspective and dramatic lighting because we have developed a sophisticated visual language that we understand and take for granted. It's hard for us to imagine the questions that might come into the minds of those viewing pictures for the first time. Some missionaries have pointed out however that the tribal people's ability to understand and appreciate this visual language develops fast, and so we shouldn't get bogged down with simplifying the pictures too much. They stress that Biblical accuracy should remain paramount in the pictures even though certain aspects of Bible times may be hard at first to explain.
This project is going to be immensely interesting and challenging and there will no doubt be lots to blog about! I would appreciate your prayers as we move forward on this.
The second exciting development is that we are in the process of providing pictures for our very first Bible! The pictures for the 'International Children's Bible' will need to be finished by the end of February. Authentic Media will be looking to publish this Bible in the Summer of 2009, God willing.
Finally, a Christian card producer has taken some of our 'Nativity pictures' with a view to producing a range of Christmas cards and Advent calendars for 2009! Watch this space.
Because of the above workload things might be quiet on the blog until the end of February. If I get chance to post though, I will.
