New Bible Picture website Launched!

Our brand new website is finally live! Click here to visit the new 'Bible Picture website'. You can now view every picture in each picture set, in large format!
We are asking all of our previous 'Visual Impact Resources' customers, (and all new customers), to register on the new 'Foundation Matters' website. Registration only takes a minute to complete, and we can then keep you up-to-date with news of each new picture set as it becomes available.

All of our new picture sets which have been completed over the last two years are now ready to view. We've had one or two teething problems where the thumbnail pictures have jumped out of sequence but don't worry, when you receive each powerpoint all the pictures will be in the correct order!

Those of you who are familiar with the old 'Visual Impact Resources' website will be wondering where all the older picture sets have gone. (We had over 100 Bible stories already illustrated but in a less detailed, or cartoon, style). All these picture sets are still available and will be slowly added back onto the new site under the heading 'Previous Series'. So, if you can't find the story you're looking for, drop a quick email to Jem Hudson.
We wanted to concentrate first of all in getting all the recent pictures, (done over the last two years), onto the web for the first time!

The picture above is from our recently finished picture set which tells the story of 'Abraham and Isaac'.
There are six pictures in this set which brings our total Bible picture count to 827. Don't forget to check out the new website here!

Latest V.I.R. News Update!

C.E.F.
We had a call last week from C.E.F. Europe, with a view to us producing Bible pictures for them! C.E.F. Europe run over 3,000 children's clubs across Europe reaching 400,000 children each year, and their resources are produced in 29 languages!
A chap from C.E.F. is flying to the U.K. to meet us in a few days. We are hoping that we can work together with C.E.F. in the future.

U.B.M.
United Beach Mission are using our resources on a national scale this year.
Their teams will be out in force around the coasts of the u.k. during the summer months, (that's if we get a summer this year, it's like the monsoon season at the moment!) Please pray for the U.B.M. teams.

N.T.M.
'New Tribes' continue to use our resources, in fact our very first internet sale was to a missionary in Greenland! Here's a photo of our pictures being used by missionaries in Thailand.

Free Bible coloring pictures!
We were asked a while ago if we could help out some missionaries in Guatemala by supplying them with coloring pictures to go with their Bible lessons for children:
"Aventura a través de La Biblia"
This is something that I am trying to do in my 'downtime' (which I don't have much of!)
Each picture has a Bible memory verse in Spanish and will also be made available for free download via the 'Sermons4kids' site in the U.S. Watch this space!
2,500 children in Guatemala will be using these pictures every week! So it's a worthwhile project.

'Judging the Competition'
I have been asked by Nate Butler, (President of ICC) if I would take part as a judge in the second 'International Christian Comics Competition'. There will be a judge from each continent so it's truly an 'International' event.
I'm really looking forward to viewing the competition entries.
You can view all the entries to the competition here. Enjoy!

'New 3D Books!'
We have four new 3D books in the pipeline! The new 3D conversions of our latest Bible pictures look really stunning! (Thanks Jim). Can't wait for these new books to come out!
That will give V.I.R. ten titles in all, and 60,000 books in print! 'Small fry' in publishing terms, but we're pleased that the books are continuing to sell well! I'll let you know when we have a publishing date for the new titles.

We would appreciate your prayers for all the above projects.

Gathering Bible references

A fellow artist once told me that "An artist is only as good as his references". After five years of illustrating the Bible, I now know that to be true!
Gathering references can be a time consuming but important task. Made all the more difficult for me as we are providing a series of 5-6 pictures on average, for each Bible story, which means that I need references of the same people/buildings from different angles!

Before you begin to illustrate a Bible story, there are many types of reference that you will need. Firstly, I would like to deal with 'figure reference'.
Figure reference is arguably the most important, as each story focuses on the characters in it.

The best form of figure reference is photographic, but finding photos of people in Bible clothing is not easy. If you can lay your hands on some good Bible clothing, invite all your bearded friends around, (the male ones anyway!), and get snapping!

It's also important for an artist to elaborate on his photographic references, otherwise a combination of a poor choice of models and Bible clothing can result in a beautiful painting of the twelve disciples that look more like twelve software engineers at a toga party!

If you have the luxury of time (and money) to do the above, that's great. But, if you're working to a deadline like me, then go for 'plan B' which is, get your references from anywhere and everywhere! Old books, old Bibles, old photos, old masters, even old comics! Cataloging your references in a filing cabinet will save you lots of time.
(I must do that one day!)

'Bible buildings and landscape reference'. (See my 'No more domes' post).
You may or may not have noticed that Bible illustrators, on the whole, avoid illustrating buildings. Why is this? I think there's a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that there's very little good reference available.
One artist who does include detailed back-grounds however was William Hole RSA RE.
Hole actually travelled to the Holy land in the early 1900's and painted his pictures on the spot!
His book 'The Life of Jesus of Nazareth' includes some really nice buildings.
When you compare Holes pictures however to photographs taken around the same period, you will notice some very similar architectural features, which means that if those features were around in Holes day, they were probably not around 2,000 years earlier. Despite this, these pictures still include some of the best 'Bible buildings' I've seen!
to be continued:

Related posts:
Bible Research
Illustrating a Bible Story
More Biblical costume reference!
Which Bible clothing colors should I use?
Easy mistakes to make!
Bible study aids