Oh how he loves us

Jon Brown gave me the heads up on this guy...

Cheeky Vid, Great song. In fact I’d say a definite power tune!

Image is from his site…
http://www.thejohnmark.com/

He’s also got an album coming out soon, which should be good.

Graphic Novel Bible

My project- what do people think? I'd like reactions, critiques, biblical correction, prayer and helpful suggestions.

My name is Alex Morgan I’m at the Newfrontiers church in Bristol

I feel compelled to do an unabridged Graphic novel of the Bible, i have decided to start in the book of judges as it stories lend themselves well to comic style action.

The qualities of my project are thus…

aimed at adults, young adults and teens aged 15+
-very historically accurate
-not shying away from the more unsavoury events and issues
-representing the true ethnicity (i.e. no white Jesus)

Below I have posted the first completed page. I plan to add additional pages as i go, so everyone can comment and give critique.

As this is the first page I will also annotate the work so you can see how the sort of things involved with the project.

Panel 1 = Manoah milks a goat, because i wanted to show and everyday work activity and based on later verses about sacrificing a goat and Samson’s gift of a goat to his new bride I concluded they must have at least a couple of goat- the breed is Cretan wild, thought to be the type in the middle east at that time, it as a nanny goat so ‘relatively’ small horns. 

The bowl the goat is eating from and the jug he’s using for the milk are a shape consistent with the archeologically record of the period.

Manoah is dressed on a robe, typical of the period, as depicted in Egyptian reliefs of battle of Kadesh for the Hapiru (Hebrew) people. He and his wife have blue accessories, as each if the clans of Israel have a colour (and gem stone) that is linked to them- for tribe on Dan the colour is blue

Each clan also has an icon that represents them (i.e. the ‘lion’ of Judah) Dan’s icon is a Snake- thus Manoah has a gold snake bracelet. In my graphic novel I plan to run certain themes throughout the book. One is the appearance of the characters, I decided to make all men and woman in each clan to look like their patriarch, (Judah, Rueben, gad etc.) in this case, Danites (in my comic) have tall slim faces, tend towards baldness and the men have a small thin goatee beards.

The trees in the background of all these images are the type of trees that grow in Zorah today (so I guess they were there then too.)

Zorah is Hebrew for Hornet so I have a little hornet flying by as well as one might assume that if the place is called Hornets as there are Hornets in the area. The type of hornet is an oriental
hornet, with yellow stripe tail and dark orangey body

Panel 2 = Manoah’s wife possessing the same long thin face, wearing blue, and carrying a basket of ripe figs. Figs are harvested in Israel in the month of September, I am basing the events in September as the baby prophesied is Samson, Samson mean Sun, or Sunny. So a possibility that he was born in the Summer (maybe June) 9 months earlier is September - obviously this is all conjecture but the is no information to the contrary.

The little goat is there for fun, and also to foreshadow the kid scarified later in this chapter (a goat less than 1 yr old due to Levitical law)

Panel 3 = The Angel of the Lord is depicted as a human in a robe, his face is concealed, the depiction is a match for the image of the messenger/ Jesus in Rev 1 (white hair, gold sash…) , ascribing this appearance as a Christophony but in a slightly subtle way. The appearance is ‘mundane’ as Manoah doesn’t even realise the angel of the Lord is not a man. When he is transfigured at the end of the verse we will see his divine nature.

Speech is green in a green bubble as the green/teal colour represents things that are of the Spirit or in spirit form, for example in the Balaam’s donkey tail the angel who is invisible would be drawn in green/teal and slightly see through, but when the angel appears to Balaam it would be in full colour with black lines.

The woman drops the fruit is shock.

Panel 4 = The angel hovers up in a sort of manifested power, the wind blows, and the background world bends around him as his presence sort of warps reality (causing her to say later he was awesome, but not define why) Again he speaks in green.

The perspective has the angel pointing at the ‘camera’ this is intended to bring a more immediate action but also subconsciously put ‘you’ (the reader) in the place of the woman being prophesied over.

The narration leads us to a new scene

Panel 5 = The woman exclaims to Manoah what happened, as the text does not flow very well in English I split it into a string of small statement, to give the impression she’s in shock just blurting out exclamations. He looks confused and surprised possibly a little annoyed,.

He is decanting the milk inside, he is illuminated by an oil burning lantern (unseen) hence the orange light

Their home is depicted as a Bedouin tent for several reasons; the text refers to this area as the Camp of Dan. Also, in archaeology, bible sceptic state that there was no settlement of Israel in Canaan at this time as very little archaeological evidence can be found (i.e. buildings) but obviously as they were mostly tent dwellers of course there is no record.

Panel 6 = The ‘camera’ zooms in to get a more personal feel, The woman speaks intimately to Manoah, she tells him the prophesy, and he wells up with emotion and has a look of amazed astonishment.

Panel 7 = Manoah falls to his knees and prays, tears streaming (tears or happiness, relief, hope etc) his wife equally moved, cuddles into him and supports him as he prays. His prayer is a request so I’ve depicted him sort of pleading to God.

In the background you can see an urn and jug which is again linked archeologically to this period.

At the food of the panel i conclude the scene with the statement ‘God heard Manoah’. This is actually the start of the following verse but i use it to bookend this scene, and lead in the next scene which happens another day.

Horse

This is an illustration of a horse that I did last summer while I had lots of empty days...

beer mat to london underground advert to design exhibition in brick lane

Student outreach project becomes design exhibit.

Not 100% sure how this network works but it looks like something I would love to be involved with. I thought I would start to post some of my past exhibit work.

One of the canvas’s in the image below started as a promotional beer mat idea for a student outreach mission but quickly became one of the main pieces for my end of year design show two years ago. My final year project was an attempt to illustrate the book of revelations in an contemporary style. This piece also went up in Euston underground station funded by revelation church in north london with an art exhibition organisation called art-below.

Salvation comes from thee

A beautiful modern hymn submitted by Damion Miller

Damion Miller heads up worship at the Kings Arms (Bedford, UK) and has written many songs that are used congregationally.  This song is wonderful.  make sure you listen all the way to the end.

Remember Us

Another old track

No explicit Christian content. Although influenced by observing breakdown in a Christian marriage.

Hence: “remember us complete” and “teach us how to love”

Written in first year, Recorded in final year, Remastered last year.

New York skyline from memory

Artist Stephen Wiltshire draws a spellbinding 18ft picture of New York from memory

This astonishing 18ft drawing of the world’s most famous skyline was created by autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire after he spent just 20 minutes in a helicopter gazing at the panorama.

I’ll let the images speak for themselves. (images © Barcroft Media)

Read the full article on the Daily Mail website.

dontjustsurvive

Don't just survive in Leeds, love it and experience all it has to offer.

Many thousands of people, Christian and non, move to Leeds every single year to paticipate in what I like to call, the “university challenge”. There has always been an epic battle between studying, socialising, exploring your indepence, maturing and developing in readiness for the rest of life which, if you’re flying solo is going to be tough.

A few have noticed the need to support new and old students in the city and as a result dontjustsurvive.co.uk has been birthed.

The site development has been an exciting, challenging and an emotional one. That is to say there have been a few tense hours in the office while some disobedient code has been causing trouble, but I’m happy to report the final product has certainly been worth the sweat and (almost) tears. Though the site has only been live 1 week, we’re already starting to discuss the next steps which leaves me excited.

I encourage you if you’re a student or not to take a look, leave some feedback in the comments and aswer this one question…
Question — In what way(s) would you like to see the site develop to further accomodate and reach it’s goals (see below).

Here’s some information about dontjustsurvive.co.uk:
What exactly is dontjustsurvive.co.uk?

dontjustsurvive.co.uk is a website designed to help students in our city to:
— Not just survive university with a remnant of their faith - but thrive!
— Find a local church and get stuck in - learn and love Jesus! 
— Connect with Christian Unions or missional organisations operating on their higher education campus - make Him known!
— Have a relevant and up to date city resource - The Survival Guide

Why have this resource?
With so many new experiences and opportunities it is vitally important that students are connected to Missional organisations on campus and plugged into the local church as soon as possible so they can make the most of the incredible opportunity university can be.

dontjustsurvive.co.uk aims to help make that connection quicker and more effective.

How does it work?
dontjustsurvive.co.uk allows churches and missional organisations operating on higher education campuses to communicate who they are and what is going happening all on one site. It provides a facility to update information whenever required.

For 2009/10 the site will work with a flier available for students and churches to give out and use to help people make the links they need.

The site has been developed as a collaboration between the Christian Unions, the Christian Union Advisory Board and Chris Mason from Mosaic Church working with David Sorley & Matt Jones from WE_ARE_BOXHEAD ⁄ ™a design studio based in Leeds.

How can you get inolved?
Our aim is that every Christian Union, on-campus missional organisation, and church in Leeds will be represented on the site.

We want to build a huge resource of articles relevant to leeds (bus service information, interesting places see, what to do when the parents visit, the best gig venues and so on) that will be represented in the survival guide.

——————————————————————

If you would like to help make a difference to the student population in Leeds by writing a survival guide article, suggest an article topic or recommend a church or missional on-campus organisation, then please contact us at hello@dontjustsurvive.co.uk

Bible Doodle

Front cover of my bible fell off so I drew on a new one

Was doodled during various sermons at Mobilise Conference last week.