Venner for alltid: A christian book about relationships (first post)

This winter I did illustrations for a christian book about relationships. Gunnleik, the author, is a friend of mine who I have worked together with at the youth café in the city. The book got published through YWAM Norway´s own publishing house Prokla Media.

The book has gotten it´s own little website, and you can see an excerpt of the book down here.

I only had very little time to make the illustrations, but still I wanted to do a god job. The initial idea of the author was to have an eighties style of cartoony illustrations in the book. But we dropped that style quite quickly. Luckily.

Fine lines

As we worked on the book, we saw that we had to draw fine lines on quite a few places. The biggest challenge was to visualise the whole subject of relationships, love and sex in a way that would not be too boring or watered-down on the one hand, while not trying to cross the line of christian-decency on the on the other hand.
We discovered that this line was at a bit of a different place with me than with the others, who were all fathers of teenagers themselves. So, they were thinking as fathers and teachers, while I was called in as an illustrator who wants to make good pictures that get the message across in a best way possible.

To illustrate that the devil trying to destroy society´s cornerstone, the family,
we got very graphic and drew an ugly little devil that is blowing up a house,
there is also a drawing of devils that are sawing the thumb off of someone´s hand.

I got to work some of the chapter-titles into the first big picture that comes with every chapter.
This chapter-title reads: What is love

After I sent all the drawings to the designer, he put them with every chapter,
I am really happy with how this ended out over two pages.

My favourite picture is this one of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery,
I really like the look of mercy in Jesus face.

In the meantime, me and a number of others at Grimerud are on a 31 day drawing challenge. Every day for a month, we all draw the same topics, and share them with each other on our pinterest-board.