When I look around, the vast majority of religious art I see falls into a very small list of categories. I see generic angels praying, lots of images of a Caucasian man with a red beard hugging things, fancy crosses or the same four scenes from Sunday School stories. Sure, these might be done to spread the Word or praise God and they might make people think about religious things, but it’s pretty bland compared to what I see in the windows of churches and old religious books. Christianity as been around for centuries, yet we don’t seem to be very creative in our religious art anymore.
More alarming I think is that there’s so little teaching about what is out there. When I was in Sunday School, I saw all of the pretty stained glass windows in the church, but I didn’t have a clue what the majority of them were about. I saw books, candles, animals, random people holding everything from ship parts to weapons to plants, symbols that may or may not be letters in a language I didn’t know and other oddities that didn’t make sense. It mostly looked like someone had attempted to illustrate a dictionary using the windows of the church.
Christianity has a very rich history of symbolism, and the Bible itself has a large number of events and stories to draw inspiration from. Yet this seems to be largely ignored in favor of generic designs we’ve seen a million times. So I’ve set up this site as a means to teach some of the symbolism, how to improve one’s own artistic abilities and encourage people to make new art. I know that not everyone is going to want to do religious art, but the drawing tips and tutorials should assist everyone that wants to draw regardless of what they are going to make.
The desire to create is part of human nature, and it should be allowed to grow and flourish. So come, take your pencil or pen, your mouse or tablet, or whatever you want to use, and let’s make the world a more beautiful place together.Back to the top of the page