Idol Scribbling has now been public for a month. I thought I would put together a little “behind the scenes post” to mark this little milestone, and to say thank you to everyone who has been reading, liking and sharing. It means the world to me that you are enjoying this and passing it on.
How far, so far?
Having had a peek at the handy Word Press stats, I found out that Idol Scribblings has been viewed in 29 Countries around the world! Hello and thank you to my readers in…
…France, Taiwan, Greece, Romania, Austria, Belarus, Denmark, Sweden, Peru, Luxembourg, Mexico, Norway, Thailand, Spain, Australia, South Korea, Philippines, Netherlands, Brazil, Finland, India, Switzerland, New Zealand, Israel, Germany, Ireland, Canada, USA and of course the UK.
Don’t be so shy folks! Come and say hello in the comments. Maybe suggest a deity?
Doing the Drawings.
Before I began posting these publicly, I had done around 60 deity drawings. I am now posting them in no particular order, even though my drawing has definitely improved. This has in no small part been thanks to the excellent Anthony Carroll and his art workshops at The Coterie Gallery in Rotherham. The workshop also helps me set time aside every week to work on a new drawing.
Thank you Anthony for putting up with me doing my silly cartoons whilst everyone else does proper art. If you are in Rotherham I can highly recommend visiting The Coterie Gallery. You can find it in the Riverside Precinct.
The drawings start out as pencil sketches, which I then ink using Uni Pin Fine Line pens. I then scan these and tidy them up using Photoshop Touch on my Samsung Tab S2 tablet and add the boarders, text and watermarks. Although they get started at the workshop, they are usually finished sat on the sofa at home.
In the early stages, I did consider adding colour. However, I had a few friends who were enjoying printing them off and colouring them in. So I decided to keep them monochrome. I may do a coloured-in special someday. Until then, I would love to see your colouring in.
This is all about deities, so what do you believe?
I very much like the theory that if someone believes in a deity, then that deity exists. That what Deities, Gods and Goddesses are, is a focus of belief. I first read this idea in one of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books and thought it seemed about right. I have not found any evidence to the contrary so far.
The nice thing about this theory is that I find it helps me to be open minded about other people’s faiths. If they believe in a deity, then to you, their deity is real purely because of their belief. If you are atheist and you don’t believe in gods, but you know that other people believe, then you can appreciate that their deity is real for them. If making humans creators of gods seems a bit of a stretch, I advise you not to underestimate the power of mankind’s imagination.
By the way, the paragraph above (and this entire blog) would have probably lead to me being forced to drink hemlock in 399 BCE. Hey, I like to live dangerously.
Idol Scribblings 