Day 21 - My Most Powerful Illustration?

Since the beginning of my creationist cartoonist/illustrator career some 17 plus  years ago, I believe the most powerful illustration/idea I've produced for Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis is the Garden of Eden and the bones piece. And this was one of the very first illustrations Ken Ham asked me to do during the two years that I did volunteer work for him before I was hired full-time. So, how about that? I've been going downhill ever since after reaching the peak in my career about 17 years ago!

It was 1995.  My wife and I were living in Minnesota and I was working as a staff cartoonist for Mello Smello. One evening Ken Ham called me and gave me a very "simple" art request. He said, "I need a picture that shows that the Bible and millions of years don't go together." That was it. I said I'd do some sketches and get back to him. It was a day or two later that I faxed him the VERY loose and rough sketch of my solution to his request. The concept sketch was only detailed enough to get the idea across and it was certainly not meant for any kind of public viewing. I called Ken after faxing it to him and he said THAT'S IT! THAT'S PERFECT! I guess I had nailed it on the first try. That made me happy because I was trying to impress him in hopes of eventually being hired on full-time. I probably asked him a few more questions and told him that I'd get to work on finishing the art so he could have this new overhead transparency for is talks as soon as possible. This was back in the dark days of primitive plastic transparencies and overhead projectors. And this was before I even owned a computer. I didn't even know how to turn a computer on back then.

Zoom ahead a few years and Ken has been using the Garden of Eden and the bones illustration in a lot of his talks. By this time I had been hired full-time by AiG and my wife and I are living in Kentucky. I had many opportunities since our move to Kentucky to see Ken use the Eden/bones art and many more of my illustrations in his talks in churches. Back in the early days Ken would sometimes make a point of it to tell the audience that his illustrator was at the seminar and even have me stand up so people would know who I was. More than a few times I had people come up to me and say that the Garden of Eden and the bones illustration changed their view on the days of creation! They would say that Ken Ham would be talking about the radiometric dating methods and the meaning of the word "day" in Genesis one and all that other stuff and they'd still be hanging on to the idea of millions of years. Then they'd say, "but then he put up that Eden and the pile of bones cartoon and I couldn't hold onto the millions of years anymore." And I'd be stunned every time I'd hear it. It was funny in a way too because it seemed like each person that would tell me about their response to the Eden/bones illustration was reading off the same script. Their wording seemed very similar, but it was always thrilling for me to hear that testimony of God's Grace to them through one of my cartoons. I've never heard a response that often and to that extent of impact to anything else I'd both written and drawn. Thank you Lord for that idea and cartoon.

It was also in those early years in Kentucky that I somehow found out that the VERY rough sketch I had faxed to Ken had been almost immediately converted into an overhead transparency and Ken had used that "not meant for public viewing" sketch in his talks for the couple weeks until he received the finished version. Oh well. If God can use a cartoonist, then he can use a VERY rough sketch for His glory as well.