When we invited Ned Bustard to illustrate Every Moment Holy, we asked him to embrace the look of medieval woodcuts with all their symbols and iconic imagery. But because the book is about recalling the sacred in our everyday lives, we also wanted him to find ways to take that old style and inject it with modern sensibilities and contemporary elements.
Ned is fast at work carving the linocuts for the book and I thought it would be fun to show you a little of his work in progress. This first image goes with a liturgy titled “A Liturgy for Domestic Days,” and it perfectly captures the intersection of old and new, sacred and mundane. Note the image of Christ humbly scrubbing the bathroom floor.
And here’s a look at the process of carving a linocut. This is the illustration for “A Liturgy for Arriving at the Ocean.” Each of the images in this piece have specific meanings in Christian symbology. Yes, even the mermaid.
This is the final, carved block that will be inked and used to print the illustration. No one ever said it was going to be easy. Ned only has about twenty left to carve, and they are all going to be amazing. The book will be off to the presses in the next couple of weeks. Pray for us as we pull the final details together.