Jeremiah 17:7-8

This drawing was made for a friend of mine in Florida in August 2008. She had seen the DNA Tree drawings I made for my brother and asked me to visually interpret the scripture "Jeremiah 17:7-8", which reads:

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

I went about this by drawing a tree over the water (original, right?), which at a quick glance is nothing more than this. Upon inspection, the viewer may find that the tree has the silhouette of a face on its left hand side... upon even further inspection, one might notice the roots form a cross in the water. The idea being that Christ is a firm foundation for a tree to bear good fruit... typically a tree wouldn't grow IN the water, but by it... this tree is straight up swimming.

I used stock photography of clouds and proceeded to distort them, allowing them to blend into a hand-drawn landscape. The reasoning for making the tree so small and dark within this giant bright and colorful landscape was to make it stand out more and require the viewer to look more closely at it, rather than seeing a drawing of a tree by the water and moving on.

The water is nothing more than a faded upside down image of the tree and landscape with a slight blue tint over the top of it... I was pretty surprised to find out that removing the blue tint actually ruins the illusion of water...

Well anyway,
~ Mark