According to several religions, for centuries, angels have been one of the most important ways that God has used to carry its messages to men, or to perform important tasks in his name. Some religions give them different attributes or abilities, but nevertheless, it has inspired artists from the entire world to make angel drawings for churches, images, books, and pamphlets.
For those of us who were raised as Christians, perhaps the most famous angel is Archangel Gabriel. This isn’t surprising as he was the one who announced to the Virgin Mary that she would become the mother of the one who would change the world. In fact, there are many angel drawings that depict this scene. Fewer people remember that this angel was also the one that announced the birth of John the Baptist as well. Ancient painters also have angel drawings that depict this scene as well.
In Islam, this angel is also the one that brought the teachings of the Qur’an to Prophet Mohammad. Because Islam doesn’t approve images of the prophet, there aren’t many angel drawings that depict this scene.
Because of their importance in religion, artists from every age have made angel drawings, which vary greatly in theme and style. Nevertheless, this gives us an image of the importance of angels in human culture.
According to most religions, angels haven’t really made contact with us in many centuries. However, some people claim that they have had encounters with them in recent times. They give all sorts of proofs that these encounters happened. From objects they left them, to knowledge they received, and of course, angel drawings they made or they said they were inspired to make.
It is beyond the scope of this article to say whether these encounters are authentic or not. I think that’s something for every person to decide, based on their particular faith and set of beliefs. Nevertheless, I believe the quality of those angel drawings should be decided on purely aesthetic values, regardless of your affiliation or standing with the artist or the artist’s religion or beliefs.
One thing that I find very interesting, is that angel drawings reflect the value and settings of the era. I could never quite undertstand, for example, why ancient angel drawings represented them with Roman soldier clothing. Later on, they were depicted with white gowns and in less aggressive attitudes.
Finally, nowadays angles in movies are as modern as you and me. The angel that Nicolas Cage interpreted used normal clothing and he didn’t fly from place to place. Rather, he would just teleport to wherever you wanted to go by mere will. I think that as long as men believe in angles, they will adapt to our culture and habits.
If you’ve never read Calvin and Hobbes, then I recommend it. I love it and part of the reason I do is because it reminds me of my childhood.
While most people love Hobbes, I’m all sold out for Calvin. In case you haven’t read it, Calvin is a mischievous 6 years old boy, with the biggest imagination in the world and who can’t stand school, homework, and girls. He’s got more energy than a nuclear plant when he plays “calvinball,” a ballgame that he invented and in which the rules change on every play. However, he can’t lift a single sock when it comes to clean his room.
But his passion is dinosaur and dragon drawings. He specializes in spaceships and dragon drawings, where they would fight ferocious battles in far away planets, destroying buildings and even leveling entire futuristic cities in their wake.
This obsession with dragon drawings gets him in endless trouble. Of course, he claims that the school’s principal and his teacher are attempting to limit his right to self expression and trying to make him be just one more of the millions of submissive masses, among other excuses. When Hobbes, his inseparable stuffed tiger and best (and only, as far as I can tell) friend, asks him what is that his teacher objects about his dragon drawings, he candidly replies “mostly my drawing them in math class.”
You would think that this is just some author’s jokes on children behavior. Well, I might think like that if it weren’t for the fact that the same situation happened to me when I was a child. When I was in art class, we were instructed by the teacher to make a drawing on any topic that we wanted. Well, I made not one, but two dragon drawings, and in one of them, they were fighting against some spaceships. My teacher not only disapproved my dragon drawings, but she also made my mother come to school and talk about my “inappropriate choice of subjects.”
Fortunately for me, my mother didn’t see anything wrong with my dragon drawings. She pretended to agree with my teacher, but when we were alone, she told me, “She’s wrong, but I don’t want you to fail the subject, so please, no more dragon drawings in class, if you want to make dragon drawings, make them at home. I don’t want to come here again to listen to your teacher’s foolishness.”
That was many years ago, imagine my surprise when I saw the same situation in a comic strip. Well, that certainly brought some nice memories.
