Josh Garrels

Just heard some great news and I really have to plug one of my favorite musical artists. I first heard Josh Garrels music when I was having a meeting with one of my favorite (... they were kind of all my favorite but that just makes them all really great!) professors Laura Lasworth. When I heard what I found out later was the song Break Bread (which you can download for FREE here just click on the harmonica :) I said to Laura, "Who is this??" and she said, "It's actually Gala's brother Josh" (Gala is actually another one of my favorite professors :) I went to his website and was instantly hooked.

I occasionaly frequent his blog and on a recent trip there I read something so great! He had been asking for prayer about his upcoming album (him and his wife do all of the work for the album out of pocket I believe) because of the cost to make it and because of him being sick. His latest posting anounced that the album was finished and- so cool- they were giving it away digitally for free till they have the hard copies done... wow! Heres some things he says in the post, "We've really felt the Lord asking us to give this album away for one year, and it's our joy to do so!" "We want this to be a 'year of jubilee'!"

What the beautiful manifestation of the gracious Spirit of Yeshuah!

Heres an INCREDIBLE video of one of his songs:

http://vimeo.com/16197810

"You HAVE to do this..."

So I dont know how many of you I've told... ok let me back up a little more then that. So super senior year of college I was just LOVING art. I just enjoyed it SO much... thinking about it, experimenting with it, making it... especially with others. So when I graduated and it looked like I'd be substitute teaching for a while it looked like I wouldnt need to be making art at all. And not only because I LOVED art but also because I was required for almost 2 straight years to be creative almost 24/7, I knew this was going to be a difficult change. But God has graced me with a few big ideas for big projects that don't have to be completed anytime soon but that I can work on whenever I have the chance :) (Hes also given me various other little ones to work on as well... thank you God!) Ok... anyway one of them is a graphic novel based on the story of the Apostle Paul but in modern times... weird I know. SO to make a short story long... Im trying to come up with an idea of how the characters in this story will look, more realistic/less realistic, basically what will be the feel to all the characters. So periodically I sketch out the heads of my idears of Paul, Stephen and Peter. So I was doing that today while resting and the head of the first one I was drawing was coming out more realistc. Thats alright and also he wasnt looking very Jewish... (I want Peter and Paul to look VERY noticably Jewish) so I decided to make this one Stephen. And I want Stephen to be blonde at this point (dont really know why). Also for the look I was going for I was thinking of Jon Foreman when I was thinking of his hair. (Probably because I cant stop watching the Switchfoot podcast from the last blog entry :) So when I was done I realised.... I drew Jon Foreman.... not Stephen. It looked very much like him. So... I had 3 circles on the page... I decided I was going to draw 3 of my favorite singers right now: Josh Garrels, John Mark McMillan and as I said above Jon Foreman. So I got ALL EXCITED. Then I thought, "ILL DO THREE PAINTINGS OF THEM!!!" and was even more excited (you can tell by the "all caps") But then I slowed down, I've been trying to keep my mind off of myself these days. God has been showing that pretty much the root to every problem I have is my WICKED selfishness... and its showing itself to be more and more true. So I thought, this is a pretty selfish painting. I stoped. Later this evening I picked up the drawing and thought I would at least finish the graphite portraits. I was looking through a bunch of pictures online as refrence for the guys. When I came to John Mark, I found this recently added video to his blog,



Then I heard...