Standing in a long line at the post office during Christmas 1979, Ron Adair glanced up at the collection of postage stamps lining the wall. Most were portraits of famous people, long dead: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. But also Robert Kennedy, author John Steinbeck, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Albert Einstein.
As he stood and stared, an idea came to him. A pencil illustrator who did commissioned drawings, Adair sent in some samples to the United States Postal Service, which not only responded but hired him to draw a portrait of former U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen for the 1981 stamp collection.
Adair and his twin brother, Don, first picked up pencils at age 5. They both graduated from the fine arts program at Washington University in St. Louis. And both answered God’s call to professional illustration.
Ron started with what he liked — sports — illustrating the cover of a book about the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback Roger Staubach and a Hall of Fame poster of Brooks Robinson, legendary Baltimore Orioles third baseman. From these projects, Adair won more commissions, eventually landing five stamp projects for the USPS, including one of Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone with the Wind.”
“I think anything people do, even the lowliest of vocations as Calvin said, can and should be done for the glory of God.”
As a believer who was a member at Village Seven Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Colorado Springs, Colorado for several years, Adair says that his faith has both steered him toward certain projects and away from others. He particularly enjoys drafting portraits of the Protestant Reformers and other theologians, including author Jerry Bridges and the late R.C. Sproul.
“I’m encouraged when I look at these men and am reminded of the life they lived,” Adair says. He talks about how living on planet Earth in 2020 and professing Christ feels more and more like a blood sport in today’s culture. “Christians are challenged in so many ways. I want to [illustrate] people for whom I have high regard.”
When Adair considers why he chose pencil illustration — an art form that has been around since the Renaissance — he explains that he likes the challenge of attempting to “sculpt” a rendering of a person, from their nose to their eyes to every strand of hair, on a two-dimensional surface. Some projects take a week, Adair says. Others, a year.
“I think anything people do, even the lowliest of vocations as Calvin said, can and should be done for the glory of God,” Adair says. “For people who confess Christ, we can’t properly divide or separate what we do from God’s glory. … I think God can be just as glorified with someone making doughnuts as someone doing a nice painting.”
ILLUSTRATION BY JULIAN RENTZSCH