Finished Painting 29 x 21 oil on Ampersand

For the life of me, I can't figure out why this is loading so highly pixelated. It's never done this before. sigh. I just get one computer/internet thing figured out and something else goes haywire. But, you can get the idea. The original file is shot in "raw" so it's huuuuge.  Maybe when photoshop creates a gif from a raw file it's too big of a reduction.

Basic model

Because I don't have the budget to hire, nor do I personally know models of the races and age groupings that I want to depict, I rely on willing family members to pose for me. Every member of my family cheerfully dons costumes and poses for my needed references when I'm doing an illustration.  Here is son number 2 posed as a figure in the foreground.  I decided his race should be African/American.  First and foremost it was to balance the composition and direct the eye with the needed color values that the painting needed.  Secondly, I wanted to depict a variety of children of God.  It is not intended to be all inclusive though....that would necessitate dozens and dozens of figures.  I'm after a simpler composition, and I needed to edit drastically the number of figures. It was so tempting to focus in on the details of each of the secondary figures, but I wanted the tight focus to remain on Christ's face - even though his head is about 1 inch tall in the painting.  All the details and sharp focus had to be toned 'way down on each figure, even though they are in the foreground and much closer to the viewer.

The idea is to direct the eye around the canvas and circle back to Jesus Christ in a continuous eye movement around the painting.  No eye movements off the canvas into outer space, no jarring stops.

Uncertain man

I wanted to depict a story within a story to add interest and mystery to the painting.  Painting Christ inviting people into his church is pretty straight forward.  Straight forward can read 'uninteresting'.  Us humans like a little mystery in our artoworks.  It's classic story telling, art making, dance, philosophy, or whatever.   Don't give it all away.  Make the viewer a part of the experience.
    So,  in the real world people can be very uncertain that they want to have religion in their lives.   I posed my son in law in a leather jacket with the task of making his body language read "indecisive" and conflicted.  We decided that the hand on the neck is a classic body language that reads this emotion.  We shot about 120 photos to get the gesture and the facial expression just right.  Then when I painted him, I changed the face into a redheaded man with dreadlocks and altered the features so that someone looking at the painting won't recognize the model.  He will be looking directly at Christ and Christ will be looking directly at him.

Frankensteining a new face

A very real problem was finding a model to depict Christ.  Of course my first choice would be to try and find a male around age 30 with a full beard, long hair and the demeanor of God so that I could paint a portrait from a live model.......Well, that's a tall order.  Believe me, I tried.  No such luck finding a live model with those parameters. So, I did what every modern illustrator/artist does.  I took photos of about 6 different males and chopped up the photos in photoshop and reassembled them into a new human face.  It's called "frankensteining" and it is a valuable skill set to have for any artist who wants originality and to not infringe on copyright laws.....and get sued or called out as a cheat by fellow artists!
   This face had to have the correct lighting, the correct gentleness of mouth, intelligent eyes looking the right direction, the strongest nose of middle east white male race, etc. etc.   Considering that the finished size of Jesus' head would only be about 1 inch in height, this composite that I created gave me enough data and information for me to do the portrait.  Hooray for photoshop again!

Costumed model of Christ in dappled light

 After doing some online research and watching several historically accurate movies of the time period, I sewed a costume for Jesus Christ using a slightly iridescent polyester fabric for the undergarment, a beige linen for the over robe and a textured drapey linen like scarf for the last layer of drape.  He is supposed to be the resurrected Christ, so ragged robes and rough home made woven flax are not needed here. I opted for no other color or patterning on the clothing.
 Part of my composition is to place Christ in dappled light so that I can really play up the shadows and light on his robes.  This will really add a cool area of interest without my having to resort to the bright yellow "glow" around him that many artists use to signify his holiness.  I've planned the composition so that he is well placed in the dark shadows of the building.  That way, I can make his robes and face really pop out of the painting, and it will create the dominant focal point, even though it is located to the left of the painting so far.
    The camera does not capture the many colors of light or the wonderful shades of color that are in the shadows.  From artistic experience, I know the colors are there, and I want to exaggerate them in an impressionistic style, so I will have to invent them based upon what I know about the color of light and the ways that I can punch things up by introducing a yellow blue tourquoise and a hot blue in the shadow areas of the white.  This was the most fun to paint!

Final rough sketch

Here is the rough composition sketch where I have monkeyed with the supporting figures and erased a few times. By this time I know the location of each figure and I have decided to tell a secondary story with the indecisive man on the far right.  He will be looking uncertainly at Christ and Jesus will be specifically inviting him to enter.  I will wait to photo my models in their costumes and in the correct lighting conditions before I finish drawing them into the sketch.  I'm going to scan this sketch into photoshop and scan each model or sketch of them into the program on different layers.  That way I can easily change my composition of them and move them around independently of each other. This will save me days of hand drawing and messing about with tracing paper.  I'm going to use this opportunity to really figure out photoshop.  So far, it has driven me crazy.

Jesus Christ Inviting All 29 x 21 oil on ampersand

This was a commissioned piece and the assignment was to depict Jesus Christ inviting the general public to enter a specific church building in my area.  The composition was a real challenge because in order to depict this specific very large and oddly shaped building, Christ and the figures would have been about one half inch high, if I kept the scale true.  After multiple thumbnails, I decided to zoom in on the figures and reference the building and its location with a few well known features like the mountain in the distance, the vegetation and the layout of the entryway, which would help identify this building but keep the main focus on Jesus.