On The Easel

I'm currently finishing up this large painting of the gorgeous Spokane River in Post Falls, Washington. It's about 70% done.  Sold, but prints will be available on my website. acrylic on museum Ampersand board.

New Acrylic painting

24 x 36 acrylic on cradled Ampersand board.  Late Autumn, Usk Washington

Free File for Non Commercial use

Here is a link to a high resolution file if you would like to use or print off a copy of my painting
Christ Inviting.  You may not copy this file and sell any copies.  I retain the copy rights to this image, but it is available as a Creative Commons file- meaning you may print off copies for church, home, family, non-commercial use.   If you would like to add a link to this blog when you copy or publicize it on your blog, newsletter, etc I would greatly appreciate it.  Thank you!  Anita

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ve2ct5dt121nn2v/Christ%20jpeg%20for%20printing%2017%20x%2012.jpg?dl=0

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!