Sunday 17 October 2010

DRAWING THE PSALMS ...

On my earlier post about my "peaceful" page somebody commented that I was taking a lot on, trying to draw pictures of God! This made me think of that joke about a little girl doing a drawing whose mother told her that nobody knew what God looked like. Her answer was that they would when she'd finished her picture!!

So lest you think that I'm creating graven images and whathave you ... I was actually thinking here about a modern psalm which is one of my favourites, and it begins "I will praise God my beloved for she is altogether lovely". What I was trying to encapsulate was the "altogether lovely" part, I suppose. As you can see above I started with some simple pencil lines, and then below got to work with my promarkers. I'm not very good at the fancy shading with these, but do enjoy using them.
Kept adding more colour, but somehow it wasn't quite right.
So I left it to come back to another time, at which point I coloured the background navy blue, and that's when this page really took off! Unfortunately I was so absorbed in the process that I forgot to take stage pictures, so this is the final result. The photos don't show it very well, but I used lots of gold and silver on this, and in fact all the writing (lines from the psalm) is in gold, and she had threads of both colours woven through her hair.

At the very end I still felt it needed something, so I masked off her face before spraying the whole page with a glimmery gold dust effect. Unfortunately this doesn't photograph very well, but in real life it seems to give the inner glow effect I was after. This is one of my favourite pages so far - actually deceptively simple, but speaking of something which goes deep for me .... I hope you agree that she is altogether lovely!

6 comments:

Jackie said...

She is..altogether lovely.
Its a bit different from a little boy in front of me in church today kneeling on the floor drawing pictures on paper on the seat . He was chatting away and he asked me what I was doing..I say saying my prayers, and he declared 'I don't say prayers' , bent over the paper for a bit, then he suddenly showed me and said 'Thats God'.
A big circle with small legs.

Ann said...

She is beautiful and you are so talented. Now she's one of my favourites from what I have seen of your work.

Suzanne B aka brookfies said...

Totally agree...she is altogether lovely. Thank you for showing how you got to the final piece.

Suzanne

Jacqueline said...

"...The beauty of her face is more than I can bear;
in her gaze I drown..."
I love it - your illustration is perfect - Jacqueline xx.

Alix said...

oh rosie when the line drawing popped up...i thought you'd drawn me!! {before the big chop}...i love her...she is serene and beautiful...and deeply charismatic...i can't live up to all that...so i'm glad its God!! ;0)

*jean* said...

absolutely stunning! this would make a beautiful greeting card, rosie...and you are so generous to share your process...