Spoiler alert! Here's a bit of the finished piece.
Now to tell a tale. Once upon a time, our church had a piece of art that looked like this.
It is nice. But I think perhaps there is just too much brown in our church. After my pastor said she'd never noticed it before and didn't seem in love with it, I made my move and kidnapped the canvas. No one noticed it was missing. My plan was working.
It took four coats of white to cover it up.
I decided on painting the Sea of Galilee because it is absolutely beautiful, for one. I'd sought out pictures of it for YouTube graphics that I was making for sermons. The other thing about the Sea of Galilee is that Jesus did so much of his ministry and miracles there. When I look at it, I feel like Jesus is closer to me. That's what I wanted to share with the church.
I set out to find a good picture for inspiration, saved it to my phone, and next thing ya knew...I was working on it.
My entire family thought the early stages of the canvas weren't quite right. I mean, I agree. Because it's not done yet. Once I'd finished the mountains, my son said with relief, "OH, I thought those were derpy clouds!"
I worked in reverse order, from the bottom of the painting up. I didn't do this as some sort of grand strategy. If I were thinking strategically, I'd paint from the top down. Maybe next time. I'm not a seasoned painter, so there was a learning curve in several areas.
Especially the rocks in the foreground! They started out looking like purple flowers. Ryan, my husband, who took enough classes (minus one) to have an art minor, told me the rocks should be painted more smoothly instead of the stippling I'd done. I tried making them seem more rock-like (in pic above), but it was still wrong. I looked up a YouTube tutorial on rocks, (THANK YOU Dianne!) and re-did them with much better results.
I also fixed the grass after dreaming about how I'd do it. The technique worked, but I think the next time I paint grass, I'll use a fan brush.
Then I worked on making the derpy beige cloud look more like mountains. I needed to tape off the sea so that the mountains would be straight on the bottom. This is, apparently, how the real world looks. Who knew?
I also added more grass texture to the foreground.
Isn't it nice to have the horizon look, erm, how it should? I was like, "WOW. My eyes can rest now."
Next it was time for the tree to fill up the right side. This was challenging! I feel like I didn't learn how to paint the tree until I was pretty far into it. Such is life as an ar-teest (I mean, I am guessing.) Here's the tree without blossoms.
My daughter loves the color purple and couldn't wait for me to add some. I told her that the pretty purple flowers would be last, and she was pretty patient. She'd say, "and THIS is where the purple will go!!"
And thennnnnn....
We looked at it, and realized...
it wasn't done. I really wanted it to be done. I LOVED painting it, but I didn't want to do anything to mess it up. And in my mind changing it would translate to messing it up.
After a week or two, I decided to add boats. Why? My mom said I should add boats. My husband said I should add boats. I had wanted to add Jesus...but, you know, painting Jesus is hard (or so I have heard). And even if I could paint Him, I didn't know what sort of scale to use, where to put Him, how I'd do it...the struggle was real.
So, boats it was. First, I practiced painting a boat on the reverse side of a box of Crystal Light packets. Then, I cut it out and asked my husband for his opinion. Where would he put the boat on a horizontal axis, as far as what would look nice, and where would he put it on a vertical axis, because I didn't want to make the boat look GIGANTIC. He helped me out. Note: this location is not where we decided to put the boat.
With much trepidation I painted that boat on the canvas.
Then I added a teensy-tinsy boat in the distance, and finally, IT WAS FINISHED.
That's it! Here are some close-ups.
Matierials used: stolen canvas, Arteza acrylic paint, paintbrushes, little plastic palette, Crystal Light box, washi tape, inspirational photographs, Holy Spirit.
Most annoying thing to paint: the sides of the canvas. I had little patience for it.
Favorite thing to paint: the rocks, after I learned how to paint them.
Finally, I shared pictures with my pastors, who seemed to like it. Whenever I have artwork to hang in our church, I send our pastors and my hubby group texts with pictures of me holding the canvas in different spots on the walls at church. They vote, then Ryan comes and hangs it up the following Sunday.
This time we were pretty happy with it on an ALREADY POSITIONED hook! BOOM! (This may not be its final resting place.)
And so, it is here that I leave you.
God bless. May the wind be at your back. And soforth.