Nativity

Three years ago my pastor and I collaborated on a project. During Lent, he was going to be going through various stories about Jesus’ life and asked if I would be interested in doing a drawing to go along with each sermon. I jumped at the chance to draw again, and I believe that this project was the start of me turning my art hobby into a business.

As Lent is quickly approaching, I thought it would be perfect timing to do a behind the scenes look at each piece. As there are more drawings than weeks of Lent (some weekends two drawings released), I’m starting a little bit early.

This week’s piece is the first in the series:

Title: Nativity

Medium: Graphite on paper

Size: 18″ x 24″

When: Winter 2012

Time to complete: About 10 hours over a week

Thought process: Pastor Dale would give me the scriptures he was preaching out of, and then I got to choose what to put in the drawing from that story. It was a lot of fun going in and studying the stories and bringing them to life visually. I knew I wanted to do Jesus in the manger, and then filled characters in around that.

Problems I encountered: This was the largest drawing I had done in years, and hadn’t really drawn in general for quite awhile. It took me a little bit to remember how to do everything, so it was slow going at first.

Getting Mary’s hands (back left) still aren’t quite right, but they’re better than they had been.

Favorite part: The mouse, for sure! When I was figuring out what to put in the picture, it made me think that this really isn’t as clean and pristine of a barn as we are so used to seeing in books and movies. I wanted to convey that somehow, so I included the little mouse under the manger.

Least favorite part: Definitely Mary’s hands.

Fun tidbits:

– Baby Jesus is actually modeled after a picture of my daughter taken the day after she was born!

– This is one of the six drawings from the series on permanent display at church.

Product availability: This is available as a print, and will also be available as note cards around Christmas!