Nativity Painting

I finish one painting project and start another. This was for the Festival of the Nativity at the stake center, this year's theme being "Through a Child's Eyes."



Karen Hemming sent me a picture back in October and asked if I could paint it. I said, "Sure!" It sounded like fun. It looked like a fairly simple image.



Doug was able to check out a laptop and projector from school, so we used that to trace the image onto plywood. Definitely a time-saver! This was taken after a few days of painting. As it turns out, the image is not as simple as it looks. There's a lot of shading. The whole thing took about three weeks.



I thought it would be fun to involve Kate, so I told her I would save the donkey hooves for her to do. I took a break over Thanksgiving, and then Saturday morning we went hoof painting.



She enjoyed it so much that she also did the donkey's eye and nostril (which I did have to touch up, but I'm sure it was a positive experience!)



Anne Marie had some free time on Monday and spent a few hours helping me do outlines. She is awesome. (She probably saved me a day of work.)



The light on the stage was not great. Outlines are tedious. Squinting does not help.



Painting with a buddy is more fun! I got us some posole for lunch, and we sat on my drop cloth and had a posole picnic. It was fabulous. 



While the painting was taking shape on the stage, the rest of the church was transforming into a Christmas wonderland. I finally finished up on Thursday, the day before the festival opened.  I was confident that I didn't have much left to do, so I was just enjoying  being there, taking my time getting nice clean edges, and listening to the Jenny Oaks Baker Christmas Pandora channel on Karen's phone. Kind of a zen experience. 



Finishing up the star! Laura Call came in to volunteer, and I got her to take a photo for me. The lighting turned out pretty cool in this one!  



Setting up the painting at the front of the stage. They used some of the arches from Savior of the World, which I painted ten years ago. (Elsewhere they also used the rocks that I painted for Pirates of Penzance. Everything gets reused!) It looks bigger like this, somehow. 



Grandma Mary came up to see us, and we all went to the festival together. Kate got to tell a few people that she painted the donkey hooves.



It's fun to see all the different nativities. I liked the style of this one.



Everything is so bright and pretty!

People sometimes ask me how I feel about volunteering so much time painting for church projects. I figure it's my consecration.  It is a lot of work, and not always convenient, but it's a blessing for me and for others.  The experience is always good.