Hello all! Just wanted to share with you the papercutting that finally got finished on Monday… it was based on Psalm 55:6, which I think I heard quoted in a movie (John Adams, maybe, near the end? Excellent movie… but the Mom/squeamish female in me must tell you to skip any scenes that involve tarring & feathering, surgery, or various love scenes in France!), and then happened upon it again a few days later while reading the Psalms. The picture has been swirling around in my head ever since I read it, and it’s one of those pictures that just had to be.

Oh, that I had wings like a dove! for then I would fly away at be at rest.
~Psalm 55:6

Here’s a detail of the hands… they were my biggest challenge…

 And here’s where they came from… I chased Kate down and took a picture of her hands for reference!

Digital cameras have got to be the artist’s new best friend! I can remember scouring through a filing cabinet full of reference pictures in my high school art class, or taking pictures on vacations, hoping one of them would be just right once we returned home and remembered to develop the film. Now if you need a reference photo, you can snap it and have it printed in a minute or two.

Another neat trick for artists… Switch a digital to black & white, and play around with the contrast, brightness, and exposure settings a bit. It lets you see, although exaggerated, just where the shadows are! I actually forgot about doing this when painting the Fly Away cutting, and I can see places where I would have added a little darker color. It’s always a bit scary to put a paintbrush full of Payne’s Gray next to a light colored painting, but the shadows are what brings it to life. Kind of like real life… it’s hard to appreciate what is bright and beautiful until you’ve experienced the lack thereof!

AND…

A very great big huge THANK YOU!!! to our dear friend who stayed up half the night to fix my banner! You went far and above the call of duty!