God the Father

Here's another sketch of God the Father and the Holy Spirit. He'll appear at the very top of the mural to complete the Trinity. I'll be painting one more colour study very soon... I'll be sure to share it with you.

Personality

It's been a while since my last post... here's where I'm at! These are the studies of each of the apostles. Through these rough practice pieces I can develop each personality prior to working on the actual mural saving me time and my sanity. Starting from the top left to right is Mary, Mary Magdalene, Thomas, Matthew, James, Simon, Nathanael, Jude, Peter, Philip, James the Lesser, and Andrew. These were all painted on 8x10 canvas. John isn't included here as it was my first to complete and was given to Fr. J as a birthday gift. Stay tuned as I'll try and get it back to show you in my next post.

I am stoked!!!

Finally!

Well, here it is. After I print it out 5x the size it will be ready for transfer. It measures 22 feet in width – making the tallest figure about 8 feet tall.

Bringing it to life

It's been a while since I last posted... we've been really busy wrapping stuff up for the final production. We just recently held our photo shoot inside the church. We decided earlier in the process to produce our own photo reference rather than painting from sketch and whatever I could find. I needed the lighting to be just right and having the luxury of working from a self directed piece of reference was more ideal and assured us the accuracy we were after.

The costumes were compliments of Fr. J. and he was lucky to find a few worthy models to fit the roles. A huge THANK YOU to them! Hey look, it's Fr. J and Fr. Donatello!!

Now I can start working on the master sketch which will be used to transfer the composition on to the alter wall.

More sketches

I had some time to kill.

More tests

Here's another digital mock-up showing the sketch in position. We're actually matching the figures to the statue above. The tallest figure would be larger than life size – standing about 7 feet tall.

Big Sky

Here's a test. I quickly created a digital painting and super imposed it on this photo. Looks real doesn't it? The apostles will be positioned a few feet above the alter chair. The feeling is we may just go with a golden sky to compliment the aesthetics of the church. Stay tuned for some color studies to make sure we get the formula right before we put paint to the wall. Still have a ways to go. Fun! Fun! Fun!