Psalm 11

I know it has been a long time, but I got hooked on FaceBook and was lax in keeping this blog up to date. Sorry. Well, on to one of my favorite "pages" so far. I showed you a bunch of the sketches and ideas a while back, but here is the final image printed on the "page":

I wanted to capture the image of the church being broken down, defeated, falling apart in the eyes of man, but yet, still watched over and protected by God.

I tried to create a sense of turmoil in the sky, but got the idea of including the eyes of God even among the chaos. Still watching, still in control, still the Ruler of all.

Once again, thanks go to my wonderful and insightful wife Lisa for pointing out that I needed to add the shadow in the foreground, which helped in creating a multi-dimensional feel to the print.
Almost forgot, for all my woodblock buddies, this was done and carved on a block of cherry wood.


I really struggled with the decorative initial and illumination, creating and then discarding idea after idea. Finally I found what I was looking for, at least the basis for the idea, in of all places a small piece of wallpaper!

I wanted something "alive", hope you understand, so I went with the vine idea.
I love the way vines not only grow, but many times overcome and sometimes take over the "host", so it fit well with the Psalm and it looked good on top of it all.

I stuck with classic colors, the deep blue and vibrant red, once again, it just seemed to "fit".
Here is the illumination, which as you will see is bigger and takes up more space than any of the previous illuminations.
This was an extremely short Psalm, so I had a lot of white space I needed to fill in, so I doubled up on the image. As you will see in the final image, I have begun moving in a direction of trying to tie everything together with some extra lines, which I really like and enjoyed.

Well, here is the final image, as I said, one of my favorites!