Psalm 20

This was one of those Psalms that I could not wait to get to!

Since I have read the Psalms many times, I knew what I thought I wanted to do with this piece for a long time.
I focused in on verse 7:
"Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God."
Actually laying it out and designing it though was another matter!
Who would or could have imagined that drawing a tire with a flat would be so hard?

Because I wanted the viewer to see it from a specific angle, I must have drawn and re-drawn that tire a million times. Still it didn't look the way I wanted it to

Then I had an idea (I know, a rarity for me).
I asked a friend of mine who's daughter had a Mercedes if he could help me out. Luckily he was into the idea.
So, without his daughter knowing about it, we snatched her car in the early morning light!
Drove it up to a nearby gas station, and let all the air out of the tire onto a small Styrofoam ring I had purchased.
Took a bunch of pictures from a bunch of angles, re-inflated the tire and snuck the car back home.
She never knew!

Then of course when the print was done I showed it to her. "I have a car just like that!".
I know. Hahahahaha.
So, here is the print (and yes, I noticed that boo boo in the spoke, it is now fixed for any future prints):

One of the things you may not notice right off the bat is that I got just a little crazy with the cross-hatching. I wanted to see how small and intricate I could get, kinda like a personal challenge. Here are some close ups of the final printed image:




Here is the decorative capital:
And the Illumination:

I felt like I needed to have this design encompass more than just the bottom, it was so strong of an image.
And the final print!

The Saga of Psalm 19

Where do I start?
Probably one of the most difficult Psalms for me to illustrate, it literally took me weeks to conceive, create, recreate, revise, redraw, and finally get happy. Then I made the mistake of asking others what they thought of the design! So, more drawing, designing, etc.....

This was the final design below I decided to go with,but as you can see, many areas were totally undecided.

Then came the decision, how do I carve this dreamscape?

I think I wound up redrawing the lines about5 times before I even came close to figuring out
how I wanted to carve.(I always attempt to draw my images in pen as I
plan carve them in wood).

Here is the idea and final image side by side:

On to the illumination!

I really had fun with the designing of this motif! I will just go ahead and show you the designs of the decorative initial and illumination and let you decide if it works:








And here is the final image:As always, comments are appreciated and they let me know someone is actually looking at this stuff.