Here is a work in progress.

Cutting the umbilical cord of Christ

It has been a long process bringing it to this point with much more work to be done, click though to see the steps involved…

The Angel is cutting the umbilical cord of Jesus to bring him into the world.
This explores the relationship between life and death, mortality and the enlightened knowledge of living.

Step #1

crude drawings to illustrate the idea- I’ll add that later, that sketchbook is at home.

part #2 – find a model for the angel. Could have worked from clipart but didn’t want to muck around with light sources and wanted a specific pose.

Hot summer sun and much drapery.

step # 3 . Prepare your surface.

I am going to use a 24″ x 30″ wooden panel that I will gesso and sand several times before it has the desired smoothness.

I skimmed a bit on this step, should have sanded more but when you are eager to get at the painting. Not the end of the world but this will cause the early layers to take on a slight grain.  It’s the inmperfections that give character anyway.

apply many layers of artist grade gesso, sand between layers

step #4 – prepare your drawing the exact size as your surface and transfer your lines over. Avoid using dark colours in the transfer as they will be difficult to deal with later. I’ve used red which should hide after I apply my first red layer of thick oil paint.

transfer your lines

step#5

This is a technique of my own. Try at your own risk, but I have had no problems so far. Using minimal amounts of liquid acrylic I start to block in and shade areas. Laying down the first bits of colour. This colour will be nearly %100 replaced by the end of the painting but it will still show and add quality to the final piece.

adding liquid acrylic

Step#6 – Paint the whole thing red! This one is a tough one to swallow but is the most fun.I chickened out a bit and made the red a bit more transparent then I meant to. Here is when the painting becomes an oil painting and the style used to paint goes from a subtractive method to an additive method which is more fun and less work.

coated in red oil paint

Make sure you let the paint dry completely between layers before adding any more paint!

Step#7 – Paint in the hightlights using white. This is how the painting gets built up.

paint the highlights using white

step#8- paint the whole thing yellow

coated in yellow

oh I forgot to mention, between layers take a razor blade and scrape the surface to remove and lumps, hairs or other impurities that settled during the drying time of the painting. If you don’t do this, those small lumps will pool the paint over the layers and become bigger problems. The way a pearl must bother an oyster.

scrape painting to keep it smooth - carefull

Next step is to paint the whole thing baby blue. It will substract the detail again but not erase the detail, just force it into an old layer of sublety.

I’ll post more pictures once I get a bit more work done.