Doing the Lord's Work.....until the weekend.

Ahhh.....sweet relief. I finished the Risen Christ mural around 7 PM last night. It took quite a bit of finessing to get the right look. For nearly 5 hours I obsessed over the details of the face. Everything looked fantastic when you looked directly at it 20 feet up in the air but I noticed that when viewed from below and afar, as the congregation would see it, that the colors and tones melded together in a way that looked way too intense for Jesus. 

Sooooo.....like an espresso-filled squirrel I scurried up and down the scaffolding making adjustment after adjustment. At one point there was a terrible lightning storm blustering outside. I spent one dramatic hour literally kneeling before Jesus (while high on the scaffolding) in a large and empty church while the windows were blasted with white flashes and the hall echoed with thunder. It was a pretty dramatic scene. 

At one point I thought I might go nuts. Adjustment after adjustment in tone and color yielded the same results from the lower vantage point. Jesus looked too intense with a dark piercing gaze and a dark, masculine beard. Nothing seemed to work!

Then I remembered an interview with Jim Morrison that I'd read where he explained that on a large stage that he had to exaggerate his movements. In a similar fashion I had to adjust to larger venue and forced perspective. Ultimately I decided to soften and "feminize" the features to go from lion to lamb. It took a long time but I finally found a way to work it out. 

In the end I really liked how it looked. I'm hoping the parishioners do as well. The church hosts its first service next week. It took me 6 days total to get it totally done. Now, on the 7th day.....I'm going to rest ;-)