Preparing canvas one with texture paste and soil.
Got the whole family together on Saturday to complete the footprints I needed for canvas one. The idea of compassion to me is linked with community; walking alongside others, carrying them when they stumble. So we all bared our feet and walked across the canvas, my husband, myself, our son and our daughter, four sets of footprints of different sizes. Compassion comes in so many forms.
The first set of footprints looked so stark and yet so powerful, the other sets overlapping and walking where the first set had walked, and it reminded me again that no matter where we walk, God has gone there before. There is nothing we will face that He is not prepared for, that He doesn’t know about.
The four canvases so far.
The issue I have now is how to blend the new footprints into the original background and this is what I worked on today. Ironically I spent a lot of time adding red and brown to the footprints but eventually I tipped water over the whole lot and scrubbed it back to its original state. It just didn’t look right, red footprints. May have to work the other way and blend a sandy colour into the red. I don’t think it visually or psychologically works the other way round. Brown and beige are the colours, not red.
Working on the cross and the footprints.
I have stitched the titles to three of the four canvases now so tonight I will stitch the last now the paint is dry. I have also added some layers of paint to the cross which was widened, but this area is very much unresolved. Part of me just wants to attach a real wooden cross to it but….. we shall see. I shall leave them now until Tuesday afternoon and see what they look like then. Slowly but surely they are coming together.
artannacrook 