Rahab

I want to thank you all for your kind comments last week. My arthritis is heaps better this week. However, I have not been able to paint this week as I have had to catch up on my illustration work. Ive managed to do my Alice series. albeit in pencil, and the Women of the Bible series which was in pencil anyway. So it has been a drawing week. I was so pleased with my loosening up that for Sunday Sketches I decide to do an exercise we did at Polytech in life classes.

 

The exercise involves drawing with the left side of the brain. Do do this you don't look at your drawing, but at the subject and you draw with the opposite hand that you normally use. For me that is my left hand. Since I didn't have a live model, I decided to draw with my eyes shut while imagining a character. (Alright, I admit to having a peek from time to time!) The character I chose to think about was Rahab, a woman prostitute who lived in Jericho. She sheltered two Israelite spies from the King of Jericho. She asked them to save her family when the Israelites attacked. Because she had hidden them she and her family were saved. One of the lessons from this story is that God looks kindly on all who help his followers and has faith, it is what in your heart that matters more than what you are.

 

 

Next, I photographed the drawing which was on A2 paper and done in conte chalk. Then in Photoshop I used Levels and the white ink dropper to whiten the background. The next step was to use the magic wand to select various parts and then I coloured them with the brush tool. It pays to save the selection, in case you want to change anything. Then I went to curves and and adjusted colours slightly.

 

I thought the picture showed the 'lady of the night' side of her now I wanted to show the soft side of her.

Back to the original.  Again I used the magic wand and selected all the brown and then used softer and lighter colours. It looked a bit wishy washy so I painted in the background with a chalk brush.

In this picture , I got rid of the man and used brushes to paint Rahab. I wanted her to be the party girl. Hence the bright colours.

In this picture I wanted to show the gentle warm hearted girl that she must have been. 

There you have it. We all have two sides to our nature, often what we see on the outside is not what is on the inside.

Here is the scripture I am taking with me into the coming week. Thanks for visiting and have a great week creating. 

Linked to Sunday Sketches