Advent

Finishing up my painting, Advent. Here is how the completed work looks at my Etsy shop. You can read more about it here or see other paintings available from My Good Babushka!

Advent

Advent. Painting in progress. Inspired by The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine. Thinking about advent, beginning, arriving in the astronomical sense of stars and galaxies being born, coupled with the religious symbols of the four candles in the advent wreath, and the traditional advent calendars with new doors and thresholds to open each day.

Advent

I expected all those starry spikes and glowing nebulae and spinning galaxies to put up more of a fight, but they really jumped to, like they were meant to be. You get a lucky break sometime. I nearly went back and tried to add yellow ocher to some parts of the sky, but the sky didn't want it. So I backed off.

Advent

The start of my painting, Advent. I am relying on blue-purplish blue and rose, as those are the colors of Advent, usually.

Advent

I am working on sketches for my painting "Advent". I've decided to work on some paintings inspired by my reading of The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. It's a chronicle of the lives and miracles of the saints. I hope it will be broadly spiritual and meditative and help me work on my problem of conveying complex things more simply. As you can see, I started out with a very crowded and busy composition, throwing in everything I could find about Advent. Then I pared it down to a few elements that I felt were the most important. The Advent Calendars we are all familiar with, with the little doors that open. The idea of "beginning" in astronomical terms, novas, supernovas, stars colliding, imploding, and galaxies forming. I also wanted to retain the traditional Advent wreath with four candles, which in the end is pared down to just the four candles.