love of god | DlmtleArt

Today I finally finished the drawing for a Christmas card design I started on 3 Christmases ago. Originally I was going to do what most greeting card companies suggest and cut paper and use that technique to keep the design simple. I even had some brown paper that was just the right color for the camels that I wanted on my card. So after going to Wetcanvas.com and checked their free reference photo library to refresh my mind on what a camel REALLY looks like, I turned the computer off and got to work drawing some camels on my brown paper and cutting them out with an Exacto knife. The camels turned out really well and there was even one who looked particularly spunky and happy to be traveling to Bethlehem. doing the paper cut outs did help with the composition, because it was then just an easy matter of placing one overlapping the other instead of trying to figure out where one would end and the other begin while I was drawing them. By the time I had gotten the Christmas star as well as some other stars cut out, in addition to my camels, some wise men, the manger, and a concept sketch for Mary and Joseph cut out I decided what I really wanted to do was to PAINT the card rather than work with paper cut outs. In retrospect I wish I had stayed with the original concept instead of changing in mid stream, because I would have been done a long time ago. It created a lot of extra work to have to trace the things I had already cut out onto another piece of paper. Then I started a long and tedious process of drawing on tracing paper and then tracing what I had drawn onto some heavy duty art paper after having cut it and arranged it in the composition I wanted. Another thing I wish I had done a little differently would be to make the original drawing larger than the card and then just use the computer to shrink it down. Of course that might just encourage me to add even more detail and make things even more complicated ;/

Wrapped in the arms of His Love by dlmtleArt

Browse other Christmas Cards

I love the composition in this card. What I was really going for was the “perfect” Christmas card–something that perfectly expressed my feelings and sentiments about the meaning of Christmas, rather than some of the shallower, albeit fun Christmas messages out there. So in the center of this design is a heart with the Christmas star centered above it and piercing downward into it. Then moving around clockwise like a Mandela three little stars seem to dance in with joy in the night sky with the desire to follow the three wise men to Bethlehem. The three wisemen and their camels curve around the heart , hugging it closely on their journey to see the newborn king. Even one of the camels cannot contain his joy has as with a merry face he saunters jauntily along. Beyond the caravan a shepherd kneels with his sheep in adoration of the Christ Child. The infant Jesus smiles in his sleep in the manger as Joseph lovingly supports a weary, but joyful, Mary on his shoulder. Moving upward around the second half of the heart, the composition then moves through some of the important events of Christ’s life. We see the sea of Galilee where the apostles on their ship watch in awe as Christ walks toward them on the water. Next we follow a path past the house where the bedridden man is let down through the roof so that Jesus can heal him. The road continues on towards the mount where the multitude listens to Him teaching the Beatitudes. Next is a portrayal Him pleading with his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. Beyond the Cross the Resurrected Lord is met by Mary at the tomb.

Right now this is simply a line drawing, but by this time next year I plan on having a full color version available for sale. For now, this design is also available on a variety of other zazzle products. Within the next couple days it will also be available as a print and greeting card on both Imagekind and RedBubble. (*UPDATE* now on fineartamerica too)