New abstract hymn print: Be Still, My Soul.
I’m experimenting with a slightly new style here, masking the notes (after adding noise to the outlines with SVG filters and then eroding/dilating with Imagemagick) and painting inside the mask in Procreate. (And then texturing it in Affinity Photo as usual.)
New artwork: Behold My Beloved Son. Basically a Christ Visits the Nephites but with a different title, one actually from the scriptures.
I painted this in Procreate, and goodness, it messed up my back a bit. (Which is unfortunate because I really like the woodcut-style look on the white triangle. I may still do occasional pieces this way, when there’s not a billion little circles like I have here.) It’s frustrating when my spondylolisthesis keeps me from making art the way I want to. At some point I’ll probably try to figure out a way to do this style with code. (Speaking of which, I generated the circles here with a little bit of JavaScript. It was fun doing a piece that’s a little more three-dimensional.)
New artwork: Heart, Might, Mind, and Strength. This is the first piece I’ve painted in Procreate with my new iPad Air and Apple Pencil. Also of note, I used one or two brushes from Matthew Baldwin’s oil masterset. And a touch of chromatic aberration and lens distortion in Affinity Photo.
I’m slowly getting back into doing non-religious art, and What Do You Mean, “What Are You Doing?” is my first real entry there. It started out as a random doodle in pencil, which I scanned and then redrew in Procreate Pocket on my phone, which is also where I did the coloring and texturing.
With this piece, by the way, I found that a) working on an iPhone 11 really, really makes me miss the pressure sensitivity on my old iPhone 8, and b) I’m at the point where I’ve finally decided to start saving up for an Apple Pencil and iPad. I’ve hesitated to go down that path since it’s an expensive one (the iPad part, that is), but the benefits are now pretty clear to me.
New artwork: Prodigal Son.
New artwork: Mine Angels Round About You.
New artwork: Light of Truth and Love.
New artwork: Families Can Be Together Forever.
Another new painting based on a hymn: When Our Heavenly Parents We Meet.
A reference to Francis Webster’s testimony about his experience in the Martin Handcart Company (as quoted in Gerald Lund’s book Divine Signatures, p. 90–91):
I have pulled my handcart when I was so weak and weary from illness and lack of food that I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. I have looked ahead and seen a patch of sand or a hill slope and I have said, I can go only that far and there I must give up, for I cannot pull the load through it… I have gone on to that sand and when I reached it, the cart began pushing me. I have looked back many times to see who was pushing my cart, but my eyes saw no one. And I knew then that the angels of God were there.