Doxology Painting

So I had this canvas left over from the painting I completed for a worship painting. He had pasted hymns on the canvas and painted it brown. I tore off the hymns before I had decided to build my own panel, to see what the surface was like. I decided to build my own but I still had this guy sitting around "the studio" aka my half of the office in the apartment. I usually hate working with canvas but I liked the look of the canvas.

 So I decided to work with the words of the doxology...

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,

Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts,

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Amen.

I've already been creating "iconography" to represent the trinity. Burning Bush represents the Father, the Lamb represents the Son and the Dove represents the Holy Spirit.

Trinity Imagery

So I began by singing the doxology to myself. Every word I painted a circle in shellac forming three rings, I did this three times. This was the result, I painted inside each ring a color to also represent a different aspect of the trinity. Gold for the Father, Red for the Son and Blue/Gray for the Holy Spirit.

Then I applied a layer of shellac to even out the canvas.

I cut out each image to represent each aspect of the trinity in paper and painted it the corresponding color. However when I placed them on the canvas they got lost in the background.

So I spray-painted three circle for the paper cut outs to help emphasize them. I painted a thin black ring around each circle and highlighted some of the rings in the background in black.

Then to add a little bit of pop throughout the background. I stamped some black knots throughout the background with a woodcut.

This is the final result.

Prettier picture of the final result. 

Enjoy.