Water heals and purifies. It also kills and destroys.
Few symbols encompass both the life-giving and death-dealing properties of water as the sacrament of baptism, which represents both the passing of the old self and their rebirth as a new creature (Romans 6:3-11).
Here, the image of death & rebirth is also reinforced by a dragonfly motif; the dragonfly spends the first years of its life in the deep waters as a nymph, and is completely transformed into a new being as it rises to the surface.
Unlike butterflies, a dragonfly undergoes several molting processes after its emergence, showing that, while the creature is already made new, it is not yet perfected, and must grow in its new identity through what is called progressive sanctification.
The work's title refers to the Christian daimyo, Konishi Yukinaga, whose baptismal name is Augustine, and is the primary subject of this image.
Unfinished value study for a painting, worked in graphite on hot pressed watercolor paper. Drafted and rendered using the Bargue method. Hopefully, I got the photo oriented correctly so that the drawing will be right side up, once I upload it! If anyone has advice for photographing a heavy application of graphite, without getting weird reflectiveness, or speckled effects, I’m very interested!
So I wanted to play with lights and shadows with this piece. (sorry I literally could not figure out how to set post it straight and I tried all I could think of, it didn's work out. Please if you have the same problem and you know how to solve it tell me, thank you).
For the doodle-a-day prompt 'kiss' I went for a thimble to keep with my loose 'lost boys' theme! If you don't remember: Wendy offers Peter Pan a kiss and he holds his hands out, he doesn't know what a kiss is. She then hands him a thimble. Pretty cute - stick a cute face on it then it's SUPER CUTE
