Oil Doodling at Waterton Lake

See the full gallery on Posterous

On the iPad using ArtRage.

Bamboo Fun

For Christmas, dear daughter and family gave me a Bamboo Fun pen tablet to play with. Here's my first attempt:

It's amazing what you can do with even this relatively unsophisticated tablet. It's pressure sensitive so a light stroke gives you a light line and harder stroke a thicker line. There's lots of different pencil, brush, chalk, pastel, oil, acrylic, watercolour settings. It comes with  Corel Painter Essentials 3 with which I did my flower and Photoshop Elements, which I have not yet tried. 

Fun, indeed!!!

The Right Side of the Boat - John 21:6

Reading John 21:1-14 in my St James Devotional Guide this morning. I wonder what the equivalent of the "right-side-of-the-boat" would be for us at the moment? 

Image! 153 big ones.

A Watercolour Meditation on Mark 10.51

Enor-mouse: Art by Bethany Vanderputten

There's some neat stuff going on over at Bethany Illustrates including a sketch of Enor, a character in a children's Christmas tale I wrote and which Bethany is illustrating. Check it out here and while you're there, have a boo at her other work and writings. Very nice.

UPDATE—May 2012: Bethany now serves as the Bishop's Secretary in our diocese. Her artistic eye add sparkle to our diocesan documentation.

Holy Week Watercolour from the Word: Good Friday

Finished.

Holy Week Watercolour from the Word: Wednesday

Isaiah 63...from which a canticle was fashioned in Celebrating Common Prayer for Passiontide.

I thought of Jesus; splendid in crimsoned apparel, dying in the greatness of his strength, mighty to save.

Not treading the winepress in wrath, but because of it.

Lifeblood spatters and stains and we are born again.

Holy Week Watercolour from the Word: Tuesday

Today's image is from the Stations of the Cross...the Women of Jerusalem. I know it's a bit early in the timeline for the week, but it was the thing that drew me today.

I love the way the Altar Guild women do this one with flowers and pearls and a lace table-cloth. In the past they've included a china tea-cup and saucer and a lace handkerchief. I find the femininity of it very moving every year.

This little display also reminds me of a scene from the novel, Christie, in which a woman places one of her aprons in her husband's coffin just before he is buried. I don't know I find that act so moving, but I do.

It was the women who prepared Jesus' body for burial and were there first thing on resurrection morning to finish the job. God bless 'em.

Holy Week Watercolour from the Word: Monday

Okay, so this is a straight swipe of an idea I discovered over at soupablog where there is this wonderful lentenblog thing going on using a Moleskine sketchbook (if you've never heard of them, check them out here and there). Even though I do not possess a Moleskine, I thought I'd try some sketching and thoughts for Holy Week anyway.

I did the sketch above during our Lenten Stillness hour...the church is open from noon to 1pm for prayer and meditation. That's the pulpit from which I'm priviledged to preach. Yes, I still use it because it gives the preaching a sense of occasion. The cross is there ready for the Triduum.

The verses that have "rung" for me so far today are those above...Psalm 130.5 on the left and Isaiah 49.4 on the right. The Isaiah verse challenges me because, if I'm honest, I'm uncomfortably aware that much of what I do is done out of vanity (and therefore for nothing). Yet, I know I am loved, that the verse on the left is also true for me, so any right and recompense there is for me, is with the LORD my God...and just as well.

The other verse that "went off" for me this morning is Zechariah 10.2...

For the household gods utter nonsense,
and the diviners see lies;
they tell false dreams
and give empty consolation.
Therefore the people wander like sheep;
they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd.

There are leaders in our church who are uttering nonsense, seeing lies, telling false dreams and giving empty consolation to people struggling with the household and other gods of this age. Therefore Anglicans wander and are afflicted for lack of courageous shepherding by leaders who are prepared to lovingly resist the spirit of the age.