2 year Nativity

I can never figure out what to get my mother for Christmas. She collects Nativity scenes so one year, about 2015 or possibly 2016 I started on a Nativity watercolor.

I just presented it to her 2 years later. I spend a month or two originally working on it and shelved it until this past 2018.

Here's a look at it finished. And the steps I took to get there.

Finished in  December 2018

I finally finished.

Working on Sketches

I have been really wanting to make a nativity scene for Christmas. But I missed my opportunity, since I started this after Christmas. So I'm hoping I'll get this done before next Christmas. 

I'm getting it done, very slowly. The above is the inked study on white paper. I'm eliminating a bunch of the ornamentation and the column, and will be adding new things. I hope to transfer this design onto some very nice cotton 300 lb paper. And then, perhaps, I'll try to paint it.

That's terrifying, because whenever I add color or paint, somehow a great drawing becomes an awful painting.