Red Sea (Process)

My fifth illustration was completed in the Fall semester of 2009 because of a funeral in my family at the end of the Spring semester. Also, I was intimidated by the size and subject matter. I painted the parting of the Red Sea based off of the verse: "It was by faith that the people of Israel went right through the Red Sea as though they were on dry ground. But when the Egyptians tried to follow, they were all drowned. (Hebrews 11:29 NLT)" Depicted are the traveling Israelites in the midst of a parted sea. In the distance the Egyptians following are only shown by fire and smoke.

Research

Because this project depicts an epic moment I felt intimidated by it and the odd sized layout of 16"x40" and didn't move forward with it during my first semester [of thesis work]. As I began to process the event I was to illustrate I gathered information about the Red Sea and the events surrounding that day. Kazu (www.kazusano.com) also encouraged m to try and think about the situation in a way that people haven't seen.

Thumbnails

My thumbnails detail two views of the event, one as Moses lifted his staff and the great waters parted. I knew that this moment had been depicted before and wanted something more interesting. The other thumbnail depicted the event as it was happening on the floor of the sea. This was closer to what I wanted and had more real emotion depicted in the characters. I was encouraged to portray reality not by style but by depiction and to look again at the details of the scene.

Photo Shoot

I first scheduled the photo shoot for early August [2009] but my models forgot and I had to reschedule. I used the Page family and Valonna Fowler on location at Ocean Beach, San Francisco later in August. It was chaotic working with two children but it helped me envision the chaos of the scene.



Comps

I developed the line drawings for this painting over a couple of weeks and added in more characters and storytelling elements as I went. I was encouraged to break up the ground plane to show the bottom of the ocean, and think about the time of day for the scene. As I went to the value and color comps I realized how complicated a scene I had produced and attempted to unify groups through value and the ground planes. The color choice became simple as I wanted to show both the greeny bluish tones of the sea interspersed with the fiery yellow reds of the light that led them through the ocean.



Final

I finally obtained the correct size of wood through a classmate that had access to a hardware store. I had long worried about obtaining the right sized wood in time to paint it as I couldn't locate it myself.

The painting process occurred over the majority of my final semester [Fall 2009]. I laid in the wash of the blues to the oranges first from left to right and then began to describe local colors and values to each of the subjects. I was encouraged to do whatever I could to portray the majesty, awe and depth of this scene. I worked on many different elements at once and added some texture in the foreground later in the process.