175th Anniversary for a Lovely Church and Congregation

St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Doylestown is holding many festivities this Saturday, April 22, on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of its first service in the church in 1848. The community is invited starting at 1:00 pm to visit this beautiful Gothic Revival church and enjoy the conviviality that I know, firsthand, is the hallmark of St. Paul’s joyful and generous members.

St. Paul’s owes its existence to Mrs. Elizabeth Pawling Ross, who would ride her horse 26 miles from Doylestown into Philadelphia faithfully every month to attend Holy Communion at the Episcopal Church there. She eventually petitioned the diocese to create an Episcopal parish in her hometown of Doylestown, which in the 1840s was little more than a village crossroad between Philadelphia and Easton. I was happy to draw Mrs. Ross for a coloring book that St. Paul’s will have available Saturday for children to color, while their parents are having refreshments or touring the graceful interior of the building.

Starting at 1 pm Saturday, in front of the church if the weather is fine, a brief ceremony including a greeting by our town mayor and a reenactment of the opening of a time capsule from the church’s inception will take place; from there visitors may stroll from docent to docent inside, hearing interesting facts about the history and architecture of St. Paul’s, chatting with uniformed members of the Bucks County Civil War Round Table, enjoying refreshments and a colorful timeline display in the parish hall, seeing the Mercer tiles in the chapel below and even viewing the lovely enclosed columbarium garden. At 5 pm the same day, St. Paul’s excellent choir will sing a choral evensong service, and on Sunday morning at 10 am the rector, Fr. Daniel Moore, will celebrate a traditional Mass using prayers and hymns of the mid-1800s. Everyone is welcome at these events.

I was pleased to design the logo above for St. Paul’s occasion, which is being used on banners and t-shirts and the like for this year of celebration. I did this illustration below a few years back, depicting the church’s Easter Vigil procession.

St. Paul’s is a very charitable church within our community – for decades it has run Christmas in Doylestown, which benefits local shelters, and they now have a small ‘community food pantry’ in front of its steps for anyone in need. At this weekend’s events there will be a spot for donations to help the underserved in the community and the parish will also host a meal for those in need on Sunday, apart from the festivities – a regular occurrence for this generous church, which does not forget its mission even in the midst of its celebrations.

For all events at St. Paul’s, see their website here.

Biblical Life Drawing, October 2022

I arranged a Biblical Life Drawing session last month and we were fortunate to have two models for some of the time. I drew with prisma pencil on toned pastel paper for these quick sketches of a woman holding a basket and Mary cradling the Child in a basket

We discussed a pose for our two models together and came up with the idea of a quiet moment with Mary and Elizabeth marveling over Mary’s new Child – this is a scene I would like to come back to and develop more, I think there could be many beautiful emotions to manifest here.

I drew these Madonna and Child sketches in prisma with some chalk highlights. I will use one of these on a Christmas card this year.

Finally, I went back into a drawing I did last session of Jesus with Mary Magdalen, and added some tones to it with charcoal, which added some needed depth to the scene.

Drawing Biblical figures

I organized another Art+Faith Life Drawing session through my church and this time we had two wonderful models, husband and wife, who posed in our makeshift Biblical costumes so artists could imagine and draw scenes from our shared religious heritage, bringing our faith into our art.

We started with warm-up sketches of 5 to 10 minutes in length. I sketched on charcoal paper with prisma pencil..

Our models took a poignant pose of Mary Magdalen receiving counsel from Jesus. I drew this longer pose in pencil on charcoal paper –

While the models often posed together in a scene, time restrictions made it hard for me to get developed drawings of two figures, so I concentrated more on one or the other. Here is our model posing with ‘tablets’ as Moses below. It was really striking to see him standing in front of us – there is a grace in the draping of ancient clothing styles that does make you stop and contemplate: the gravity of their lives so long ago, the convictions they held that carried them through devastation. Drawing these faithful figures has an effect that goes beyond simple rendering.

My favorite from the day – an Evangelist.

Drawing Women of the Bible

I organized another Art+Faith Life Drawing session through my church and this time our model was a lovely friend of mine, tall and with waist-length hair; and instead of Madonna and Child poses we decided she could pose as Mary at the time of the Resurrection or other women of the New Testament. Another artist in our group borrowed some beautifully-made costumes from a Nativity pageant, and along with some props, veils and scarves we put together some wonderful depictions of women of the Bible to bring into our art.

We started with warm-up sketches of about 5 minutes in length. I sketched on charcoal paper with chalk and conté crayon.

I didn’t get too far with this one below but I think I have the basic pose, just have to develop it more. This is prisma pencil on charcoal paper. I think this drawing could be Mary waiting to go with the other two women to the tomb on Easter morning.

The last two are twenty minute poses I drew on toned grey sketch paper, with burnt sienna and white prisma pencils. I added some local color with other pencils and chalks. The top woman with the jar could be the ‘woman at the well’ that Jesus met, and the bottom one, since we dressed her with several accessories, could be a wealthy woman – perhaps Pilate’s wife, contemplating her message to Pilate to “have nothing to do with this righteous man.”

Many years have passed since I drew figures daily in art school; until these drawing sessions I had forgotten how personal and cathartic it is to draw from a model in the moment. It inspires exploration, harkens back to stories long remembered, and turns accidental strokes into almost prophetic discoveries. I’m looking forward to our next Biblical model.

More Madonna and Child drawings

A few more from a life drawing session of a model posing as Madonna and Child. The first is again chalk & conte crayon on toned pastel paper, the second is more a line drawing in prisma pencil on toned paper.

Sketching the Madonna and Child

I was very happy to be able to arrange a life drawing session a few weeks ago (before a nasty bout of sickness from which I’m emerging) to help celebrate the Christmas season – a lovely model who posed for as the Madonna and Child. This is one of the ways I hope to continue to bring art and faith together in my life.

Here are a few of the first quick sketches we did to loosen up, on plain paper & toned paper – we called these croquis drawings in art school. I used sepia chalk and conte crayon for these loose sketches. More drawings to come this week.