Along with the excitement about The Idea, I soon realized there were countless details to work out to make this book a reality. Even though I was an artist with a BFA and MFA in Drawing and Painting, the truth was I had:

No experience with illustration.

Large Mixed Media Abstract Images? Why, yes.

Realistic Pencil Drawings? Yes, again.

Watercolor? Well, yes. Yes!

Working with watercolor became my best option. The deep rich luminous colors that are possible with this medium, plus the fact it dries quickly, lent itself to creating illustrations.

Now, how to create the look of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. Do I use a traditional European depiction? Do I use another ethnicity? A light or dark skin tone? What should they look like? How old do I make Joseph?

Whatever decision I made precluded all other options.

Mary was probably a young girl at the time of Jesus’s birth, but there are two schools of thought about Joseph. Many Christians believe he was a young man, but the Orthodox tradition teaches he was much older, perhaps a widower. My Joseph figurine shows him with gray hair. He is also sometimes depicted as a balding older man, like in this tender statue.

The truth is, we don’t know much about Saint Joseph.

Since Joseph traveled long distances with his family, going first to Bethlehem and then to Egypt, and found a way to provide for them in a foreign land, my decision was to depict him as a strong 20 year old. Just around this time, my oldest son returned home from college with his hair at a longer length and growing his first beard. He instantly became the model for Joseph.

 

And to balance the equation, I used photos of our youngest son as a model for the baby Jesus. I made him a baby with dark, curly hair and my son’s sweet expression.

 

The colors I chose for the skin tones have gold undertones, suggesting an other worldly quality, a kind of holiness. They glow against the dark blue color of the starry night sky.

 

Once you get past the big decisions, sometimes the path becomes clearer.