Ceramic Churches on Shelves

I just spent a week at my mother's in Georgia.  While there, I completed one painting.  My mother collects ceramic, wooden, and tin churches.  Most of them have lights inside.  Mother has them lined up on shelves all around her family room and also in other places around her house. The churches are along the tops of shelves.  However, I wanted it to look like like they were on two shelves - one shelf over the other.  So I removed photos from the bottom shelf and added churches.  Then took photos and put everything back where it was.  Here is the photo I used as a reference for my painting:

Then I blocked in basic shapes and started painting.  I forgot to take a photo of the work in progress until I had gotten the basic design on the churches on the bottom row.

Notice I did the bottom row first.  Lesson learned.  LOL!  When I started painting the top row, I kept bumping my arm against the bottom row of churches. Work top to bottom from now on!

Once I finished the churches it was time to go back and do some fine tuning. 

I added shadows behind the churches, and I believe I’m done. I know that there are steeples that are leaning a little, and I changed the design on a couple of them to make them a little simpler - added colorful stained glass windows in several that had clear or simply black/white windows.  Overall, I really like it.  Now I want to work on a poem to go with it.

I may go back and do a little more fine-tuning after it has dried a few days.  I'm wondering if I use oil-based Sharpies if I could get some of the more exact details done.

Oil on 12x12 Gessobord.

(Much later - 6/12/2018)  And here is the poem to go with this painting.  It took me a LONG time to get this poem written - and I could work on it more, but I reached the point of saying, "It's done."

My Mother’s Churches

My mother collects small churches, displayed on shelves and table tops

They’re gifts from friends and family, or treasures found in thrift shops

As a child, at her mill town church, when she was eleven years old

She gave her heart to Jesus, and was welcomed into God’s fold

She married and became a mother -  and, afterwards, a pastor’s wife

Serving churches in Kentucky, Ohio and Georgia - a big part of her life

Later, she became a widow - and studied to be a pastor herself

That’s when she got her first small church and lovingly placed it on the shelf

She was in church for baptisms and weddings, in church for potluck meals and preaching

In church for Sunday School and worship, in church for meetings and for teaching

It’s only fitting she collects churches – churches of ceramic, wood, or tin

Churches symbolize her life’s path, where she worked and where she’s been

The church collection, how it has grown!  It reflects the story of the sacred place

Where a woman we all know and love was “The Church” for others, by God’s grace

~Mary Carol Shaw Johnston, June 2018~