Story Behind Healing Hand of God Painting.

Here's what J got explaining the painting.  It might be slightly different as I re-wrote it twice, mainly to have it legible.

For Christmas I received a 16"x20" canvas from my parents.  I had no idea what painting would go on there as the paintin God put in my head needed a larger canvas.  I asked GOd to give me the painting for the canvas I received.  In Apil I was drivin home from work and listening to the compilation CD I made of some "worshipful" Jeremy Camp songs.  One of those songs was "Healing Hand of God".  A I was driving, I was picturing 1 hand with a scar on the wist and the thorns on the upper arm reaching down, palm facing up.  The other gad was reaching up eith the palm facing down.  Then there was the broken heart being mended located just above the hands.  God had given me the picture.  I planned it out in writing and rough sketches (posted here in June).  I pictured a soft blue background that had a marble/sponge effect.  I had initially dismissed the crown of thorns on the arm as I got into the major planning phase.  Then I had a recurring thought that I finished the painting without the crown of thors, but the photo contained the crown of thorns (God's done that before with the lyrics to Point of Grace's song "Great Divide" so I added the crown of thorns back in).

Now one thing about my drawing/painting.  I don't do people unless I can go off of a picture either by tracing it or making a copy that I can draw a grid on and "transfer" to another paper with the same scale grid.  For this painting, I was picturing arms that were kind of muscular.  I thought about where I could find pictures that would have the curve od each hand the way I was picturing it.  I looked at my laptop's wallpaper where you (J) are worshipping God during a concert and thought "maybe I have the right hand reachin down?" Then I saw the other picture of you worshipping God (probably from the same concert) but it was your backside.  And again the left hand reaching up?  The only thing...the curve of the hand I was looking for was the mirror image of the actual photos.  So I took each picture, did a miror image of it, cropped it to the area I wanted and zoomed in.  I then printed off the pictures and did my grid transer process.  Since I needed to enlarge the arms to match my canvas I had fun measurin 1/16th inch markings. (I could have used a ruler with smaller increments at times.) and conted the lines and multiplied to get the large scale.  The crown of thorms is based off your tattoo on the left arm (that arm became the right arm in the painting).  I enlarged the tattoo and printed that photo.  I then traced that onto my "template". I hope you don't mind that you arms were used as a model for the painting.  My sister helped me find the script font I wanted to use as Microsoft didn't have any that really stood out.  Free online fonts can be fun.  Once I found the font, I tyoed in the title of the painting (same as the song) and the second document with a portion of the Bible verses you reference that go with the song's chorus.  I used graphite paper to transfer my template and the words to the canvas.  I cranked your music while painting to help me remember how the painting looked in my head.  I had a good worship time with you music, God and the paining.  The 'T' in my last name is painted to look like the Martyrs Cross.  The crown of thorns for Jesus paying the ultimte price, the fish for the early persecuted chuch, and the spike for the modern day persecuted chuch.