Fifteenth Station; Jesus is risen from the dead

Harrison and Ruth

At first we practiced drawing Pre-Raphaelite models, such as, Elizabeth Siddall, Fanny Cornforth, May Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ect. We took a lot of time choosing our models from various references including, Pre-Raphaelites, The Great Artists, and many others.

To put the models from books into the painting proved a challenge; in our painting, you see the woman (Mary Magdeleine), facing Jesus; she has seen him rise. This is Elizabeth Siddall, she is on the front cover of Pre-Raphaelite sketches in class, (one of our model sources). Painting her in from a different angle was very difficult.

I was looking forward to painting the sky pinks and blood reds, so I was sorely disappointed, we were doing the fifteenth station, (Jesus rises from the tomb), therefore the sky had to be bright, reflecting the atmosphere.

Our Jesus was based on Dante Gabriele Rossetti himself, who actually painted the picture of Elizabeth Siddall we painted, confusing, isn’t it? I searched for a long time in our picture sources and found a picture that fitted the roll perfectly. Harrison asked to draw this picture as he isn’t very good at drawing women.

I liked drawing the picture of Jesus as his face was very subtle and serious and the faces I usually draw are happy ones so it was a nice change. Flying from Jesus’ hand we drew a dove - this is a sign from the Pre-Raphaelites paintings and is a sign of peace. God is also supposed to have appeared above Jesus as a dove at his baptism.

We also put the holes in Jesus’ hands, to show the importance of him being nailed to the cross and dying for us.

Our teacher told us what features the Pre-Raphaelites liked on a woman. A straight, strong jaw line, a straight nose, full, red, tight lips, and redy brown hair.

As we copied Siddall’s painting, we tried to take this into account, though we couldn’t quite get the hair colour.

Traditionally, Pre-Raphaelites included a lily and dove in their pictures: the dove representing peace, and the lily representing purity

Although this was set 2000 years ago, we did the styles of clothing medieval, (apart from Jesus, who had of coarse been stripped.) So, Mary’s (Madeleine) dress was painted long and sweeping, purple with dark blue painted-on ribbon around her waist and down the centre of the bottom half.

Unlike all the other paintings, ours has the sun rising, to represent the rising of Christ.

Every painting represents something.

Ours represents joy.