The Progression of Triumphal Entry

Having just passed Palm Sunday, the day we celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share a few photos of drawings I did while I was in the process of developing the painting called Triumphal Entry, a painting 40 x 60 inches on canvas.

For anyone who has been in my studio, they know that especially with the very large pieces like this one, there are many changes that can take place before the work is actually finished. With very complicated compositions I do full scale drawings right on the canvas to make sure each figure is where I want it to be, still loosely drawn, but tightly mapped out in measured segments to be sure the composition balances properly, even from a great distance away.

It's from those distances that any flaw in the overral design becomes most apparent. And any weakness in the composition in the very beginning remains a disaster even after a painting is finished.

Once I accomplish the basic design, I then cover the drawing with "veil" of skin glue and burnt sienna pigment, and let that dry before putting very thinned oil paint across the surface to lay out color.

Even before the beginning of this finishing step takes place, the composition has to be, in essence, already finished. The design has to be perfectly complete.

It caused me to think again how the Triumpal Entry was such an unfinished event. It was appropriate that Jesus the King was recognized as such, but in the very same week he was treated like a criminal and killed. I imagine during the Triumphal Entry His followers thought establishing the rule of this King was a pretty done deal. My canvas with a completed drawing looks pretty finished also... finished if I was making a drawing. But the plan is not to make a really big drawing.

The plan for Jesus was not to be recognized as a political leader, a good King to rescue His people from their oppression. The plan for Jesus was to die as a sacrifice and be recognized as the King of the Universe.

In those next steps as I lay out color on a canvas, the original drawing is typically lost under the layers of a mess of oil paint. It's a bit nerve-wracking because to some degree I have to trust myself and all my years of study and studio practice that the oil paint will give form and life to those clean pencil lines. Thus I must emotionally detach myself from the pencil lines, the skeleton of the finished painting, in order to bring the work to its final and colorful completion.

When Jesus went through Holy Week, He had also to trust that His Father knew what He was doing. He let go of the opportunity to be a king in the way that His followers wanted, in the political sense, and trust that God's finished plan would far exceed the human plan. Somehow His mock trial and horrid death would all work to make that come about. It must not have seemed so to His followers at the time. Just as circumstances in our own lives don't always appear they will work out better than the things we've lost. But in the end, when the picture is complete, we can share in the triumph as it was meant to be, allowing God's sovereign thoughts and plans to replace the ones we thought were so perfect, but died along the way. Thus we define Holy Week, this "triumph under construction", completed after something precious dies, and we wait for what only God Himself can do, give resurrection life and replace death with glorious victory.

May your Holy Week and your Easter be filled with celebration as we all await the coming of the triumphant King.