Psalm 6—Artwork
Learn more about Christ in the Psalms weekly artwork and see previous pieces here.
Person: Myra Ferguson
As a digital media subject matter expert, I wrote How to Cheat in Adobe Animate CC: The Art of Design and Animation and have authored video courses for Photoshop and Illustrator. I teach part-time at the University of Colorado Boulder, create video tutorials, and write articles to help InDesign users convert print layouts to interactive HTML5 content. I have worked for Adobe on various projects and have created digital media skill assessments for LinkedIn for Photoshop, Illustrator, Animate, and After Effects. My portfolio is available at myraferguson.myportfolio.com.
Piece
Although King David is awash with agony in Psalm 6, he trusts God with his prayer for help. This composition presents a posture that expresses both the heavy weight of being worn down from distress and bowing down in prayer. The placement of the angled rays of light shining from above through the clouds depicts God’s acceptance of David’s prayer. The rain represents the floods of tears David shed.
PROCESS: DIGITAL COMPOSITION
The piece was mainly created in Adobe Photoshop. I started with a black and white Adobe Stock image of a young man in this position. I cropped it to focus on the position of being hunched over with his head down and in his hand. His hair originally appeared to be blond, so I darkened it and added contrast which helped to make it look wet. I couldn’t find a suitable image of crepuscular rays (what we affectionately call “Jesus clouds”), so I used Adobe Firefly to generate one. I positioned the rays to align with the subject’s head. The image only contained the rays and the clouds, so I added the rain. I used a Photoshop filter to render black and white fibers. By increasing the contrast, rotating the fibers, and applying a Screen blend mode, I simulated the rain.
