Artwork for “Christmas Eve”

I like to do my own front cover art work for my musical compositions so when I wrote a new carol set to Christina Rossetti’s “Christmas Eve” earlier this year I took the last line of each verse as my inspiration:

For Christmas bringeth Jesus, brought for us so low.

I initially wanted a baby in one hand but having done some preliminary sketches, decided that a pair of hands cradling the baby would be preferable. I then Googled various words and phrases and came up with the following images as my inspiration portfolio :

I liked the straw in the first image but there is little sense of the swaddling clothes that the proper versions of the Christmas story feature which the photo shows very well. I thought the hands on the logo were clever as the image is very simple but there is still a feel of the anatomical shape of thumb and fingers.

Next I needed some actual hands to work from so I took a photo of my own hands in the cradling position I wanted and then photoshopped myself out to leave just the hands; I then drew the hands working from the photo, with the shape in the Canadian logo also in my mind. I also draw a baby taking the tight wrapping from the photo but the looser outer wrap and the straw from the print:

Finally, I popped the drawings into Photoshop, darkened the lines and slid the baby into the hands to produce the definitive version:

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