Quam dilecta: Week of Prayer in Daily Life - Day 5

This morning after talking with Miriam and reading out my imagined conversation between Jesus and Zacchaeus, I decided to go back to imaginative drawing as an aid to prayer. I wanted to try to draw from the point of view of Zacchaeus - to put myself in his place as I had done in writing. I also wanted to create an image that addressed some of the points I was not so happy with after my sketch on the second day of the retreat.

This was the last of my daily sessions with Miriam and she asked if I could undertake a review of the week in the form of The Examen and bring along an object to the final session tomorrow to show people. I thought a picture would be a good object to take to sum up the week.

I had left my sketchbook and pencils at home. At lunchtime at the office I used the drawing function on my I phone notepad app to sketch the image above. It is not great! It’s hard to sketch on the I phone if you have big fingers like me!

Thinking back to the first sketch I did - and how the fig leaf looked a bit like a heart, I realised that it also looks like a hand - with five “fingers”. I thought one way to link everything in the scene (the crowd, Zacchaeus and the fig tree) would be to draw the different parts of the image based on hands! This might have also been a cop out for my anxiety about sketching people from memory! I sketched my own hands in different positions, turning the pointing fingers and folds of skin into the faces and features of the jealous crowd.

I placed Zacchaeus and Jesus in the centre of the image. The fig leafs on the tree don’t look as much like hands as I meant them too! I didn’t get time to finish colouring the picture but you can get the general idea from the half finished image I think!