Do You Hear Somebody Singing Alleluia, Or Is It Just Me??

One of my favorite year-end assignments is for the Inland Register, the monthly news publication for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane in Washington State. Editor Eric Meisfjord always asks me to do a Christmas cover.

This year’s features a sheep who wonders if he’s hearing things. He knows it can’t be the shepherd’s iPod, because shepherds couldn’t afford iPods back then… : )

Here’s a detail image:

The bishop’s Christmas message is at the top. Here’s a close-up which makes it easier to read.

I roughed out several ideas for the cover. Eric made his selection based on this sketch.

I was curious to see what the illustration would look like with a full night sky, so I did this variation, deleting the bishop’s message, and expanding the heavenly host (Lk 2:13).

If you look closely, you’ll see that some of the angels are duplicates, with different skin and hair color.

There’s a little sleight of hand in the musical notation. Anybody spot it? Any music majors out there?

(Don’t waste more than ten seconds on it– it’s pretty obscure.)

The question mark is actually a reconfigured bass clef.

I created the clef with Photoshop’s Shape tool. I narrowed it, moved the dots aside, and reshaped it slightly using the Warp tool. I deleted one of the dots, enlarged the other one and repositioned it.

Voilà!– a musical question mark.

The musical notes are also Photoshop shapes. The original stems were thin, and I worried about their visibility.

Solution: I created a new layer and used the Pen tool to draw over the stems, making
them thicker.

Here’s the final again.

Have you ever tried to imagine the night sky filled with the heavenly host singing praise?

Did you know shepherds took coffee breaks, and that sheep can speak musical notation?

Hope you’ll leave a comment.

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