As part of our church’s 6-week fast, Gregg asked me to make a banner as a focal point and to help illustrate a theme.
Found near the end of the book of Joshua (Joshua 24:14-28), the story tells about the commitment that the people made to follow God, and the marker stone Joshua placed at the base of a large oak tree, to remind the people of their commitment. We at NFC are corporately and personally renewing our commitment to follow and serve the Lord, so these are exciting times!
After thinking about this opportunity, I decided to do something unusual. Something big. (At 17.5 x 3 feet, this is the biggest banner I’ve ever made!)
It was a fun project! The best part being that I got to spend half of Saturday (including a Subway lunch) with my daughter Alison… Together we enlarged it, painted it, waited for it to dry, and hung it. I’m SO glad she helped me. Without her it would have taken twice as long! Plus she’s a great painter and good at mixing colors!
The drawing:
First, I made the simple sketch with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator at 1/12th size (1 inch = 1 foot). Then I applied a “charcoal” stroke to the lines, colored them, and filled the areas with simple colors.
Trade secret #1 (how we enlarged it):
We used the church’s projector to enlarge the file directly onto butcher paper that was taped to the wall. We traced the outlines in pencil. Then we painted in the colors, sort of like “paint by numbers” with tempera paint. So cool!

Notice the re-purposing of the projector on the left side of the next photo. We used its cooling fan for a while to help dry the paint! It was pretty slow so we eventually took it outside into the sunshine. A gust of wind overturned part of it, and it did smear in a couple of places (if you look REAL close you may see them), but thankfully no major damage was done!

I brought my Dad’s long ladder with the extended arms to get to the top of the arch, and I taped clean rags on to its arms to keep from scuffing the walls.
This domed structural feature is somewhat like an apse in cathedral architecture. Whatever it is called, there was an amazing view from up there!

Trade secret #2 (how it is held up):

Finished!

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