Creating my twin’s ketubah
When my twin sister asked me to make her a watercolor ketubah for her wedding I was thrilled…and a bit apprehensive. Yes, I’ve made plenty of Jewish marriage certificates just like this, an painted(watercolor) design with Hebrew and English calligraphy for the vows in the middle. In the past couple years the custom Ketubot I’ve been making have mostly been made of wood. The wooden designs I’ve created either hand carved or lasered text and my calligraphy and painting needed some warming up. So, I broke out my paints and began practicing with some smaller paintings of trees and landscapes, what a joy! My sketchbooks are often filled of pen and ink, graphite and scribbled notes, no color what so ever. But, in no time I had filled up a watercolor sketchbook with vibrant hues on each page.
It took me a while to figure out the branch structure of the tree in the painting, but late one night I was working on thumbnail sketches and stumbled upon this composition. Sketching the entire tree really helped even though I would be cropping in so heavily on the final piece.
