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Luke 2:15 (NLT)
When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Come on, let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this wonderful thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

DRAWING NOTES:

TIME OF DAY:
Night.

LIGHTING NOTES:
The stars in the sky & particularly the bright one over the cave near Bethlehem provides the cool blue light of this scene. In contrast to that is the warm yellow/red glow of the shepherd’s camp fire. You can see highlights of that warm glow on the figures, sheep, trees & surrounding ground.

CHARACTERS PRESENT:
Five un-named shepherds & lots of sheep (Ovis aries)

RESEARCH/ADDITIONAL NOTES:
This scene is similar to a previous one (Luke 02 – Nativity SET02 – Scene 03 – Shepherds) in that it deliberately contains similar background, mid ground & fore ground elements. I have changed the “camera position” so to speak, in effect “panning the camera to the right”. You may notice that the hill on which Bethlehem is located has apparently shifted to the left, as have the stars. There is less of the ancient oak tree to be seen behind the shepherds (only a small section of one of the upper branches) & there is less of the foreground bushes to be seen in this view as well.

I have copied & pasted the stars from a previous scene (Luke 02 – Nativity SET02 – Scene 03 – Shepherds) so that they match up to the same arrangement & positions in this one.

The colours used also come from the previous scene (Luke 02 – Nativity SET02 – Scene 03 – Shepherds), to maintain continuity between them.

Plants in this scene.
I researched typical plants of the region & decided to draw 3 types of tree & a representative bush:

The reddish tree on the right is Terebinth (aka Terpentine tree) (Pistacia terebinthus).
Carob (Ceratonia siliqua)
The large tree the shepherds are near or leaning against is an Olive tree (Olea europaea). This particular one is
thought to be 5,000 years old. That makes it 3,000 years old at the time of the scene above!

The bush with red berries in the foreground is Butchers’ broom (Ruscus aculeatus).