This month’s theme for five new illustrations to Bible journal is ‘hope’. I decided to start work in my new NIV Art Journalling Bible and there’s a little mini-review about it below. In part due to the planned review, I used five different media for my colouring-in just to see how the paper behaved. Conceptually, the illustrations were quite tricky as I didn’t want to repeat the same basic interpretation across all five verses. AI came to the rescue here, helping me develop some ideas for different emphases.
Media used
- Psalm 62:5 – Faber-Castell Polychromos colouring pencils
- Psalm 71:14 – Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer watercolour pencils
- Lamentations 3:25 – Derwent Inktense Paint Pan Studio Set [watercolour ink]
- Amos 5:4 – Derwent Pastel Pencils / Winsor & Newton Spray Fixative
- Matthew 12:21 – Koh-i-noor Hardtmuth Round Water Colour Paint (24)
NIV Art Journalling Bible – an artist’s review
My previous NIV Black Journalling Bible with unlined margins has served me well, now with over 150 of my illustrations in it. I’t was getting to’d reached the stage where I was having difficulty finding spaces for new illustrations. I chose not to use the back side of a page that already had an illustration on due to bleed-through and it was harder to trace through.
As it happened, I was searching for an interleaved Bible and discovered that Hodder & Stoughton have brought out a ‘specialist’ NIV Art Journalling Bible. It has slightly wider margins, 32 blank pages, as well as the other elements that you’d expect from a Bible such as ribbon markers, concordance and key passages.
The cover
The Bible is hardback with a kraft paper cover which I suspect is going to be grubby and colour stained very quickly. It may need sealing with a coat of varnish for longevity and wipe-ability if that’s something that is going to bother you down the line.
The paper
The pages are very almost white rather than the cream of my older Bible. In use, they are thinner and more prone to tearing. When I was using a 0.05 fineliner, it caught the page and punched through on a couple of occasions, which never happened in the other version. They have a good tooth, working well with all the coloured pencils I used. They were slightly more absorbent with the Inktense watercolour inks, which meant the paint didn’t move around as much. That wasn’t an issue with the watercolour pencils or the Koh-i-noor watercolours.
With the water-based media, there was some buckling, as one would expect, but to a similar amount as the old version. This was quickly improved with a spritz of water on the back side and a quick press with a mini-iron:
The 32 blank pages are much thicker (I’m guessing a 100-120gsm weight) with a definite ivory/cream tint compared to the main pages. They are thin enough to trace through. I haven’t yet tested those.
What did I think?
I like the slightly taller and wider margins, creating more space for drawing. While I look forward to doing whole page illustrations, these are limited to where the blank pages have been inserted (in contrast to the interleaved ESV Bible). I also prefer the whiter paper over the creamy colour of my old Bible. The resilience of the paper is not so impressive, and given the marketing of it as an art journaling Bible, it could be better. The kraft cover is on trend, but not very practical to keep clean if you don’t want stray paint to stick. Overall, I’ll carry on using it, but will probably resort back to my previous journaling Bible.
