It’s a new year (I’m sure you’ve noticed) and what better way to start than some joy and praise in the form of this month’s Bible journaling theme. Five new illustrations for verses from Old and New Testaments, full of excitement, colour and metaphor. Keep scrolling to the link to download the templates if you would like to add any to your own Bible, and for making notes.
In praise of AI
I’ve admitted before that I use artificial intelligence to assist my design work, and these new verse illustrations are no exception. I continue to take all the credit for the creative ideas and the final results, but it is so useful to have ‘someone’ else to bounce ideas off. ChatGPT is currently my assistant, and, with the right prompting, helps out with illustrations as well as general creative ideas. However, without my input and design, there would be an unusable output… I’m not redundant yet.
The joy of new tools
At the end of November, I invested in yet another laser machine. The xTool F2 Ultra UV laser complements my other machines as it is a different wavelength and is known as ‘cold lasering’. No physics lecture incoming… Just know that the laser beam is ridiculously fine and the amount of detail it can achieve (without burning) is amazing.
The following pic shows the illustration for Philippians 4:4. I painted tissue paper with a wash of the watercolour inks, dried it and then ran it through the UV laser. The laser cut out the letters with no smut or burn marks. With lighter settings, it also ‘bleached’ the watercolour pigments resulting in what appears to be white printing within the letters. The smallest ‘rejoices’ are fractions of a millimetre tall and still pretty much legible. Gluing down the letters using matte multimedium renders the tissue paper practically translucent and some pen work to add shadows was all that I needed to do to finish.
Design notes
With many verses being so similar in wording, illustrating five verses representing joy and praise without reproducing the same images turned out to be quite tricky. I hope I have created enough difference in styles for each to stand on its own merits.
All were completed using black pigment fineliners and Derwent Inktense watercolour palettes (standard and metallic).
I hope you appreciate the elongated regal shadow of Christ riding the colt, and my attempt to capture whole body praise in the form of the signed words. And that last one, with the lasering? It’s a dingbat: rejoice(s) in THE LORD recycled (always). One of those ideas that popped into my head, amused me and then challenged me when trying to create it!
