Spring has sprung, so this month’s Bible Journaling theme of growth and renewal is entirely appropriate. I’ve just started planting seeds ready for the garden and allotment, bulbs are blooming, and buds are swelling – a perfect illustration of the metaphors used across the Old and New Testament verses I have chosen.
Visualising the verses as Bible journaling
In developing the theme through these five illustrations, I have included surrounding verses to add context: the ‘heart of stone’ in Ezekiel and the vine in John 15. In others, I have brought broader concepts in, such as that of baptism representing rebirth for the passage from Titus. And for the verses from John and Isaiah, I have tried to visually represent the words: a fruitful mingling of the vines with a wilting shoot that is apart from the ‘Christ-vine’ and a bit of wordplay – praise springing up in front of all nations.
Materials and techniques used
Some of my illustrations are AI-assisted designs based on my own inspiration/concepts. I have once again coloured using Polychromos pencils, with schemes prompted by Color Cube cards (by Sarah Renae Clark). Watercolour on tissue paper formed the basis for the background for ‘praise’, a bleached-white word cloud laser-engraved using my xTool UV laser. The plant was then coloured in with pencils. This turned out to be a messy mistake when it came to sealing the tissue paper with matte medium, which smeared the pencil dust all over.
