It’s time for another set of illustrated verses to be released into the wild, this time with the theme of ‘God’s Word and truth’. The two are intrinsically linked, obviously, and it didn’t take long to choose five verses for this month’s Bible journaling. As normal, the templates are available for you to trace into your own Bibles and make your own version. Use the link at the bottom of the post. Here are my coloured examples:
Some thoughts behind the illustrations
Deuteronomy 30:14
I have used the context of the verse for a couple of my illustrations this month. For this verse, the remainder of the text is ‘it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it’. Having the continuous line linking the verse from mouth to heart seemed very apt, and needed the landscape orientation to keep the flow.
Psalm 119:160
This one is a bit of a dingbat – ‘all your words are true’. I used an online word cloud generator which allowed a background shape (the speech bubble) to be filled with the words. Random fonts and careful selection of settings were experimented with to get the result. I transferred across to Illustrator to edit and then to the xTool UV laser to ‘bleach’ watercolour paint on tissue paper and then cut out the speech bubbles. Glued into place with Xyron sticker maker and embellished with colour pencils.
Mark 13:31
I tried to come up with ideas of things that never pass away. Mountains, sun, moon and star were the most immovable, long-lasting things I could think of – during a human lifespan anyway. Because, of course, we know that even these things will pass away. The colour palette was inspired by a photo of a sunset over a smog-bound Los Angeles, with the colour changes suggesting depth in a mountain range. Or that was the plan anyhow.
Hebrews 4:12
‘Sharper than any double-edged sword’ drove the imagery for this verse. I think this interpretation shows much more dynamism than my first time journaling this verse back in 2019. I’m not very good at getting my colouring to replicate a ‘glow’, but tried my best to have a bright white sword radiating light.
James 1:22
Oh, how to depict service, Christian love in action, mission and all the other activities God’s Word commands us to do? I’ve done my best pictorially! I wanted the black and white, uninteresting silhouette of a church-bound group of people to contrast with the vibrant colours of a community-engaged active congregation leaving the confines of a church building.
Materials used for these illustrations
- NIV Art Journaling Bible
- Faber-Castell Polychromos colouring pencils
- Xyron sticker maker (permanent glue)
- Tervakoski sketching paper – tissue paper thin 25gsm. holds up when wet, flattens nicely with an iron and barely visible once glued into the Bible
- Derwent Inktense watercolour pans
- Unipin black fineliner (various sizes)
