Illustrating Ephesians. My bible journaling adventure begins!

A year or so ago while scrolling through Pinterest (I'm sure during a late night feeding with the youngest son,) I came across a new bible study that caught my eye. Illustrated Faith or bible journaling is literally using a bible as an art journal to illustrate verses or write them in the margins in a creative way.

Honestly, at first I thought it might be a tad bit sacrilegious especially ones that had paint covering the word of God, but growing up in a family that the women especially are notorious for hi-lighting, underlining, scribbling notes in the margins and filling the back pages with quotes from their favorite sermons AND the fact that I'm an extremely visual and hands on learner, I couldn't resist this new way of studying the bible. I did a test run of this last Christmas in my art journal with Artful Advent. 

So come August 2015, I picked up an ESV journaling bible before our vacation, packed a few goodies from my art supply stash and dove in when we got to the beach. 

First up was Ephesians because the depth and breadth of the ocean kept reminding me of the depth and breadth of his love.

Testing out the water with pens and colored pencils. 

Getting warmed up with washi tape.

Swimming in the shallow end with black gesso and white gel pen.

Diving on in with water colors, pens and Stephanie Ackerman's online class. 

I'll be honest that I have NEVER had a regular quiet time, ever. My "go with the flow mentality" just revolts agains scheduled regiments. So just picking one book of the bible and focusing on one page at a time and illustrating one verse that speaks truth into my life has worked out well for me and has allowed God to reveal things that I would miss had I just had a check list of reading through the bible. And the beauty of it for me is that it's not on a time schedule, while my boys play in the sandbox I can do a page in 10 minutes or an hour or work on a page off and on for a few days. I can be as simplistic as it gets with just a pen or go hog wild with any supply I have already!

Ah the beauty of flexibility!

Monet water lilies

Much like the Starry Night lesson a while back, this lesson required lots of dashes, 

and more dashes, 

and dashes on top of dashes, 

and dashes until they were dashed out, and dashes until they wanted to dash me out.

After checking out some Monet books and talking about Impressionism, they started with the water and the willow branches, doing a reflection as they went. They kept the water and reflections going horizontal and the limbs going vertical.

Then, we threw in a variety of shades.

And kept dashing and adding a variety of shades.

Focusing on filling the white space.

Lastly, adding lily pads and flowers.

Winslow Homer Ships

Last but not least for Summer 2015 is Windsow Homer Ships.

First, paint a little less than half your canvas light blue with a super wet brush. When dry, use a foam brush to paint a few clouds and adding a bit of light tan to the bottom of the clouds.

Next, cut out a shape of ship and using a palette knife scrape various shades of blue paint mixed with molding paste on the canvas.

Then, paint the back of the boat.

Go back over the boat with a darker brown mixed with molding paste and draw into the paint with the pallet knife to create the lines of the boards of the boat.

Slap on some thickened white paint for the sails.

Use a black marker to outline a few areas to make them pop.

And voila! 

Altered Book Club

Below is a snippet of the 12 or so projects the Altered Book Club made in class and on their own. We took a vintage children's book and used it as an art journal and revamped the cover to reflect them. 

Jenni Horne style paintings of their choice and mandalas as unique as they are!

Color blocking and tree silhouettes.

Crazy colorful mixed media trees.

Mixed media self portrait on their covers.

Teesha Moore inspired collages.

Another color blocking + stencils to journal on whenever they wanted. 

Frida Kahlo self portraits

Pretty amazing things tend to happen when I face (ha! no pun intended) a fear with my art and my teaching. 

First off, I have always hated, capital H Hated, drawing people. Trees, houses or doodles, I'm your girl but drawing faces....I'd rather not. So, when I sucked it up and put Frida Kahlo on the list for Mimicking the Masters, I decided to take Christy Tomblinson's SheArt 3 workshop, which gave me a good idea of what I wanted to do and how to tackle face making. 

Here is what my brave little kids created! Amazing how fearless they are! I could learn a thing or two from them!

Klee Cityscapes

Geometry + architecture + modern art + killer color theory = Paul Klee 

We inititally drafted our design focusing on the shapes he used in his work, then transferred it to the canvas.

Working with one color at a time, trying to make it as boxy as possible and as always they made their own color choices. 

Coming together!

We used Faber Castell Gelatos to add the finishing touch.