Bible Journaling - Colouring the opening pages while contemplating praise

As I turn to the first two pages in my Bible, I find that these are beautifully decorated in line drawings that begs to be coloured. I use a combination of colouring pencils and fibre tip pens to colour these pages and show you how I went about it. As I was doing so, I contemplated what it meant to live a life of praise. I wrote a poem that sprung from this contemplation, which I share in this blog. The poem is written in Afrikaans.

Lewe van lof 

‘n Lewe van lofprysing en gebed,

van gee met alles wat ek het,

van energie en geld en tyd,

in hierdie laaste dae eindstryd.

Ek kan nie wag om Hom te sien

wat ek my lewe lank al dien,

maar wanneer ek daar voor Hom staan,

wil ek my nie vir my beskaam.

Ek wil arms vol mense na Hom bring

wat Hom, soos ek, met lof besing;

mense wat Hom met lof vereer,

want ek het hul van Hom geleer.

Gee dat my lewe saak sal maak

vir meer as net my aardse taak,

gee dat my lewe lewens red,

dit is my begeerte en gebed.

'n Oorspronklike gedig deur Marietjie Uys (Miekie)

I love the fact that the Inspire Praise Bible opens up to a succession of beautifully decorated pages that I can personalize by bringing my own ideas to the pages.

I decided to colour the journaling on these pages with my Giotto Turbo Glitter markers.

I coloured the letters in solid colours to begin with.

Then I added some contrasting colours to each letter to add highlights and to create the illusion of dimension.

I then suddenly became concerned about bleeding and turned the page. Too late! I would simply have to deal with this issue when I started on this page. I did manage it quite well and will tell you more about it in the upcoming blog.

I decided to restrict myself to the use of my full set of pencils for the remainder of my colouring, as the pages have not been treated against bleeding.

The pencils I decided to use were Derwent Coloursoft colouring pencils. These are not watersoluble pencils.

I did not want my colouring to leave indentations on the pages that followed and wondered how I could overcome this issue. I finally remembered my Mont Marte watercolour paper pad had a lovely sturdy plastic cover. This paper pad had long since been filled up. I cut the cover off the paper pad to use as a shield when doing my Bible Journaling.

I blended oranges and yellows in the first flowers.

Then I blended purples and reds.

Blues and yellow-orange was blended next.

I returned to the warmer colours and blended pinks and purples.

I then blended reds, oranges and yellows, and added a contrasting black to the mix.

I finally used shades of green and suddenly the pages started to come alive.

I returned to shades of pink

Then it was necessary to add more greens.

In the next step, I played with purples and a cloudy blue.

I decided to use metalic pens (not markers that will bleed) to colour inside the labels.

I the added reddish browns, like Pimento and Terracotta to tone things down a little.

I stuck to the autumn palette a little longer with orange and brown.

Then I livened things up dramatically by adding the colours of the oceans to the page.

But I was still concerned that this page up being too bright and decided to add some more earthy browns.

Now it became necessary to pay more attention to the foliage and I came in with even more greens.

And then even more greens.

Now I was in danger of ending up with a page that was too earthy, so I returned to pinks and reds.

When I was done, I sprayed Artist Fixative over the page, as the pencils that I had used are extremely soft and likely to smudge with much handling. The fixative would prevent this from happening.

You can watch a compilation video of the steps above on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/jVQUUuIGtZw

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2005,2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois, 60188. All rights reserved.

Inspire PRAISE South Africa edition copyright 2017 by Christian Art Publishers, PO Box 1599, Vereeniging, 1930, RSA. All rights reserved.

Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy my books here:
You can purchase Designs By Miekie 1 here.
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