Lesson #4 My Sketch-Book/Bible Journal

I have greatly enjoyed my new Bible journaling adventure. When I first started I was using a basic sketch journal because I didn't want to write or mark in my nice Sunday morning Bible. I figured this would be an easy hobby for me to get into since I am creative and some what artistic.

Cover of my sketch journal. Esther 4:14

My church started a class on Monday nights where anyone can come and journal together. The leader picks a verse, but if you have something else on your heart you may work on that. The first week the scripture was Roman 8:11 "The spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead live in me". I was confident I was going to leave class with an awesome piece of artwork; however, I'm not proud of how my skills failed me that night.

I tried to do way to many things in one picture that I wasn't used to working with. I used calligraphy pens, stickers, traced letters, and water-colored. My calligraphy didn't turn out how I wanted so I decided I would paint the background. Well it turns out calligraphy pens aren't water resistant, but I had already paint around the border so I tried going around the words. I should have stopped and started a new one, but I was set on fixing this. The word 'spirit' was originally in stickers, but after I painted over it I thought it might look cool if I took the stickers off. I still like the concept, but because of the light colored paint I used it all started to blend together. 

The next week at class I decided I was going to take a different route. I looked up an idea on Pinterest and did my best to copy it. I didn't purposely change anything I wanted mine to look just like theirs. Our scripture this week was Pslam 91:4 "He will cover you with His feathers and under His wings you will find refuge".

Wow, it doesn't even look like the same person drew those two pictures. Crazy. 

The next couple weeks went pretty smooth, I looked up ideas and then copied or changed a few things and drew my own version.

Advice #1 If you are first starting your Bible journal, don't try to mix multiple medias and do fancy calligraphy if you have never done it before.

Advice #2 Don't be afraid to look up ideas and see what others have done. Once you are more comfortable with journaling you can look at those for inspiration and then personalize them. Later on you may feel confident enough to come up with an idea from scratch.

Advice #3 If you have a bad week or month and are losing motivation and feeling like you can't do it. Take a break, but don't give up. I have gone a few weeks without touching my journaling and sometimes that's what I need.