Happy New Year! I pray that this year for you is full of peace, joy, and good health!
2019 was a very happy year for my family- we had our son, Clark, in March and he is just the best thing to ever happen to us. He also is SO MUCH WORK. Haha.
So, last year I didn’t get to Bible journal nearly as much as I had the years before. And now with this new year and decade beginning, I feel my soul craving to get in the word more, to make more time to continue feeding my relationship with the Lord.
While I’m not big on resolutions, I am going to try to devote more time to reading, studying, and Bible journaling this year- while also taking in and enjoying my baby, because he is already growing too fast. It’s a delicate balance.
I would love to know what your resolutions/goals/cravings for this year are! Let me know in the comments!
The Verse
Alrighty, so to start of this year I wanted to do a Bible journaling page that is bright and cheery, but also simple.
I decided to journal on Lamentations 3:22-23 which says:
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.”
His mercies are new every morning just felt like the perfect way to start this year and decade.
God is merciful, has wiped our slate clean, and loves us unconditionally. Praise the Lord for the new. For our eternal salvation through Jesus who died to wipe away our sins.
The Tutorial
I decided to paint a simple sunrise using somewhat of a wet-on-wet technique.
If you arent familiar with watercolors, wet-on-wet is basically where you wet the page and then add in wet watercolors. This makes the watercolors spread in the water already on the page and blend beautifully. However, trying to do the wet-on-wet technique in a journaling Bible, as opposed to watercolor paper, is very tricky!
Journaling Bible pages are thicker than a traditional Bible’s, but they are still very thin. So adding a lot of water makes the pages more prone to tearing. The page also crinkles up with a lot of water so you end up with pools of watercolor rather than a nice blending wash of watercolors. The Bible page also dries very fast making it hard to add color before it dries
All this to say, it’s hard to actually do the wet-on-wet technique in our Bibles. But we can still do our best!
Some key things to remember when using the wet-on-wet technique are:
- Work in layers– Paint a thin layer of paint, let it dry, then add another layer with a little more detail/definition, and repeat until you have created what you want.
- A paper towel or napkin is your best friend– When the water/paint pools, dab it up with a paper towel. Or it the colors get too dark, dab it up. This will help keep you in control.
- Always place a piece of paper underneath the page you are working on– This will help protect the rest of the Bible.
Check out the tutorial video below to watch exactly how I painted this page!
The Supplies
*This article contains affiliate links. CLICK HERE for my full disclosure*
ESV Single Column Journaling Bible– Check out my post on Choosing A Journaling Bible to learn out more about other Journaling Bible options and find the right one for you.
Kurretake Gansai Tambi Watercolors
Masking fluid/liquid frisket (you don’t necessarily need this, it does help to keep a white sun)
Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen (or you can use stamps/sticker/etc.)
White Gel Pen- I used a Sakura Decorese for this page, which is a good pen, but my favorite is the Unibal Signo Gel Pen
Paper towels or napkins
Large Round Paintbrush– I use cheap brushes from value packs like this one. For this page, you would use the largest round brush
Other Helpful Tutorials
- Eight Must-Have Bible Journaling Supplies
- Watercolor Basic Tips- Forest Tutorial
- Brush Pen Calligraphy Basics
- Brush Pen Calligraphy- Bounce Lettering
- Faux Calligraphy Tutorial- Three Simple Steps To Beautiful Hand Lettering
- 10 Simple Hand-Lettering Styles (Plus a free cheat sheet)
