Various Art Mediums in the KJV My Creative Bible

I’ve spent some time over the last couple of weeks coloring and drawing in my Creative Bible. I has been a lot of fun and very uplifting (and occasionally scary and disheartening). Here are most of my results so far.

The colored pencil, as expected, works beautifully with almost no bleed through. (You can see the printed illustrations as well or better then the colored pencil). I used Prismacolor pencils on the large picture and Crayola Twistables on the 1st page of Genesis. Colored pencils are an excellent choice for beginners or those who haven’t quite let go of their perfectionist tendencies. They are readily available in a wide assortment of colors and erasable if you make a mistake you can’t live with.  (Though you do have to be careful if the paper is thin)

Crayon works almost as well. (I just had to color all these toys with crayon) The color shows through on the back side a little more than pencil does and you will get a dot or two of color on the facing page if you put the crayon on thick, but the dots are so faint on mine I couldn’t get them to show up good in a photograph. Crayons are also a little harder to do tiny detail with.

I love gel pens because of their vibrant colors and specialty looks (glitter, metallic, etc) but they do bleed show through the paper in this Bible. Not the worst of the mediums I tried but still noticeable and potentially hard to work around if you want to draw on the other side.

I love the blend-ability and transparency of watercolors but they present problems with this paper. Not only is there bad bleed through but if you cover a large area or use the tiniest bit too much water you get noticeable page crinkle and thinning as well. I think I would have to be very careful writing on the back of this page as the large portions of watercolor seem like they would tear easily. Edit 7/26/16: I didn’t know what i was doing when I painted this. I used as little water in my paints as possible and NEVER used a drying tool. The worst possible way to watercolor on Bible paper. I’m planning on doing a revisited post and will attempt watercolors in this Bible again but with a bit more know-how.

Which leads to my first experiment with gesso. This page has been Gessoed then has a pearlescent watercolor wash with gel pens over that. The page did crinkle noticeably (I applied the gesso with a wide brush in two thin coats) but with so much less bleed through I find I don’t mind the crinkle. Also this page did not seem to thin like the other watercolor page did. The gel pens did seem to indent this page more than the other page I did with them. I think this happened because I didn’t let the watercolor dry long enough. I’ll do another page like this in next weeks post (with a longer dry time) and let you know if that helps.

This page has been gessoed and painted with acrylic craft paints. I applied the gesso with the edge of a plastic store reward card (a technique recommended by several other art journalers) and the page seemed to have crinkled a little less. Even painted on lightly the paint made the word neither harder to see so I borrowed my husbands super thin pigma micron pen and lightly drew it (and some of the other detail) back in. I also used pigma micron pens on the butterfly trails and antennas.

I wanted to do at least one page using a medium you’d most likely do your own artwork with. I decided on Proverbs 4:26 done with ink and stamps. The footprints didn’t bleed through but the letters did. I think it’s mostly due to the type of ink (the teal is harder to clean off the stamps) but it could partially be me pressing harder to get crisp letters or loading a little more ink. .

While I was waiting for the stamped ink to dry I decided to do this page as well. It’s done mostly with Pigma Micron Pens but I decided to color the heart, leaf and banner with the highlighters we had. The Micron pens bleed noticeably but the highlighters are horrible. Since gel pens come in similar colors I think I’ll skip highlighters in the future unless we get a set that’s specifically made for Bibles.

If you want to know exactly what products I used for these pictures: (the clickable ones are affiliate links)
My Creative Bible KJV: Pink Hardcover Bible
Crayola 18 Ct Twistables Colored Pencils
Prismacolor Soft Core Colored Pencil, 48 pack
Crayola 120ct Original Crayons
Illustrated Faith Journaling Bible Mat
LolliZ Gel Pens 48 Gel Pen Tray Set
Crayola 24 Ct Washable Watercolors
Pearlescent Watercolor Paint Cakes 16/Pkg-Assorted Colors
Prima Marketing Art Basics Gesso, 8.5-Ounce, Clear
Anita’s All Purpose Acrylic Craft Paint, 48 bottle set
Sakura Pigma Micron 005 Ink Pen – Black
Pigma Micron Inductive Bible Study Kit 8pk
Paper Mate Intro Micro Chisel Tip Highlighters, 6 Color
studio g (Hampton Art) dye ink pad – teal
my first ColorBox ink pad – brown
Artistic Alphabet Wooden Stamp Set 0.25 Font Size
Embossing Soap Stamps, Baby, Oval

Gesso is the only product I bought specifically for this post. All of the others I bought either for previous personal journaling projects or already had on hand (homeschooler, crafty person, bit of a pack rat). The acrylic paint was a Christmas present a few years ago (I think they got it at AC Moore) but I’m sure most acrylic craft paint in that style bottle would work about the same. The ink was bought at Walmart (studio g) and Hobby Lobby (my first ColorBox). The rest was bought at a wide variety of stores including those three, Amazon, and Staples.

I missed getting my journaling mat in the picture (probably because it was under a drying page) but I highly recommend using some kind of protector when using inks and paints. If you don’t have a journaling mat anything, thin, flexible, and waterproof (like a stencil blank or even wax paper) will work. That way you know nothing will bleed through past the page you’re working on. The footprint stamps were actual cut out of a soap stamp when I couldn’t find a regular stamp of footprints for another project.

This post has been quite a learning experience. In order to meet my deadline I had to be willing to say good enough on a few of them (I still might go back and add detail to the pink butterfly) and be willing to show less than perfect work (I’ve decided I like the incomplete footprints better than if they’d stamped perfectly but still wish I’d gotten PONDER a little neater). And if you’re willing to experiment and make a few mistakes you can art journal with almost any art products you have on hand.

I have another various art medium post in the Inspire Bible coming on April 22nd. I will be using some of the same mediums and some different. Are there any other journaling Bibles you would like to see this kind of post for? Are there other mediums you would like to see included? Do you know of a great source for art supplies? Please let us know in the comments.