Watercolor Tutorial | Leaning In – One Little Word® 2017

Happy New Year Illustrated Faith Family!

For the past few years, I have prayed and asked the Lord to give me a guide word for the new year, most people call this finding your “one little word®”.   In 2015, my word was “courage” and man did I do some stuff afraid.  Last year,  my word was “prayer” and I illustrated and shared my journal pages with you  One Little Word® 2016.  During 2016, the Lord taught me so much about prayer and I grew in desire, delight, and need to connect in prayer with Him.

I really have found blessing in choosing a word of focus and filter to serve as my guide for each year so I prayed again this year, “Lord, do you want me to have a word again?”

Over a few days, the word “intention” kept showing up in my thoughts, in the words of others, and my heart was doing a little dance every time I heard it.

I searched His Word for an appropriate scripture.  1 Chronicles 29:18 in the NASB was perfect.

O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, our fathers, preserve this forever in the intentions of the heart of Your people, and direct their heart to You;

Intention.  I turned it around in my mind.  To a yoga girl, the word intention encircles every practice.   Intention for me means to set my heart, mind, spirit and body on the Lord.   To let Him be the focus and filter of everything.  To honor Him and to grow in Him.  To be still enough to listen and to trust enough to rest.  To depend on His guidance and provision and not on myself.  To seek Him.   To serve Him with every breath and thought.  To filter everything I hear through His truth.  To choose to follow His lead even when I might be afraid, unsteady, or feel as though I am going against the current of the world and the thoughts of others around me.

It means whenever an opportunity arises, a thought enters my mind, or a word exits my mouth, I lean into Him and make sure my intentions are in alignment with His truth and path for me.   It’s a deliberate choice.   It’s like a check and balance system to walk in the light.  Yep, I’m in.  Intention.  My “one little word” for 2017.

Let’s journal truth my friends.

I have been seeing lots of multicolor words everywhere.  I love them and I have put lots of words in my Bible with rainbows of stickers and watercolors but I thought it would be fun to experiment with the watercolor technique called glazing.   Glazing involves applying one color over another.  The transparency of watercolors allows you to see “through” the layers and adjusts the tone and color with each layer.  It is an amazing technique, especially on watercolor paper and is used by many watercolor artists to add depth and dynamic color to their pieces.

First step is to create puddles of the rainbow colors I want to use.

It is very helpful to make your puddles in the order in which you will be painting them.  I am using my whiteboard as a pallet.

I selected a #6 flat shader brush to paint the letters.   The straight angles of the brush will allow me to achieve the fairly straight lines of the hand painted block letters.

Begin by setting your brush down at the starting point of the letter, press slightly with even pressure into the paper, and “pull” your brush upward.  I like to rest the side of my hand on something steady so I have less wiggles in my lines.

Side note:  this picture was no less than an aerobic feat as I angled my body between lights and a tripod to try to show you what the stroke looked like.  Yes, I love you!

You can square off the tops of the letters by turning your brush and “pulling” the brush stroke horizontally.  The shape of the brush is your friend.

It’s very important to dry the watercolors thoroughly between each color and to completely clean your brush with clear water before loading up with the next color.

Cleaning your brush in between colors maintains the integrity of your colors.  If you read my posts, I talk about this alot.

Loading your watercolor brush ensures you have enough color to complete a stroke with even color.  You load the flat brush by pressing gently into the watercolor puddle to open the bristles.  This allows the brush drink in lots of pigment.

Are they going to be perfect?  NO.  Just have fun with it!

Letters complete.

The rainbow reminds me that God does not usually speak in black and white or one dimension but in a spectrum of colors and diversity.  He loves for His children to sparkle with all different gifts.  He’s never boring so why should we be?

Ok.  How about a tab or some paper pieces?  I pulled out the Bella Blvd Illustrated Faith Bright and Brave collection papers.  Sooooo perfect for this page.

I started playing around with some of them.  I chose paper pieces that seemed to speak “intention” to me and cut out a tab.

I wanted to be sure to include “one little word” so I grabbed my Bella Blvd Illustrated Faith Homespun alpha stickers and selected “olw” to sit on top of the glasses.  Reminding me I am going to look through the glasses of my word this year.  I adhered my pieces down and added some more word stickers that reflected the message of the entry.

Next I brought back in my watercolors to highlight some of the words in the passage.  And then tragedy struck – while balancing between tripods, I dropped my watercolor brush filled with scarlet pigment right on the passage.

I made it worse by trying to remove the splatters and —- and then an even more tragic event occurred – yep, I ripped my page.

I almost cried and then I dug even deeper into to mess by blaming my sweet daughter who had been chatting away at the other side of the table.   I told her, “If I had quiet, I could concentrate.”   Oh my, our flesh is so ugly, isn’t it?

Then I thought…stop Amy.

What is the intention for this journal entry?

It is perfection?

Is it the process tutorial I am writing for you?

Is it the beauty of the page?

Nope.

It’s to document and journal His truth.   It’s to listen in the process.   To lean into Him, set my intention, and trust Him.  To let Him create and speak through me.

Yes.  God has a plan.  And everything can be enfolded into His plan, even messy mistakes.

I lifted a brief prayer and grabbed sticker sheets.

Now, I hesitate to cover words.  That’s just me; but it seemed like God was saying,

Remember child… I know you are messy and I still love you.  In fact, I cover you with my love and I redeem the messes.   Bring them to Me.  Open your eyes.

It’s a repeat message between God and me and I don’t think it has sunk in yet.  Time to think out of the “Amy” box.

Sure enough, there was a sticker that popped out at me, another message from my loving Father.  “Have faith.  He will make things clear”   I added it over the tear in the page and finished highlighting some of the words in the passage.

Last I added a date and notation on the bottom corner of the page to remind myself.  God does “messy love” always has, always will.   That’s who He is.

And this journal entry is complete.

May the Lord bless you in 2017 my friends.

hugs,

amy

ESV Leather Journaling Bible  | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Bright and Brave Collection 12 x 12 papers (inspiration) | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Bright and Brave #1379 Paper Pieces | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Bright and Brave #1374 Elements Stickers | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Bright and Brave 12 x 12 paper #1372 (tab) | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Homespun Alpha Olive You #1232 | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Homespun Alpha Practice What You Peach #1230 | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Homespun Alpha Apple of my Eye #1227 | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Say It – Colorful stickers #993 | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Watercolor Set | Illustrated Faith by Bella Blvd Precision Pens | Daniel Smith and Sennelier Watercolors | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Tape Runner   | White board | Ranger Heat Tool | Illustrated Faith Bella Blvd Date Stamp | Princeton Select #6 Flat Shader