THINGS ABOVE

Hello Illustrated Faith Tribe!

I have had this giraffe on my heart for a long time. The Lord used the tall, graceful animal as a picture to remind me to keep my head and heart above the circumstances around me. To focus on Him. To keep my heart, eyes, and mind from wandering away from His truth.

At first I was a bit intimidated to draw a giraffe. I had never drawn one before so I spent time looking at giraffes and doodling full body giraffes. I finally settled on just drawing the from the neck up. I thought this was a better representation of seeking what is above. I sketched out the giraffe in my doodle book and outlined the sketch in black. I made her a girl with beautiful eyelashes, well, because.

There is an illustration on the other side of the page so I lightly covered the margin area with white gesso because I didn’t want anything to distract from the giraffe. Once that was complete, I used carbon paper to transfer my image to the page. Normally I would trace the image from behind but the gesso and the flowers on the next page would have made that difficult.

Once the light sketch was on the page, I penciled in the other areas.

Then I got stuck. I was already left with the navy washi tape so I needed to include blue. I knew I wanted a wonky, imaginative giraffe but I just could not settle on a color scheme. So I Googled “navy color scheme.” Voila. Ideas galore.

Next I used my Illustrated Faith .65 and .35 pens to go over my pencil marks and then I erased any stray marks. I was inspired by the lines in my leaves to make lines and marks inside the giraffe. Like a funky quilt. Oh my… so me. There may be some more animals coming like this.

Happy with the initial design, I pulled out the watercolors and began layering color.

A tip I love is to mix colors on a clear sheet of plexiglass (you can get these in various sizes at Lowes). I put the plexiglass on top of whatever color paper I am painting on so I can get a true idea of the color. Watercolors look different on a cream background than on white; and the plexiglass gives a delightfully smooth, flat surface to play with colors.

After she was complete, I dug through my Illustrated Faith die cuts for a fun tab and added it to the top, added my favorite white details with my Signo gel pen, and one of the adorable navy cute clips from Bella Blvd. And there she is. The first patchwork animal in my Journaling bible. I’m in love and won’t soon forget the passage I highlighted –

Colossians 3:2

Set your minds on things that are above not things that are on earth.