Six Ways to Turn Scripture into Art

 

I’ve always loved those pictures that you see in the Christian bookstores – and that are now all over Facebook and Pinterest.  You know the ones – the beautiful scenery or poignant babies with scripture added beautifully into it.  I admired them and wished I knew how to do that.

Then a few months ago a friend started using different handwriting styles to write scripture into her journal, and she posted pictures on Facebook.  I can do that, I thought, and so I began writing scripture in bigger letters and different kinds of letters in my journal.

I’ve always gotten pictures in my head while reading, and one day a certain picture wouldn’t leave – so I sketched it out and then grabbed some paper and drew it.  Ever since, I’ve played around with drawing or painting scripture – and my kids, as well as the kids in an art class I help to teach, are doing the same.

We’ve found that it’s a great way to think more deeply and specifically about what a verse means.  About what’s happening in it, and about what God might be telling us through the words.  It also helps me to remember the words – because as much as I want to memorize lots of scripture, memorizing is really hard for me, and making the words colorful helps.

So while I’m definitely no artist, and these usually just stay hidden away in a sketch book, I want to share with you six ways to turn scripture into art.  These are all easy, colorful, and fun ways to make connecting with scripture even more fun.

Remember the kids’ stories that have pictures inserted into the story instead of words?  This would be a great way for a beginning reader to learn scripture.  It could even be a family project.

I don’t like to waste paint, so one day I dry-brushed the last little bit of paint left over from another project onto a clean sheet of paper.  When the paint dried, I wrote a scripture verse on top using different handwriting styles.  Designing, layout, and centering are skills that I don’t have, but it was fun to play around with, and My Big Helper is now starting to do this, too.

This scripture really jumped out at me when I first read it. The imagery is awesome and just begged to be turned into something visual – so I drew each major element of the verse and then wrote the words pertinent to each picture inside it.  Then I colored the whole thing with water-color pencils and painted over it later. 

I saw something like this on Pinterest and had to try it for myself.  This requires absolutely no drawing skills whatsoever, but it was fun to plan out the colors and to block it all out!  Simply write out the verse you are focusing on any way you’d like.  Choose a few colors, perhaps ones that are meaningful for the words, and use the lines of each letter as an image to color.  I chose to color ‘Lord’ in purple since that’s a royal color and to make ‘good,’ future,’ and ‘hope’ yellow because they are positive words.  The rest I filled in with blue and green at will, and I gave it an indigo background, which really makes those bright words stand out. 

I love this verse.  The three parts of it stood out to me visually, so I broke it down into those three pieces, each one with a single word and a single symbol.  It’s simple and bright, but it helps me remember the three things that stand out to me about this verse.

This is another that someone of any age could do.  Write out the verse, and then extend some of the lines out to the end of the paper, creating big blocks of space.  I chose to write in cursive so I’d have a few smaller spaces blocked out automatically, and then I added teardrops because it fit the words.  Then I colored each block, being careful not to put any one color next to itself.

Do you ever combine scripture and art?  I’d love to hear about it!