This week was my anniversary and on Wednesday, my husband took me painting. He had never been and he knows how much I love to paint so he surprised me with a painting class close to our house. We each got to pick our own painting and had one on one session with the instructors. The painting below is what I created.
I had a lot of fun with this painting and learned a new technique. To create the moon and the sky, it’s a simple technique of going in circles when you apply the paint. Most of the time I’ve gone is horizontal lines to follow the horizon in the painting but this time I went in a circle.
You can start with the lighter color and work out or the darker color and work in. I feel more comfortable working from light to dark.
So after my husband and I had painted, I got to thinking that I could use the same circle technique in my other paintings. Yesterday, I sat down and worked on a painting. I had no idea what I wanted to paint or how it was going to turn out but I knew I wanted to use yellow, orange and red for the sky.
I started with yellow and worked outward and then I made my first mistake. I thought it would look cool if I blended the red with blue and made it look like the sun hadn’t reached the corners of the painting yet. Well, the paint did not blend the way I wanted it to and it just didn’t look right. But I didn’t completely hate it nor did I give up. As I let it dry I tried to figure out what I was going to do in order to fix or cover up the mistake.
After it dried, I added the water. I was working outside so it didn’t take too long for the paint on the canvas to dry. I used blue and white to create the water and added some yellow and orange for the reflection.
Then it was time to figure out what to do about the sides of the canvas. The shape of the dark purple had kind of looked like trees to me, so with a fine tip brush, I outlined the trees and the branches. I also added the clouds at the point. I used black, dark brown, light brown and white to create the trees. Black was the base color and the others were used to for highlights. I also took a slightly wet big brush in order to blend the paint together and add the rounded out aspect to the trees. I did this on a previous painting and it turned out really well.
The last step was the clouds, leaves on the tree and the birds, which were done with the fine tip brush. The clouds were simple and done with a light blue with some white accents. The leaves, originally I had done with a little green abs black paint but when it dried it was too dark. I went back over it with more green than black and a green and white mixture. Paints don’t always dry the color you think they will. This new combination worked better and is in the final product.
This painting taught me a couple things. 1) don’t give up. You can find a way to incorporate what you have done into the painting. 2) take your time and slow down. 3) Paints don’t always dry the way you want them to.
It also showed me that I am capable of coming up with my own paintings. Sometimes I have a hard time with being imaginative but if I use what God has given me and allow Him to inspire me, the possibilities are endless.
The last few weeks have
been so busy that this is the first time in two weeks that I have had a chance
to actually sit down and write or do art for that matter. I’ve been to youth
camp and then visiting my family out of town and I am ready to have some time
to myself. Over the last few weeks, I really haven’t drawn or painted or done
any art thing at all. I felt like I had some sort of artist block. Mainly because
a lot of the time I draw on my anxiety or depression in order to develop something creative. The last
few weeks, I haven’t really felt anxious or depressed to the point where I could
create something on paper, canvas or digital.
Camp was wonderful. I saw
God do amazing things that week and He worked in me as well. I’ve been
struggling with trusting him and relying on him for everything that I need. I’ve
been trying to do everything on my own for so long that I had forgotten what it
was like to just give everything to God. AS Christians, that is one of the
things we say all the time.
“Trust God”,
“Give everything to Him.”
“Allow God to be in control.”
Yet, what does that actually look like? What does it
really mean to trust God? How are out lives any different when we trust God from
when we don’t?
First of all, in my opinion, life is drastically
different when we trust God than when we don’t. It has been my experience that
when I try to control everything and do things my way, nothing works. Or if it
does, it doesn’t really fit with my life. It is like doing a jigsaw puzzle and
forcing a piece to go into a certain spot even though it is not a perfect fit.
When God is in control and running my life, everything simply falls into place.
I get the perfect Job or my husband is able to get a new car, or we have more
money than we thought we would have for the month to be able to pay a bill we
had forgotten about. With God, every piece of the jigsaw puzzle falls into
place exactly where it is supposed to go and exactly at the right moment.
What does it mean to trust God?
It means that when we have a problem or situation going
on in our lives, we know that He is going to provide for what we need because
His word promises that He will. He
says that He will take care of the birds. How much more important are we than
the birds? Will He not also take care of us?
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life,
what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will
put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at
the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet
your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which
of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are
you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:
they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed like one of these. … “ Matthew 6:25-34
He will because He loves us.
He has never left you. He has never forsaken you. He
loves you. Since he has never left you, he will not leave you now. He will not
leave you to your own devices and force you to carry on without him. He is a
God who is chasing after you and loving on you, even when you do not love him.
This does not mean that life is not going to be hard. It
is. Life is hard. Life is not always fair. Honestly, if life were fair, we
would not be forgiven or have God’s grace and mercy. We would not have had
Jesus die on the cross for us and come back to life so that we could be in
Heaven with Him. If life were fair, we would get what we deserve; death.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the
free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. King James Bible.
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) Yet, we have a God who loves us so much that
he sent His son to die for us so that we would not perish. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only
Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16
Life is hard.
Life is unfair.
But Life with Christ is worth it!
Living for Christ is really the only way to life. He
provides purpose that we all seek. He provides comfort and anything else that
we could possible need.
We all have a God shaped hole in our hearts. We are
all seeking something. We long to be loved, to be wanted, to be needed. As
humans, we have free will and we are able to make choices about what we want to
do each and every day. God does not force us to love him. If he did, that
wouldn’t be love. We wouldn’t know true love. We would be like robots doing
whatever God wants us to do. Some would argue that is how God is anyway but I
would say they are incorrect.
God uses us in order to achieve his will. Does he have
to use us? No. Does he choose to use us? Yes. Do we mess up? Of course. I mess
up daily, yet God still uses me. God does not call the equipped, but he equips the
called. He provides everything we need, from the clothes on our back to the
food in our stomach to the skills that we need in order to achieve the purpose
he has set for our lives.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to
give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11
Life is hard.
Life is unfair
Yet is it so much harder without Christ.
I pray that you know Him as I do. If you do, great!! Trust
Him. Give him full control of your life and see what amazing things He can do
and will do.
If you don’t know him as I do, I pray that you
surrender to Christ. That you give your life to him fully and trust him with
not just you every day life but with your eternity.
So last week, I went over days 1-3. Today I will be talking about days 4-5. The paining above is the final version of my portrait. For my first time, ever doing a digital portrait, I’m happy with how it turned out. Day 4 went over the fine details. It went over things like, the eyes, tattoos, fine details of the skin, eyelashes, and hair. Each one is done on a different layer so that if you make a mistake, you are not messing up the rest of the painting.
The first thing I detailed were her eyes and eyelashes. From my experience, I always thought that the “white” part of the eye was actually white, so I would color it white. In reality, white is too harsh of a color in order to achieve what is desired for the eyes. A light gray should be used instead. this makes the eyes pop but not in a harsh way.
The second thing I did with the eyes, was use a blending tool to smooth out the gray color so you didn’t see any lines. Then I placed one white dot at the top of her eyes, to make it look like reflection of light, which is in the reference photo. Once I did this, the eyes really stood out. It was during this process that I had to go back to one of the original layers and draw her eyelids. I had gotten caught up in sketching the eye sockets but had never actually given her eyelids. This made her look more human, once she had eyelids.
Then, came the eyelashes. In the past, I have drawn eye lashes one line at a time like little hairs but they’ve never really looked that good. A tip that I learned was to make the eyelashes using triangles. the base of the triangle is on the eyelid and then it comes to a small point. I did this across the top of both eyelids. You could do it on the bottom as well. I chose not to because I started that and didn’t think it looked that great.
My reference photo had freckles. So in order to achieve that same look, I used a texture brush. I used both the light and the dark colors in order to make the freckles pop on the different sides of her face. This step seems relatively easy but I did this particular step three or four times before I ended up with what is in the photo above. That probably says more about me than it does the actual step.
The last step was her tattoos. I saved this step for last on purpose because I wasn’t quite sure how to go about doing it. In the original picture, the tattoos on her chest are really hard to make out, so I kind of just had to make up something. What I ended up doing, rather than looing at the tattoos and eyeballing where they go, I traced the tattoos on the original photo and then copied that layer to my painting. In doing that, I learned that the proportions of my painting were off by more than I had originally thought. I left it because once you get to this point, it is difficult to go back and actually fix the proportions. After copying the layer, I just add color and that was it.
I was done.
I had finished my first portrait.
Now what I left out, was that it almost didn’t get finished. Remember how frustrated day 3 left me? It is because of that day that I almost didn’t finish. Day 4 and 5 happened on the Thursday and Friday of this one week portrait but I didn’t finish mine until Saturday afternoon or evening. Thursday and Friday, I as still so frustrated with how it looked and what had happened that I couldn’t bring myself to actually work on it. Before I left from visiting my mom, she made me promise that I would finish the painting.
So I did.
Now I talked about Day 4 but not day 5. That’s because I didn’t actually do day 5. Day 5 was about styling and making the painting actually look like a painting but I was happy with how the portrait turned out so I skipped day 5.
The thing that stuck out the most is “Finished, not perfect.” I try so hard to make sure everything is perfect and not just with my art. With my whole life. I want everything to be perfect for my students, for my husband, for my church but that is not how things work. I am not a perfect person. There has only ever been one perfect person and that is Jesus Christ. He is perfect because He is God. I am not God and yet I still try to be perfect. From this I have learned that I need to let God be God and me be me and allow him control everything because He is in control anyway. Things that happen in life, all happen for a reason and sometimes on this side of heaven, we may not know what things happen. But he does and everything He does is for our good.
Don’t give up. Don’t throw in the towel. Finish what you start and allow God to lead your path. He is perfect. We are not. He knows what is best and everything always works out for good.
This week was interesting, art wise. I participated in something
called The One Week Portrait, which was the put on by Paintable. The goal of
the one week course was to create the best portrait you have ever created. That’s
what is promised anyway. I decided to try it out and see what the outcome would
be. I want to get better with different types of art and some techniques transfer
from digital art to traditional art so I decided to give it ago.
Before the class ever started, I had to select a reference
photo. The idea of the course is to paint a realistic resemblance of some photo.
It could have been of anyone. Some people picked random photos that were
provided by the class, while others chose to do more personal pictures and some
even chose to use pictures of people from Hollywood.
This was my reference photo. It was different and met the criteria
for the class. For beginners, the person needed to be facing forward and not
have too many shadows going across the face. I knew the tattoos would be
challenging but I figured I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.
On a side note: I used two programs this week. The first one
was Artweaver and the second is Krita. I am finding that I like Krita more
because it is completely free and has so many more brushes and tools than
Artweaver. With the first program, Artweaver, there is a free version and a
paid version. I ended up having to switch half way through this project because
Artweaver did not have the tools I needed to continue to the project on Day 3
of the course.
Monday was the first class. The first thing that you have to
do is sketch the subject but before you start doing that, you have to study the
photo. You look at all of the angles, and where everything is in relation to
other things. Such as how do the eyes line up with the lips or where do the
ears line up with the shoulders or jaw line? This part took a while because I
had to examine everything. Later, I realized, even though I had done a thorough
examination, my proportions were still not what they needed to be. But more on
that later.
So once I did my examinations and measured where everything
was, it was time to sketch. The first thing you must remember is as you are
building your painting, you will need to add different layers. This is
especially true when you are working with different colors. I found
it especially useful for mistakes on a specific layer. If had built my layer
correctly, then I could just delete the layer with the mistake and start over.
For the sketch, there were three layers. The first layer of
the sketch was just simple geometric shapes. There was no detail and you were
really just doing the outline of the subject. On the second layer, I went
through and added some details but not too many. This was basically creating a
road map for the final and third layer for the sketch. After I was done with
layers one and two, I changed the Opacity to about 25-30% so that the layers
would not bleed through. The third layer was the detail sketch. The result is
below.
Day 2 was coloring and shading. I created a different layer
for each color. I started with the skin and worked my way forward. The idea
with coloring was not to select the darkest or the brightest colors on the
reference photo but to choose the mid-value color so that lowlights and highlights
could be added in later. It was on Day 2 that I learned a very important
lesson. One that I have known most of my life but because I had gotten so
involved in my work that I had forgot.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS SAVE
YOUR WORK!
After I had done all of my work on Day 1 and had gotten halfway through coloring on Day 2, Artweaver froze and was not responding. I waited for a few moments to see if it would fix itself but unfortunately, I had to completely restart my computer. Once the computer came back up, I realized Artweaver does not have an autosave feature as I had assumed for some reason. So the first day and the last two hours of work (probably five hours total) was completely gone. Now, because of this blog and my Facebook and Instagram, I take pictures of my work and post it as I am painting. Thankfully, I had just taken the picture above and was able to load the photo into Artweaver. At this point, all I had to start over was Day 2, which was doable.
Once I had gotten the first step in coloring done, it worked
on the shading. This was a mix of low and high values in order to get the light
and shading affects from the reference photo. By the end of Day 2 lesson, I
thought my picture look a little weird but Day 3 was on shading, so I left it
until then.
Day 3 was the hardest of all
the days so far! In my opinion at least. Day 3 was about blending and this is
where traditional are and digital art differ. With traditional art, I use a
smudge tool in order to blend my colors together. In digital art, you do the
same thing but sometimes you have to use diferent tools or brushes in order to
achieve the same affect.
My first frustration started
when the class required I use a texture brush, a smudging tool and a mixing
brush to achieve the desired blending affect. The course uses photoshop, which
I currently do not have, and so I started looking around and exploring Artweaver
(free version) for the tools I needed. I spend a good 45 minutes to an hour
trying to make this program work and trying different brushes and tools but I
just wasn’t getting the desired effect.
I switch gears and started
looking for a free digital art program that had more to offer that Artweaver. I
had remembered seeing Krita in a post by the teacher of this class as a
software recommended outside of Photoshop. I did a little research and found that
Krita is free and has more to offer than many of the programs that have to be
paid for. I then had to combine all the layers on my painting in Artweaver and
save it in picture format in order to upload it into Krita. At this point I had
been working with this piece for about and hour and a half, close two hours and
I hadn’t gotten any work done on it yet.
I explored Krita for a few
moments and found some tools that would help with the blending. So, trying to
put my frustration aside, I started to work on what I thought would be a
relatively easy job. After all I was just blending right?
That’s where I went wrong. Thinking it would be easy. This is my first time and I assuemed I could so something right away that I have never done before. I blended and I bleneded and added more color and blended some more and it left my painting looking very muddy. I went throught this process about four or five more times in order to get it right but it just left me frustrated.
Art is my therapy but when it
leaves me extremely frustrated to the point I want to cry and just give up, it
is time to put it up and walk away. I sat and starred at the painting I had
created for a few moments. At this point, I hated it because it wasn’t’ living up
to the expectations I had set for myself in my head.
I wanted to give up.
I didn’t want to give up on
this one and start completely over.
I just wanted to give up.
I thought I hadn’t done well
and if I got stuck at day 3, how was I every going to be able to get to Day 4
or 5 and make my painting look anything like the reference photo?
I was a failure. Or at least,
that’s what I believed.
Yet, thanks to some support from
the facebook group attached with the course, and encouragement from my mom, I didn’t
give up. I made one or two adjustments and I set it aside for the night. Day 3
was by far the longest I took working on the painting. The course had a saying
that I really should start paying attention to.
“Finished not perfect.”
This means, that it is better
to finish a step, day or a piece than have it be perfect. We are not perfect
people and yet we expect things that we do to be perfect. The only one who is
perfect if God. We are not perfect and we are setting ourselves up for
disappointment when we expect our work or actions to be perfect.
As of right now, I have not
finished Days 4 or 5 yet. I will be working on that later and let you know how
they turned out in next week’s blog. This week I learned 3 things.
1) always save your work
2) be paitent with yourself
3) Finish, not perfect.
I hope you come back next
week to find out how to painting turns out. If you have questions about the
programs I used to different techniques or tools that I used, please comment
below or send me a message on facebook or instagram.
This week I got a Microsoft surface pro 6. I have needed a new computer for awhile now and finally figured out what I wanted and had the money to purchase it. While looking for a new computer, I had decided I wanted something I could draw with. Traditional painting and drawing is by far still my favorite but it’s not always easy to transport paints, pencils, paper and canvas. People might think it strange if I showed up at Starbucks with my paints and canvas and painted while I drank coffee.
With the intention of getting into digital art, I started looking for tutorials on how to do it and where to even begin to start. A lot of the skills and techniques from traditional art transfers to digital art with a few exceptions. While look for tutorials, I stumbled across a digital painting group on Facebook. I got really excited because they are having a digital painting course next week on how to do portraits. I got really excited.
Then I saw the work of the other artists in the group.
Their work is amazing and looks like it could be in a movie or professional comic or something. So many of them have gotten commissions for their work and are on the covers of popular books.
My excitement almost completely disappeared. I felt so overwhelmed as I started comparing myself to them.
I am no where near as good as their are with traditional art yet alone with digital art. I tried to ignore how I felt and not compare myself to them but it was really hard not to. It still is.
Then I realized that my excitement has been replaced with something else.
Envy.
I was jealous of these other artists, whom I have never met nor know any of their life stories. I wanted what they had but didn’t really want to put in the work for it. I just wanted to suddenly be as good as they are.
So I picked up my surface, opened my sketch book and started drawing. Between last night and today, the picture above is how Envy turned out.
To me, Envy is different than Anxiety and Depression. With Anxiety and Depression, I personified them and depicted them as people but with Envy, that didn’t seem like it would fit.
Envy is more like a monster that creeps up on you in the middle of the night from under your bed. It continues to come at you constantly until you finally give into it. I picture that each time you feed it, give into it, it grows another tentacle. It has suction cups because tries to stick to everything someone else has and wants to have it for itself. If left unchecked, Envy could get vastly out of control and completely take over.
So what do we do about Envy? How do we not feed it so that it won’t take over our lives? How do I not let it control me as an artist?
Proverbs 14:30 says, ” A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” (ESV)
1 Corinthians 13:4 says that love is not envious. So when we are envious of others, we are not acting in love but in our own selfish desire.
Galatians 5:20 specifically lists jealousy as a work of the flesh. Then, in Galatians 5:22-23, Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit. These are characteristics that, as believers in Christ, we should have in our lives.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; against such things there is no law.”
Paul takes it one step further and says “if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. ” Galatians 5:25-26
We fight Envy by loving others. We fight Envy by being joyful for others.
I fight envy by being patient with myself and my art. In time, and with practice, I will be able to develop my skills in both traditional and digital art.
I also fight Envy by finding my identity in Christ and not in myself or my art work. God is the one who gave me the ability to draw in the first place. I want to use my gift to glorify Him and not myself. That’s not saying that it’s easy fighting Envy. It is something I struggle with because I compare myself to others. I have to rely on God in order to fight Envy. The same way I have to rely on Him in order to fight Depression and Anxiety.
Have you been Envious?
How did you handle it?
I pray God leads you this week and shows you how to rely on him, especially when you struggle with Envy.
At the church I attend, I help out with the youth. For the last month, we have been talking about Holiness, in regards to us as Christians made holy because of Christ’s sacrifice (Hebrews 10:10) but we are still in the process of being made holy (Hebrews 10:14). When we accept Christ, God sees us as forgiven and as made holy but we still live in a fallen world and we face temptation. This is when we rely on God in our walk with Him to grow in the fruit of the spirit.
“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT)
Started off with this.
It was during one Wednesday night service that God gave me the idea for the Fruit of the Spirit painting. I started off with a simple tree and then let it sit for a few days. I knew something was missing but I wasn’t sure what. After it sat for a few days, I figured out that it was bugging me that the tree looked very two dimensional.
Fruits of the spirit
When I started painting on it again, I added branches and more leaves. I used a small tip paint brush to add the smaller branches and the leaves. I wanted to make sure they stood out from the rest of the tree so they could make the whole painting pop. I also took a larger dry brush to blend in the new paint with the dry paint on the tree trunk. It took me about an hour to add the branches and make sure everything was blended and shaded the way that I wanted it. I then added “Fruit of the Spirit” on the tree trunk. Last night, I wanted more than anything to finish the paining. But if there is one thing I have learned from painting, its that you have to know when to walk away. So I called it a night and went to bed.
This morning, I added the symbols for the Fruit of the Spirit. Instead of instantly drawing them on the painting, I first drew them out one by one on paper, so I would know what I needed to do when it came time to paint them.
Once I drew them on paper, then I drew them on the canvas. The hardest part was figuring out where I wanted to place each symbol. It took me longer to do that than it did to actually paint the symbols onto the tree.
Galatians 5:22-23. Each aspect has its own symbol. There are 9.
When I finished paining, I realized I have had to be very patient. I could not rush through any part of the painting process, otherwise it would not have come out the way it needed to. I most definitely believe God gave me the vision and the ability to execute the vision for this painting. The same week that I started painting the Fruit of the Spirit, I also started to listen to Francis Chan’s Forgotten God. In his book, Chan talks about how as a church, we generally do not speak of the Holy Spirit as we do God the Father or Jesus Christ. We some how leave out the Holy Spirit as if He is not part of the Trinity or isn’t important. One thing that he said that stuck out to me was that in his experience, Chan has noticed that sometimes non-believers have more aspects of the Fruit of the Spirit than Christians. This just should not be the case.
As Christians, we are called to live a life that is set apart from the rest of the world. Non-believers should look at Christians and wonder what do they have that I don’t? How can I get what they have? Yet, all too often, that is not the case.
It seems that sometimes, as Christians, we are afraid to stand out. We are afraid to be different because of what they might mean for us. Myself included. I have often not said anything in different situations where I probably should have proclaimed the name of Jesus or stood out in some what but I sat silently. Our world is changing and sometimes I think, not for the better. There is so much anger and hate in the world and it seems like it is only getting worse.
Christians are called to be the light of the world. We are called to be the ones who stand out and are set apart from the rest of the world. If we do not proclaim Jesus and live our lives differently, then who will? Jesus has already sanctified us in His death and resurrection. We need to live as if we believe that to be true. Our lives should exhibit the fruit of the spirit. There are some characteristics that are easier to do than others and that differs for each person. Yet we should still strive to have all of the fruits of the spirit in our life.
After looking at the painting, which “Fruit of the Spirit” symbol is your favorite?
Mine, is Joy. I tend to forget to have joy in my life. Seeing it on the tree, helps me to remember to always be joyful not matter the situation. I hope you will comment below about your favorite symbol. You can also comment on the posts on Facebook and Instagram.
This week as been long, tiring, busy and boring all in at the same time. I really didn’t have any time to draw until this morning. I went to church on Wednesday night for the first time in a long time. It was great and got to connect with God and with the youth. God gave me so many ideas for projects that I didn’t know what to do with them, other than writing them down.
I was trying to decide what to talk about this week and a topic kept coming up that I feel like I am not ready to talk about but at the same time feel God telling me I need to blog about it this week. Even as I am typing this I am still struggling with God and the words that should be or need to be said.
My heart has been heavy this week with all the talk in the media about abortions, being banned or made legal. The point of this post is not to get political. You are entitled to your opinion so please do not think I am trying to shove my opinion down your throat. I just think that we often don’t hear about the other side. The women who have miscarried or can not have children. Those women tend to stay silent because it hurts to talk about it. It is hard to talk about something like that that has happened to you. Or to have wanted a child so much only to be told that it is impossible to have children of your own.
I saw a post on Facebook with #youarewanted attached to it. It was speaking about the women who are hurting because of the lose of a child or the pain of infertility. The above picture is called You are wanted and is inspired by the hashtag. While I have never had a miscarriage and am physically capable of having children (as far as I know), due to my epilepsy, there are high risks when it comes to children. God is amazing and He can do anything, but for now, it would be too risky to have my own children.
In God’s Hands
A few months ago, I drew the picture above. It is titled “In God’s Hands”. This picture has two meanings. It is a prayer for all the children, born and unborn, in this world. Praying that God would protect them and show them His love. A prayer for those who are never born for one reason of the other and that He would carry them in His arms.
Its also a prayer for my own future children. Should that be in God’s will. I used to cry or be really depressed when I thought about the reality of not being a mom, ever. At first I was trying to be okay with it and ignore how I felt, but that just made things worse. I had to acknowledge how I felt and the fear that I had. So I drew the above picture. It took me a few days to get through the drawing and get it to a place where I liked it. I’ve only told two or three other people about this picture and the meaning it has for me. Why God is wanting me to tell everyone about this now, I don’t know. But if it helps just one person with what he or she is struggling with, then I will share.
I know one thing to be true. God loves Children! Every verse written on God’s Hands in the above image is about children and how much God loves them. When the disciples tried to tell the children to go away, Jesus told them to bring the Children to him. Matthew 19:14 “But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.'”
“For You formed my inward parts: You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” – Psalm 139:13-16
Even before you were born, God knew you. God created you and put you together in your mother’s womb. He knows you better than anyone. He knows you better than you know yourself. He loved you before you were born and He loves you now.
You are wanted.
If by no one else, you are wanted by God. He loves you. He sent his ONLY son to die on the cross for you, so that you would not have to die. So that if you choose to believe in Jesus, you will be in Heaven with Him one day. To me, that is amazing. That Jesus would die for me. There are only a handful of people that I would give my life for. Yet, Jesus died for the whole world! For everyone who lived before He walked the earth. For everyone who lived while He walked the Earth and for everyone who came after. The best part is, He didn’t stay dead! He defeated death! He paid the price that we were meant to pay, so we didn’t have to.
If you have ever felt unwanted, please know that God loves you and He desires a relationship you with you. The same scriptures that speak about God’s love for children, apply to us when we are grown. When you accept Christ, you become a Child of God. There is nothing you can ever do that will make Him stop loving you. There is nothing you can ever do that will cause him to not give you His grace.
Matthew 18:2-6 says that we are to have faith like a child. Children believe so easily. They believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy so easily. Their imaginations run wild and they want everything to be real. Children who believe in Christ amaze me sometimes. Their faith that He is real, even though the can not see Him is exactly how we should be. Some how when we grow up, we lose that. Because of things that happen to us, we become skeptical and don’t believe that God loves us anymore. That is the farthest thing from the truth.
I pray that you will have Child like faith this week. I pray that whatever you are going though, that you will know that Jesus loves you.
My husband bought me roses this week, just because. I love roses.
This week, while stressful, has not been too bad as far as my anxiety and depression have been concerned. I actually managed to take some time for myself and draw on Tuesday evening.
I started off wanting to draw a rose. My husband had gotten me some roses when we were shopping just because he knows I like them and I decided I wanted to draw one or two of them. I took pictures of the Rose’s at different angles and went to my spot outside to draw.
I looked at the picture of the single rose and attempted to draw it. I worked for a few minutes and then realized things were not going as I had planned them. The pedals didnt really look like pedals. The looked more ridged and harsh. So I set the picture aside and tried to draw it based on what I thought the flower should look like.
I took a deep breath and tried to relax. I was getting frustrated because things weren’t going as planned. I thought if I relaxed and loosened my grip on my pencil things would work out better. While I was relaxed and the pencil started moving better and my lines weren’t as ridged, the pedals of the rose still weren’t working. I erased and drew lines over and over until I stopped and realized my lines were no longer a rose but a tea cup.
This really frustrated me at the time because I didnt want to draw a tea cup. I wanted to draw a rose. I had a big plan for the rose. I was gonna draw it first and then once I had figured it out, I was going to draw it on a 5×5 canvas and paint it with oil paints. (Something jve been wanting to do for awhile.) But things didnt go as planned. I ended up with a tea cup instead. Being frustrated, I erased the tea cup and started working on my personification of anxiety. Yet, now I wish I hadnt erased it because there is a lesson in the tea cup.
We make plans all the time. We decide what we are going to do and when we are going to do it and we try to keep everything so perfectly in line with our plans that it drives us crazy.
Yet we are not in control.
God is.
Thats why it drives us crazy and is exhausting trying to keep everything in line and exactly where we want it.
So if we are not in control of our lives or of things that happen, why do we constantly try to make everything perfect and the way we want it?
Part of it, I think is that we are stubborn as humans. I know I am at least. If I want something, I keep going after it even if it feels like I’m hitting my head against a wall.
There are reasons God closes doors that we thought we wide open. He doesnt always give us a reason, which can be really frustrating. The thing I struggle with the most is not knowing why something happened or didnt happen. Why did my friend have to die at a young age? Why did my husband have to lose his job? Why did I have to get placed at a different school than the one I had been working at with one of my closest friends?
Life is full of whys and some of which we will never get the answers to until we get to Heaven.
Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declare the Lord, Plans for welfare abs not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Often times we stop at that verse. Which is a great verse because it tells us that God is in control and everything that happens, he knows about and is for our good. He does not do anything for evil or to bring us harm. Yet if we go one to two verses further, we find out more.
Jeremiah 29:12-13 says ” Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (ESV)
We will go through things. We will go through hard things but we are not alone in them.
Personification of Anxiety.
Anxiety and Depression lie to us. They make us feel as if we are going through everything alone and that no one cares l, least of all God. But if we look to the scriptures, we know that isnt true. Not only does He have plans for us that are for our good, but He will never leave us. Isaiah 41:10-13 says exactly that. Hebrews 13:6 says ” Do we can confidently say, ” The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”
No matter what happens, God is with us. When we call on the name of Jesus, who shall we fear? When we call on the name of Jesus, what can stand against us?
No matter what you may be going through, you are not alone. Maybe what you wanted to happen didn’t, or something you were praying wouldn’t come to pass did. Know that God is in control and His plans for you are good. It may hurt for awhile but God is there. Call on His name. He will hear you.
Depression makes you not want to do anything. When I’m anxious, generally I can focus my anxiety into art. It is so much harder to do that with depression.
For me, after I’ve been extremely stressed out and anxious for a long period of time, depression hits. I feel a weight on my chest that just doesn’t seem to go away. Nothing I think of to do sounds good. I should work on my blob, but I don’t feel like I have the energy. I should draw or paint because it will make me feel better but that feels like too much effort. Besides, what if it doesn’t help?
Depression talks to me and tells me everything is pointless. She says things like, “You don’t really want to do that do you?” or “You don’t have the energy to do anything.” She even goes as far to say things like, “No one cares about you!” and “You are all alone!”
After listening to Depression for even a little bit, it is so hard not to feel alone. That’s the trap isn’t it? You say you aren’t going to listen and you try to stay strong against Depression, but then something catches your thoughts and before you know it, Depression has you in her claws.
It makes me feel alone. Like I’m the only one in the room. Or even the world. I could be in a crowded room or stadium and if I’m depressed, still feel all alone. That’s the thing about Depression. She is a thief who steals our joy our attention and if we let her, our time. Its hard to fight something when you don’t believe you have the energy or don’t feel like doing anything but curling up in a ball and crying.
That’s when we have to rely on God’s strength. Something I should have done the other night. Something I try to do each day. Some days are easier than others while some days are really hard. Yet, we only have one life to live. We only live this life that God has given us once and I am tired of missing things because of my depression. Or at least feeling like I’m missing things.
I have to make a decision each day to rely on God’s strength and not my own. I can not do anything apart from him. I need his strength to be able to fight back the things I can not fight on my own. Left to my own devices, depression and anxiety would consume me. Yet, it is because of God that I have the courage to even fight against my anxiety and depression, yet alone speak to people about it.
Maybe that will be my next art project. A series where Depression and Anxiety are fighting to conquer me but with God’s help I fight back.
I pray for you this week. I pray that you will seek after God’s strength. I pray if you struggle with anxiety and depression like I do, that you get the support and help you need. I pray God will light your path this week, guide and protect you.
As I have started this blog and have been drawing more, a question has come to my mind multiple times. What kind of artist do I want to be? What type of artist am I?
Am I the landscape artist?
Am I the human body artist?
Am I a symbolism artist?
Or am I perhaps a combination or none of the above?
Sometimes I find it overwhelming to figure out what I want to draw or paint next. I have had so many ideas flood my mind and then when I actually go to draw, I get frustrated because I don’t know where to start or even which idea to start with. One thing I do know is art is personal for me. I put everything that I am into my drawings and paintings. Whatever I am feeling at that moment foes into the work of art that I am creating. I think that’s why I have a hard time with criticism (when it’s not constructive). It feels like they are rejecting me and not just my art. For example, the image below is called “In God’s Hands”
The whole reason for drawing “In God’s Hands” is extremely personal for me and I do want to share that story with you…..eventually. There are several different meanings behind this piece that I will share but right now I am not ready. Looking at this piece and as I write, I think part of who I am as an artist is a storyteller. Not just any story however. I am telling my story of what God has done for me and what He continues to do for me. My art started off as being therapeutic , and it still is but it has become more than that now.
I’ve always been a visual person. In school, I had to see how something was done or what something looked like in order to really understand, I’ve discovered that expressing myself is the same way. I can express myself in words but those often fall short or fall on deaf ears or lack the full meaning of what I am trying to say. With art, its entirely visual. No words are needed and I find you can communicate more effectively. Art also tends to pull at the heart strings more and is not as easily ignored.
My husband always tells me that I have a message to tell people. For awhile, I didn’t really believe him. I wasn’t sure what message I wanted to tell people but somehow he already knew. At one point, I had stopped drawing or painting all together because my art wasn’t going anywhere. I was the only one seeing it and it was filling up our living space. My thought had been “if no one is going to see it, then why do it?” So I stopped. For those two months or so, I was really anxious and depressed because I had cut myself off from the only outlet I could use at that point. . My husband noticed this before I did and began to encourage me to create art again. He said we would fill the wall of our home with my paintings. He puts whatever I paint up on the wall and the rule is if I don’t like something that is up, I have to paint something to replace it.
It may sound silly but his words helped me get started again and inspired me in regards to this blog. Not only am I talking about my art but I am putting photos of my art online for people to see. Something I had, at one point, never thought about doing. My husband was right. I do have a message to share with people. How I use art to get through my anxiety and depression but also how the God that I love has loved me through those dark times. He has given me these abilities and I want to use them to glorify him. Not only has He loved me through the dark times in my life but He has done so much more for me than I have ever deserved.
Jesus Christ is my savior. He died on the cross to save me from sin so that I would not have to perish. Without Christ, I am nothing. Without Christ, my art is meaningless because it all came from Him to begin with. He is what gives my art meaning and my life purpose. When I was dead in sin, Christ gave His life for me. Romans 3:23 says “For all have fallen short of the glory of God.” Without Christ, I am doomed to be separated from God for all eternity in Hell. However, there is hope! John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only son so that whosoever believe in Him, may have everlasting life.” (NIV)
The “whosoever” is me.
The “whosoever” is you!.
I challenge you to replace “whosoever” with your name. Does that not have an impact? That the Creator of the Universe loves you so much that He sent his only son to die on the cross for you! FOR YOU!! Even if you were the only one on the planet, He still would have sent Jesus to save you! He loves you that much! When we want to believe in Jesus, we must admit that we fall short of God’s glory and that we are sinners. Then we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, died for our sins and rose again three days later! Then we confess with our mouths that He is our Lord and Savior over our lives.
Do you know Him? Do you really know Him? I pray that you do. If you don’t but would like to know more, please feel free to message me, email me or comment on the blog below. I would be more than happy to share with out about my Jesus. For those reading this that do not know Him and do not have any interest in knowing him, I pray for you. I pray that God becomes real to you. So real that nothing can explain the things that are happening except that it is God!
So what kind of artist do I want to be?
What type of artist am I?
I am an artist of many talents and ideas from landscapes to silhouettes to symbolism but my message is clear. Jesus is my Lord and Savior and I want to share Him with the world.
