Dramatic waves of Crayola

My favorite thing about using crayons is the names of the colors! Unlike the unimaginative names given to colors in cross-stitching (see previous post), a Crayola box is full of fun and inspiring names, and sometimes I get distracted by just reading all the labels.

I used five crayons to color the lagoon: pacific blue, sea green, blue-green, cerulean, and indigo. I wanted to give some movement to the water, so I colored in broad strokes that arched in different ways. Then I smoothed over it with short horizontal strokes. I'm not sure it came out the way I thought it would, but I'm happy with it:

Center panel of "The Little Mermaid II"

The thing about broad, arching strokes is that they make me feel very dramatic and I get a bit carried away. If you look closely, you'll see the blue crossed many lines that it probably shouldn't have, and tinted the boat, the hair, the clothes, the flowers in less than professional ways. But I was coloring to the rhythm of the song "How He Loves Us" (linked below), and at the time it felt just fine and even now, I have no regrets.

I was thinking of the love of God, which is like a hurricane on the sea, fierce and awesome... taking our steady hearts and boring lives and stirring them up with such power that we get carried away and turned violently into something new and unrecognizable.

And I was thinking of His grace, which is like an ocean that sinks all of us who dare to enter into it... so much deeper and wider and infinite than we could ever image, and it never runs dry but springs fresh and new every morning to cleanse and restore us, and drown us.

And I was thinking of how heaven meets earth in a "sloppy wet kiss"... when God walked in the garden, when Jesus wrapped himself in baby-soft skin, when the Holy Spirit crash-landed like fire on the heads of the saints, and whenever we slow down enough to observe his hands move and listen to his voice sing over us.

So I color in broad strokes, in arches, and in layers, and I get "pacific ocean water" all over the page, because it reminds me of the incredible and reckless love of God.

Listening to: "How He Loves Us," by John Mark McMillan