My latest design. It took nearly 2 days work to complete, though I may add some metallic highlights here.
I used Inktense pencils and blocks with water brushes, Uniball Unipin pens and Daler-Rowney Aquafine smooth watercolour paper.
Black line definitely keeps my need for that high contrast work happy, but the ability to add layers of colour or create gradations in colour with the Inktense also keeps me happy. Together, they work for me.
I did start off the central area with shapes of colour, but then I started to draw in the designs around the edge and then add colour. Both ways work for me for sure. Also, there’s a kind of randomness to the colour and some over-spill outside the lines, and that is something I’m learning to live with and like.
Perfectly imperfect.
Just like me. Just like us all. We are all perfectly imperfect and that is OK. In fact, it’s more than ok, it’s just perfect and I think we should all embrace it. The imperfections are what contribute to our uniqueness, our individuality as much as anything else (perhaps even more). Society sends a message we all need to be perfect as people with perfect lives and perfect homes and perfect bodies and perfect smiles, hair and so on.
The reality is, however, that we aren’t.
We are all imperfect. Life is imperfect. Nature is imperfect.
But all is perfectly imperfect.
And that is good. It is. At any moment in our lives we are all doing the best we can. Sometimes things work out perfectly. Sometimes they go wrong. The balance of it all is that it is all perfectly imperfect.
My artwork is perfectly imperfect. I do my best with digital art, but I’m not really happy with what I do often. I learn each time I do some, and move forward, improving. The same is true when I use traditional media.
The same is true of life. Of my life. Of all our lives, our perfectly imperfect lives from which we can learn and grow as people.
Angela Porter 