I woke early this morning, it was still dark. The night has now lifted to reveal a dull, grey, misty, damp morning here in the Valleys of South Wales.
I wanted to re-colour the holly mandala in a more traditional colour scheme of red, green and gold, and so I have done so.
The colours help to give an illusion of dimension to the concentric rings in the design. Of course, the colours are kind of my signature – bright and jewel-like. I chose to change the background colour from stark black to a very dark, inky night-sky blue. I did add some lighter texture to the background to break the colours up just a tad.
It’s worked out ok. I think I prefer it muchly to the green foil version. The foil images are fun to do, that’s for sure. And of course they’ve allowed me to work out another way of creating art digitally, which is essentially by removing black to reveal the design. This has resulted in me drawing my motifs in a slightly different way to how I’d usually do them. They definitely have more of that lino-cut feel to them with the simplification of designs and lines. I like that.
I also like how the holly berries in the outer ring seem to be floating above and below the leaves. That wasn’t intentional! It’s just how it’s all worked out.
Sprinkling stars everywhere is one of my favourite things to do it seems and they do add a little magic to this design for sure.
Which version do you prefer? This one or yesterday’s green foiled version?
Tools used – Microsoft Surface Pen and Surface Studio. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Angela Porter 