Uniball eye pens on heavyweight cartridge paper (acid free). Coloured using Chameleon Color Tones marker pens.
Today is #wipwednesday over on #angelaporterscoloringbookfans facebook group.
Eerie Entangled Art, Entangled Butterflies and A Dangle A Day are new books from me that are available to pre-order now.
This is the fruit of my Sunday ‘labours’, and I’m quite pleased with it, truth to be told. Now that’s not something I say about all my works. However I am, quite pleased with it.
I’ve been playing around with hand lettering and design for a while now. From placing the words on curvy lines to straight lines. Trying having the word(s) sit above the drawing with white space above and using them to split the drawing, as in this case.
I’ve used simple hand lettering, like here, and a bit more ornate.
It has been a bit of an adventure, with some successes, some not quite so. With this one, though, I think I’ve found my kind of ‘style’ for it. I like the way the flowery ‘poles’ join the top and bottom part of the design. I really like the jewel-rich tones of reds and blues that I’ve used.
If there’s one thing I wanted to do, and forgot about until now, it was to use a metallic gold pen to add dots to the centres of the circles in the bushes at the bottom. Also, maybe tiny gold dots to the centres of those little purple flowers. It’s that inner raven that loves sparkle having an influence yet again.
I like my quirky hand lettering. It may not be the best, it may not be the most precise or even. If I wanted that, then using something like Publisher or the text tool in Autodesk Sketchbook would or could work. Or I could select and move individual words, or even letters around, in Sketchbook. That, however, would remove the imprecision that gives the art a ‘human’ touch.
To create this, I used a Pentel Energel 0.5 pen to draw the design and do the hand lettering. My Copic Ciao’s were used to colour the image in, and I added white dots with white Sakura pens – Souffle and Gelly Roll 08, both of which worked well over the Copics.
I enjoyed using the Energel pen. The line is consistent in width and intensity, and my heavy hand doesn’t wreck the tip within a short space of time. I also tried out a Uniball Eye Needle point 05 pen for some of the fine details, but it didn’t seem to like writing over the paper that had been coloured with the Copics. It does, however, write smoothly on plain paper, whether that’s Bristol board or Heavy weight cartridge paper. The solvents in the Copics changes the surface structure of the paper; the Uniball Eye didn’t write smoothly on it, and it also bled into the paper, which it doesn’t do on un-Copic-coloured Bristol board.
I’ve spent all day working on this, and a pleasurable day it has been.
When it came to choosing a quote to hand letter on the image, this one by Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed perfect to me.
To colour my drawing I used my Chameleon Marker pens. I haven’t used alcohol markers in quite a while. There was a point when I’d coloured a lot of the outline art in and really didn’t like the colours I’d used and nearly gave up on it.
However, I persevered in adding the patterns and highlights and it’s worked out quite nicely I think, even with a not very good photo of the image.
Another pen and ink drawing with pencil shading with a hand-lettered quote. Intricate, entangled, zendoodle-y.
Can you tell I’m really enjoying drawing intricate illustrations and designs at the moment?
Pen and ink on paper, with pencil shading. Some dangles have crept in at the top, a touch I rather like.
I meant to leave some space to add a quote or inspirational word, but got so engrossed in the dangles that I forgot!
A Dangle A Day, Eerie Entangled Art and Entangled Butterflies are books of mine available to preorder now.
Over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group it’s work in progress wednesday. Pop over and you’d be made to feel welcome I’m sure!
Carrying on my theme of playing with ideas and paper and pen, I decided to do a monogram, and here’s the result.
If I’d thought ahead and either made this smaller or made the paper bigger, I could’ve added dangles to it.
I’m not at all sure of the coloured patterns I added around the outside of the monogram display; I didn’t choose some of the colours wisely. I do like the subtle grey “feathers” there though.
I also think I may need to thicken the outlines of the letter and/or create shadows on the design behind the letter so it looks like it’s standing a bit proud of the design.
All the same, I’m enjoying creating and exploring and experimenting with my art again, and it definitely gets the #weekendvibes going!
It’s also #furbabyfriday across the interwebs, and more particularly at the facebook group ‘Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans’. Why not pop over, join in and share your furbabies with the lovely people there!
Watch out for an exclusive giveaway related to my book, “A Dangle A Day”, which is due to be released in September and is available to pre-order right now. It’ll be announced, along with details of how to get your free dangle design here, on twitter @wyrdsmithing, on facebook @angelaporterartist.
I had some fun with this one. Lots of zentangle-y patterns in a zentangle style ‘string’. I eventually worked out how to get a better ‘separation’ of the areas that worked aesthetically for me (and was more my kind of style). I added a quote and some darker shades of the same colours in the background it was all done.
I am enjoying my current phase of just creating for the sake of creating, especially adding quotes in very simple hand-lettering. I expect there’s going to be quite a few more created as time goes on.
Oh, the holes are in the top as I took the sheet out of my A5 discbound sketchbook; I’ve coloured most of the pages with distress ink in various ways. Should I wish to frame or reproduce this, I can easily remove that area of the page.
I also quite like having the empty space above the quote and design. My art can become very, very busy and intricate, but this seems to bring some balance to the overall design.
I really am on a daisy-kick in my drawing lately! Such happy little flowers, resilient too.
I did do this drawing last Monday, but decided to post it today after I spent much of my morning colouring one of the templates for Entangled Butterflies (available to preorder).
Can you believe that June is nearly over? Time seems to be flying at the moment!
I’ve designed the front page for July in my BuJo, and here it is – a dangle design for the month. I felt the need to add words/phrases that epitomise July for me.
The rest of my BuJo is likely to be very plain and simple this month, and done in a Fauxdori rather than an A5 Leuchtturm as an experiment.
Art is the Adventure 