In the last day, I’ve uploaded three more colouring sheets to my Etsy shop – Artwyrd.
For each, there’s either a fully coloured, or partly coloured, version of the line art to see. Yes, I’ve been using them to practice colouring in digitally.
I’ve also started work today on a new book for Dover, the theme for it being eerie.
I’ve started getting my head together around colouring templates for sale on my Etsy shop, Artwyrd, and this is my first design – Dragonfly Mandala.
It’s offered as a high resolution pdf file for instant download.
As always, I love to see how people colour my designs in, and hope that people will share their finished works with me via social media!
As you know, I’ve been spending quite a lot of time developing a good relationship with both my Microsoft Surface Book and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
I’m fairly happy with drawing on the surface, though I’ve yet to get the texture of the ‘pen’ I use to be a little less perfect and a bit more ‘human’. There’s also the issue of not quite getting how big patterns will be when printed out, and then finding out that a powerful magnifying glass along with microscopically fine pointed pens/pencils will be needed to colour the patterns if not done digitally.
Now, I have mostly been printing my designs out and then colouring them with traditional media; particularly my Chameleon Color Tones and Color Tops marker pens. I do love doing this – it’s a very sensory experience.
However, I am aware I have a different tool for colouring viz. Sketchbook Pro and it’s suite of brushes and textures and so on.
Believe it or not, it takes me longer to colour an image in digitally than it does with traditional media, and I mean a LOT longer.
I love the way the colours are clean, almost glowing, when I use the marker pen ‘brush’ or one of the watercolour brushes. I’m getting to grips with which particular kind of blending or smudging ‘brush’ I like to use. I’m starting to get the idea of working with layers.
What is vexing me, is how ‘perfect’ the finish is, and how simple it looks. I wonder if it is way too simple a finish. It also frustrates me that I’m kind of trying to replicate the effects of traditional media but with digital tools, and failing as everything either works out almost perfectly blended with bright, clear colours, or ends up as a bit of a mess as I try to use different brushes or textures.
A dear friend of mine pointed out to me that I’m trying to compare apples and oranges, that perhaps I should treat digital colouring as an art medium all of it’s own instead of trying to make it like traditional media.
It was also pointed out that I do have a tendency to give myself a hard time when things seem too easy to me, or end up too perfect.
All of the images in this post have been coloured digitally, and the colours have shading/gradation in colours, but there’s no texture in them. But then, there’s little texture in the colouring when I use marker pens, such as my Chameleons or Copics, unless I deliberately add it, which I’m always disappointed with. I much prefer to add texture with black lines, which I need to bear in mind now as I work with digital colour.
I also recognise that I need to do a bit more to make more ‘contrast’ between the paler and darker shades of colours, as well as making sure there’s good deep shadows to add that illusion of 3D to the drawings.
I will continue to experiment and explore the other digital media and brushes, as well as special effects, and in time I may work out how it can all work for me in a way that I’m happy with.
Last night I bit the marker pen and uploaded two sets of small greetings cards to my Etsy shop, Artwyrd.
Each set has ten cards featuring a coloured flower/mandala design stored in a small, custom made box along with matching envelopes.
The flower/mandala designs I drew myself in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface book. I printed out multiple copies of the designs and then used my Chameleon Markers and Copic Markers to colour them. Distress Ink was used to add colour around the designs.
The next step was to create colour mats for the designs; I used my marker pens to colour some Centaura Pearl card.
Before mounting them on the 3″ x 3″ (7.5cm x 7.5cm) card blanks, I embellished the designs with dots of metallic and pearlescent acrylic paint, as well as adding coloured gems.
Of course the cards sparkle!
The boxes are made from cardstock with the lids decorated with designer series paper; the colour ways chosen are complementary to the colours of the cards. I also used Distress Inks to distress the edges and corners of the boxes. I’ve yet to embellish the boxes.
These are my fifth and sixth attempts at making the boxes. I had to purchasing a new paper cutter that’s more accurate than the one I had been using. I had used a template for a box that would take ten 3″ x 3″ cards, but wasn’t big enough for the envelopes. So, I also had to work out and adjust the measurements needed for the base and lid so that the envelopes would fit in the box! Frustrating, especially as maths isn’t my strong point …but I got there in the end.
I do have a couple of jobs to do to the cards/boxes; the boxes need some embellishment, and I need to add makers labels to them too.
The boxes will be nice for other things once the cards are used up – the lids are a snug fit.
All of the designs I have stored and may, in the fullness of time, put them together as a pack of digi-stamps so people can use them to create their own cards!
I received these cards in the post today from Crane&Co! I think you can tell I designed the artwork.
The design is Letterpressed onto cotton rag paper using a grey ink; this means the lines of the design are slightly impressed into the paper.
I’m really chuffed with how it’s come out!
Over the last couple of days, my focus has been on designing mandalas. I also have been learning a little more about Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and how I can import images, cut them and have them as an opaque image that ‘floats’ on top of other layers or designs. The image above is an example of the work I’ve done.
My only issue with it is that I’ve used too thick a pen for the mandala. Now I know how to do this, I can always re-do the mandala part, or the dragonfly!
I also spent a fair part of yesterday doing some mixed media work. A friend of mine asked if I’d do something with her wedding speech for one of her family so it’d become a keepsake for them.
I’d been puzzling about how to do it, when inspiration struck with the colours I needed to use, and off I went! I’ll post a photo of it once the wedding is all done!
Seeing as I’ve focused on butterflies over the past few days, I didn’t want to have dragonflies feeling they’ve been overlooked. So, I have a few templates done and saved, and so far I’ve added patterns and shading to one.
Oh, I’ve also worked out how to add a watermark to my art to try to protect its copyright…just have to remember to add a watermark to every image of my art I upload now…
Of course, I’ve been drawing on my Surface book in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro…no better way to get to work out how the software works for me and with me!
I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Book along with my Surface Pen to add patterns and shading to two of the butterfly outline designs I drew yesterday. I’m happy with the results.
Today I’ve also created two more dot mandalas, each around 5″ in diameter. I added some gems to those, as well as to the small dot mandalas I created over the last couple of days. The sparkle really adds something special to them, and helps to emphasise the circularity of mandala designs.
Over the past couple of days I’ve continued working on my Microsoft Surface Book using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to create digital images for used in card making and mixed media projects. IFungi and butterflies have been my chosen subjects, and you can see some of them in the images above. They’ve also been digitally coloured, though I’ve still got dots and lines to add to them to give more depth and dimension to them.
They’re all now cut out and sitting waiting to be used in various projects. There’s still more drawings carefully filed away on the Surface Book for future uses…
I’ve also have a bit of fun creating some teeny-tiny dot mandalas. Each card base is just 3″ x 3″ (approx. 7.5cm x 7.5cm). The black card I used as the substrate is 2½” square (approx. 6.25cm).
The acrylic paints I used are either metallic or pearlescent, so they do catch the light rather nicely.
I have a new book of coloring templates available on Colorist from Faction Apps. This one is called Intricately Yours – Mandalas, and the image above is one of the mandalas partly coloured.
I used the flood fill to add base colours to the patterns, and then added shading/highlights with the pencil tool. The patterns in the bottom were drawn using the gel pen tool.
While test driving one of my templates on the Colorist app, I discovered a new feature, which I love – pre-set color palettes. I used the Easter palette to colour the above mandala.
I may be an artist, but I do sometimes get overly fussy with my colour choices, so being able to use a pleasing and limited colour palette makes life a bit easy for me!
I also discovered settings that allow you to turn touch colouring off, which is great for me as I use my surface pen, and a setting that keeps you automatically inside the lines, or not.
Art is the Adventure 