Angela Porter’s Colour Book Fans

‘J’ Monograms

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©Angela Porter 2018

What a troublesome letter J is! Well, as far as creating a monogram. Early sketches showed me that if I add too much fanciness outside of the letter, the letter gets lost in the embellishments! So, here are a few that I’m vaguely pleased with.

I used Daler Rowney Marker Paper to draw these letters on, with a mixture of black pens. I used Copic Markers to colour some of the letters. Others I used to experiment with Tombow Dual brush pens and a blender pen. Chameleon Color Tones pencils were used on a couple more.

The Copics work really well on the marker paper – no surprises there!

The Tombows tend to cause the pen I use to draw the designs with – Uniball Unipin and Sakura Pigma Sensei pens – to smear. I keep forgetting the Tombows do that. So, I tried drawing a J with the Tombow Dual Brush pen and then add the lines and patterns after it had dried. That worked. But white space needs to be created outside of the letter, and again, if I got too intricate, entangled, ornate with the embellishments I would’ve lost the letter. Or perhaps not if it was only the letter that was coloured in.

I was surprised at how easily colour from the Chameleon Color Tones coloured pencils laid down on the marker paper. Surprised because I’d forgotten how nice it is to colour on the marker paper! I did need a good layer of padding paper beneath the 70g/m² or 48lb marker paper.

I foresee similar problems with the letters I, L, and S. Not sure about the other letters I’ve not tried this kind of decorating with yet. Time will show!

What I can see here is that the style of embellishment I’ve used, while not always successful, such as the heart and arrow one (where did that idea come from? Sheesh!), it is different to the previous letters I’ve played around with. That is all down to the shape of the letter and the edges I have to play around with, while keeping clarity of the letter too.

What to do today? Well, I do have the 2019 template to colour for the colour explosion over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group set to run through New Year’s Day. I’m also aware that I haven’t done a cutely whimsical cat monogram dangle design for a few weeks. I also have three templates to colour for ‘Entangled Forests’ so that book can be put to rest ready for publication, before I start on the next one.

October’s Coloring Template

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Angela Porters Coloring Book Fans facebook group October 2018 small

It’s that time of the month again – the release of my ‘freebie’ coloring template in the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group.

Autumn is my favourite time of year and Hallowe’en is my favourite ‘festival’. Not the dressing up or trick or treat and rowdiness, though I do appreciate the excitement that the little ones have about the spookiness and slight scariness that it all brings.

I just enjoy the atmosphere at this time of year that the darker nights and changing colours and falling leaves bring. It’s the time of year where I really appreciate candle light during the evenings, creating a cosier environment at home.

There’s a little more to it than that, but I can’t quite find the words for it at the moment.

Anyhoo, this whimsical, cute colouring template is available only to members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. It’s free to join. I create one template a month just for the members (sometimes I surprise them with a second one, and in the run up to Christmas I try to do a couple a week to help with de-stressing). Pop over and join a fair number of like-minded, friendly people.

Work in Progress Wednesday

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Angela Porter 9 September 2019 02 coloured small1

This was drawn on paper with Sakura Pigma Micron pens, scanned in and is in the process of being digitally coloured in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. I’m using my Surface Studio and a Surface Pen, both from Microsoft.

The background may go a little darker on this one, but I’ll decide on that when I’ve completed colouring the design elements in.

It’s also work in progress Wednesday over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. We’d love to see your colouring works in progress of pages from my coloring books. Why  not pop along and join in? You’d be very welcome there.

Hello September!

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Angela Porter September Template 2018 small

September 2018’s coloring template

A new month begins and a coloring template for September 2018(above) for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group is now available.

If you’d like to access to September 2018’s uncoloured template, which is exclusive to members of the group, just wander over to the group, join and download. Please note, that terms and conditions do apply.

I drew this in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Studio using my Microsoft Surface Pen.

Autumn is a-coming!

With the calendar turning to September, my heart lifts with the expectation of the glory of nature as autumn asserts it’s influence.

It’s my favourite season of the year. I love the bright, vivid colours that replace the darker, duller greens of summer. Nature’s picks out it’s most glorious paintbox and sets the world alight in fiery autumnal hues.

I also luxuriate in the cooler evenings and mornings and look forward to waking up to see dew, or even frost, on Binky, my Smartcar.

The fresh, clean, clear air that the turning season brings blows away the dustiness of the hot, dry summer.

There’s also the return of the pleasure and comfort of snuggling up under a duvet as night time is cooler. Not to mention the relief of sleeping well throughout the night.

There are other things I’m looking forward to this year too.

It’s hard to remember now the fear and trepidation that the return to school as a teacher that would come with the start of this month as the new school year starts.

Now, I look forward to the start of the new school year as the world is calmer, quieter during the school day and I can begin to venture forth from my home without my CPTSD panic kicking in when I hear the sound of teenagers shouting and arguing and swearing and being belligerent, just them being themselves really.

It’s not their fault, I know, but their sounds are triggers for my fear, anxiety, panic and cause me to want to hide in a quiet dark corner of my safe home. So much so, that I find it so difficult to venture out of my front door during daytime during the school holidays.

Through therapy, I will overcome this, but the reaction is so ingrained in me and goes right back to my earliest years; teaching, dealing with the dramas of teens on a daily basis as well as being the focus for some to vent their anger, just reinforced these automatic responses. This means not just unraveling the web of trauma that resulted in the panic response, it means learning a healthy response to such triggers, one that I’ve never, ever had in the first place.

Now, with the start of the school year, and a daytime world that is quieter, I’ll be able to find my courage to venture forth during the day once again. Maybe not often, but from time to time.

With it being my favourite season, with the theme of my next book being forests, to sketch and find inspiration in woods and forests during autumn is something I want to do this year.

It’s all part of my road to recovery from CPTSD. Autumn always feels like a time of new starts, more so than New Year. As nature begins to shed what is unnecessary so survival through winter is possible, so I work on shedding the trauma that has kept me in a metaphorical winter in terms of my mental and emotional health for a very, very long time.

 

 

Dangle Day

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Angela Porter 24 August 2018

It’s Friday so it’s time for one of my occasional dangle designs.

This one involves elements from my latest bits and bobs of abstract botanical art.

Want to learn how to draw your own dangles? Just follow this link for my upcoming book  ‘A Dangle A Day’ to preorder.

It’s furbaby friday over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group – join to share pictures of your furbabies! You’ll be most welcome there.

It’s always furbaby friday in the Happy Tails facebook group. If you love animals, this is a lovely group for you to join.

Perfectly Imperfect and an Abstract Botanical 21 August 2018

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Angela Porter 21 August 2018

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.

 

 

Entangled Art 18 August 2018

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Angela Porter 18 August 2018

Planning a relaxing arty day, no digital art planned at the moment.

In the last couple of days, in between work for my next Entangled coloring book in the Creative Haven series from Dover Publications Inc, I tried something a bit different for me.

I tried drawing shapes for the design in colour first, then adding the black ink details over them.

For the completed design I used a Kuretake Zig Brush Pen and Tombow dual tip markers. I say completed, but I may return to it and add dome metallic/pearlescent/iridescent embellishments.

For the coloured design, without details, I used the same brush pen and Winsor & Newton Water Colour Markers.

I’m trying to decide if I’m going to add the details using a Uniball Unipin pen or whether I’m going to use a fine brush and watercolour.

Perhaps with this one I’ll stick with my Unipin pen(s) while creating a smaller, test piece for the use of watercolour with a fine brush.

I must admit, I do like the more graphic, high-contrast black lines, but I do think I have to give lines in colour a try.

Weekend relaxing with art, my #weekendvibes.

Abstract botanical drawing

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Angela Porter 8 August 2018 coloured 01

Happy times drawing! I drew this one with a Lamy Safari fountain pen with black ink on some mixed media paper from Claire Fontaine.

The colours are digitally added after scanning the drawing in, just for a bit of fun. I have ideas I want to try out digitally, but I’m going to wait for my Surface Studio to arrive for those explorations.

My own piece of wisdom for #WednesdayWisdom is that when you get to a point in a creative project where you think it just isn’t going to work out, don’t give up. Push past your own doubts. It can help to put the project to one side and come back to it later with ‘fresh eyes’ and a ‘fresh mind’, but don’t give up on it.

When you think you’ve finished the project there may be bits you don’t like, but there will be parts you really do like about it. The bits you like are ones to take forward and work with further.

What I’ve noticed over the years is that sometimes it’s the bits I wasn’t sure about that are the ones I really like when the project is completed. Often, the bits that are ‘mistakes’ end up being ‘happy accidents’ or ‘creative opportunities’ – discoveries of new things to try out again in the future.

I’ve most probably said this before, but I’ve been getting a lot of self-doubt lately in work I’m doing. As I often work directly in ink on to paper, my mistakes are permanent, so I have to work with them and incorporate them into the design. That’s what happens when you’re an intuitive artist; I’ve learned to trust to the process and that I can work with whatever happens.

You too can do this! I promise you, you can!

It’s also #wipwednesday over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. Plenty of people show their works in progress, but there is always, always room for more! We all love to see what people are up to.

Bookmarks – #makeitmonday

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Angela Porter Bookmarks 30 July 2018

Amongst other things, I’ve had a lovely crafty time over the weekend drawing tall and think designs that make lovely bookmarks, and here they are!

I love black and white line art, but I thought I’d try working in colour too with a mid-blue and a dusky kind of purple. Not too sure about the coloured drawings; I think that’s because I do like high contrast.

The first task was to cut paper (Winsor and Newton Bristol board and Claire Fontaine Paint On mixed media paper) into strips that are 30.1cm x 5cm or 30.1cm x 5.5cm in size. For each, I drew a pencil border around them that is approx 3mm wide.

Then, came the inky drawing. Usually, I start with one motif and let the design grow out from that one. However, with these I scattered large motifs across the space, then slightly smaller ones. Finally I used small patterns and even plain colour, to fill in the gaps.

I tried to keep to just three or four patterns in each design (a self-imposed challenge); some have just two patterns, others have 4 or so.

I really enjoyed doing these!

Now, I have to decide what to do with the originals. Do I scan them and then gift/sell the originals? Do I use them as the focal points for some mixed-media work? Do I use them to created some printable pages for people to make their own book marks? Do I scan and re-colour them in the way I have my recent quotes? Do I scan, print and set small parts into bezels to create my own custom jewellery? Do I turn them into greetings cards? Do I add shadows/shading to them?

So many possibilities and I feel quite overwhelmed.

I do know I need to turn my attention to my next coloring book for the Creative Haven series from Dover Publications Inc; I need to get a few templates done in the next couple of weeks, with one to be coloured as the cover illustration.

All #makeitmonday projects!

Talking of #makeitmonday; I uploaded a bonus colouring template to the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group yesterday. It is a group exclusive, so if you’d like to print and colour it and share it with the group, pop along and join in with the lovely group of people over there.

Dangle Day Friday – new BuJo spreads for August

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August BuJo Spreads

Angela Porter 27 July 2018

The last days of July are upon us, which means it’s time for new BuJo pages.

I’ve settled into a kind of pattern for myself as far as a BuJo/Planner goes. It’s really minimalistic in terms of what I keep track of, but not so minimal in terms of artsy-ness!

I have two designs for the monthly cover page. One, a dangle design, the other one of my zentangly, entangled style drawings. Yes, I hand lettered these ones, not like the quotes where I am printing out the words before drawing on the paper.

Like my dangle designs? You can pre-order ‘A Dangle A Day’, my book where I take you through how to draw your own dangle designs!

I like both of my monthly cover spreads, but I know the more complex one may never get completely coloured in – it would need a lot of time invested in it.

I like to have a monthly overview page for my events and appointments, and I’ve added dangle elements to that, though I do like a simple layout for the days.

The final planned-out page I like to have is a mood tracker. As you may be aware if you’ve been following my blog for a while, I have CPTSD and keeping track of my mood is useful. For August, I’ve decided on some bunting. The spaces are large enough that I can, if I wish, record different moods throughout the day.  Also, I like to keep the key for my moods simple, with just five different ones.

Hearts and stars are the theme for this month, which are common with me. They are two motifs that I really, really like.

The stars this month represent the Perseid meteor shower which happens around my birthday each  year, natures own fireworks. Hopefully the skies will be clear this year so there can be a good view of them.

A little about the materials used

  • A Leuchtturm 1918 A5 dot grid notebook
  • Unipin pens from Uniball and a mechanical pencil to sketch out the letters and so on.
  • Chameleon duotone pencils for colouring
  • A metallic gold Sakura Gelly Roll pen for some metallic highlights on the cover page.

Furbaby Friday and a new facebook group

Today it’s #furbabyfriday over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. The members love to show their beautiful furbabies, especially when they’re ‘helping’ with their colouring! You’d be most welcome to join the group and share your beautiful furbabies.

One of the admins of this group has started a new facebook group called Pet Love, Care & Happiness. If you love pets and animals you’d be more than welcome to join in. I believe they have a competition at the moment to win some Amazon gift vouchers.