Dangle Day Friday – new BuJo spreads for August

27 July 201827 July 2018Angela PorterLeave a comment

August BuJo Spreads

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.

Another Terry Pratchett Quote…

25 July 2018Angela PorterLeave a comment

Angela Porter 25 July 2018

I am enjoying doing these quotes, as I’ve said before.

I enjoy the intricacy of the drawing/design/illustration.

I quite like taking a black and white line drawing and turning into a rainbow line drawing too.

Today is WIP over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group – you’d be made very welcome if you pop over and join in!

Decorated Terry Pratchett Quote and Chameleon Pencils first impressions

23 July 201823 July 2018Angela PorterLeave a comment

Angela Porter 23 July 2018

Another quote from Terry Pratchett. This one from one of my favourite characters – Death. Death tries so hard to understand humanity, yet he gets it both very wrong and quite right at the same time.

I like the way I’ve added colour to my black and white line art in this example, but one day I hope to get around to colouring in the black and white version.

Maybe I’ll print the art out and then colour it in using Chamelon Pen’s ColorTone Pencils, which arrived yesterday.

I have spent some time colouring with them and so far I quite like them.

They are softer than Polychromos and others, but not quite as soft as Prismacolours. They blend quite nicely, and a little help from a blending pencil results in really nice blends.

I like the colour palette; the colours are nice and bright and just the colours I love to use in my art, which is a huge, huge bonus! As I often struggle to choose and use colours in a sensible manner when I have a huge choice, the limited palette of 50 colours is really useful for me, as are the double ended pencils. Being able to flip to add shadow or light is a nice touch, though I would like a bit more contrast between some of the colours as some are a bit too similar.

The leads are a bit thicker than other pencils, such as Prismacolours. However, this makes the barrels of the pencils a bit too thick for a standard pencil sharpener. My Staedtler pencil sharpener – the ones with the handles that you turn around – should cope well with them though.

At a price point of £45 on Amazon.co.uk with free prime delivery I think they’re good value for money, even though you essentially have 50 half-sized pencils. However, the thicker colour leads make up for that to some degree.

I’ve not been able to find out if you can buy individual pencils when some wear down. However, I can’t see that being a big issue as I suspect that I’ll use most of the pencils fairly equally.

Eerie Entangled Art

16 July 2018Angela PorterLeave a comment

Eerie Entangled Art Angela Porter 16 July 2018

A knock on the door and I find a nice UPS man handing me a parcel which contained my advance copies of Eerie Entangled Art!

It’s always exciting to see my art published, and I feel a little proud of myself.

I feel a bit of a giveaway coming up in the near future …

Oh, Eerie Entangled Art is released on the 18th July 2018! So, only two sleeps to go!

Kindness is the light that…

11 July 2018Angela PorterLeave a comment

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.

Nature always wears the colours of the spirit

5 July 20185 July 2018Angela PorterLeave a comment

Angela Porter 5 July 2018

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.

Monday motivation

2 July 2018Angela PorterLeave a comment

Angela Porter 2 July 2018

I had a lovely, artsy, creative, relaxing time drawing the bottom design for this quote yesterday evening and this morning. It’s kind of a throwback to when I started drawing this kind of intricate art before I started doing all the work for colouring books, where the images have to be a fair bit less complex.

Unipin pens from Uniball, along with a blue-grey coloured pencil and a blender pencil from Derwent were the tools I used to create this.

I didn’t hand-letter the quote; I chose to use Serif’s Affinity Designer to add it instead, though I’ve not worked out how to get the text to follow a curve…yet. I will.

The quote is something I try to apply in my life. I’ve struggled with being a hyper-perfectionist all my life; learning to accept that something I produce is ‘good enough’ is something that is easier for me, though still not easy.

I cringe when I look back on earlier work.

Recently, I was approached by a lovely lady about using some old artwork of mine for her business branding logos and so on. I looked at it and knew I just had to re-work it; I recognised that my skills and style have developed and evolved a little, and I wanted to do the best I could now.

She seems to be really happy with the artwork, and I’m much happier with it too.

It’s not just in art that these words have meaning though.

It’s no secret that I am working in therapy (EMDR) at healing what I can from the CPTSD I’ve experienced all my life, especially the way it limits my life. Learning to accept that I’m good enough as a person is very difficult. Progress is slow, but it is progress.