pen drawing

Something Different Sunday – Bots invade my sketchbook…pesky things!

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Click on this link to see today’s video!

A rainy, windy, grey morning here in the Valleys of South Wales. The perfect day to cwtch up in the warm and dry and work on some art.

I’ve been drawing robots, or bots, in my sketchbook lately. I blame Bill Making Stuff on YouTube. I stumbled across his channel a lil while ago, and it seems his insidious bots and makes have found a corner in my creative mind to lurk. It’s inevitable, I suppose, that they should creep out.

But my drawing style has exerted its muscle …and these are typical ‘Angela’ style drawings! Actually, I had started to work on some new bots and characters for my Doodleworlds style of cute and whimsical art. But Bill gave me, unknowingly by him, the push to have a go at drawing these creations.

Fun. Whimsical. Cute. Different. Just what I needed to do on a rainy, windy, grey morning.

A Zentangle Bookmark-sized Card | #ArtForTheCreativeSoul

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Having fun today, combining drawing and cardmaking! Zentangle inspired drawing of course.

This card is 2½” x 7″ in size, and the paper I drew on is a 2½” x 6″ piece of Canson Imagine paper.

I chose to use Sandswirl and Holly tangle patterns in the design. After all, they were my tangle pattern and fragment of the week! Plus a couple of other bits and bobs – flowers, crystals, a bit of mooka and a sprinkling of flux.

I did make a boo-boo though. I didn’t let the silver ink dry long enough before I used an eraser. I checked that it was touch-dry, but it wasn’t eraser-dry. Ho hum, dash and darn it!

I used the same metallic silver to draw a border and add a little bit of embellishment. The embellishment is under my fingers, duh!

The sketchy diagram to the right are the dimensions for making an envelope for the card. Red means cut out, blue add glue.

Of course I made a video for this, and you can see it by following this link. (It’s a new link – I managed to re-upload yesterday’s video as today’s one. Duh go me! It seems to be one of them days…)

#FragmentFriday – “Holly” by Linda Dawson

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Ah! Fragment variations! One of my favourite things to do just for fun!

Today, I chose the lovely tangle pattern ‘Holly’, by Linda Dawson, as the source of the initial fragment.

My coddiwomple through the variations let to some lovely variations. Some were definitely dead ends, and some just don’t work in a reticulum.

Each dead-end and ‘fail’ teaches something. To persevere. And to accept that playing around with variations means mistakes, yeuchy variations are going to result. This is what sketchbooks are for – to make mistakes, to try things out, to work out what does and what does not work. And more importantly, to help get over the fear of failure, of having a go.

Even the ‘fails’ can lead to fragments that are lovely and unexpected.

Also, it’s nice not to have the pressure to create finished and highly polished artwork. It’s always nice to draw just for the joy of drawing.

Of course, I created a video showing my exploration. You can view it by clicking on this link.

Sneak Peek Wednesday and my first attempt at stop motion animation.

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Sneak Peek Wednesday

This is part of a mandala design for a colouring page. And it is just part, though this would stand nicely as a design all in itself. Thursday, tomorrow, is the day I’ll release the template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group.

Stop Motion Animation

Do you ever wake in the morning with an idea you just have to try out straight away? Yes? I often do, usually for a drawing. Today, however, it involved stop motion animation.

First job was to download Stop Motion Studio and check it would work with the document camera I use for filming. And it does! Well enough for now that’s for sure.

Then I played with the software and decided to do a stop motion drawing. Then I thought I’d animate the paper and pen too. It took me the time it took to drink my morning mug of tea to create a simple little video lasting about 23 s (without intro and outro)

I have some things to think about – lighting, background, keeping my hands out of the way, holding the paper down in a different way, and sound effects perhaps. I’m going to try my best not to run before I can crawl with this. I have no idea what I can do with it, or what to make. But, I’m sure ideas will come to me.

Hmm, I wonder if Saturday’s will be Stop Motion Saturday from now on. Maybe, eventually, I dunno.

It was a lot of fun for an hour or so this morning.

Anyhoo, I like to share the fun, so here’s the video for you to enjoy! I’d appreciate it if you could click on the “Watch on YouTube” button in the video 🙂

Tangle Tuesday – “Sandswirl” by Karry Heun

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Tuesdays are #TangleTuesday! This week I’ve chosen “Sandswirl” to draw and work out some variations with.

Sandswirl has long been a favourite tangle pattern of mine. I’ve never thought about exploring variations of it. I really enjoyed doing so!

When shadows are added, this tangle pattern becomes really dimensional in an interesting way.

I’ve never thought of using Sandswirl as a border before. This shows that all the time I’ve spent exploring patterns and fragments is paying off! I’d always thought of Sandswirl as a filler pattern. Today, I discovered otherwise.

If you’d like to see my explorations today, then here’s the link to today’s video on YouTube.

Motif Monday – Flower Motifs #1

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Keep the alliterative theme going; today is #MotifMonday! Also, happy Valentine’s Day to you all too.

A motif is something I use either for a focal point or in clusters as part of my drawing. Although motifs can form patterns, I tend to use the term for a particular design I like to use. I tend to use the word ‘fragment’ for that kind of motif that would fit into a grid (reticulum in Zentangle-ese).

As it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d start off with roses, which led to other favourite flower motifs. Along with some, hopefully helpful, suggestions about creating volume in the drawings.

I use a lot of floral, botanical, organic motifs in my artwork, so I’m looking forward to sharing some of these with you.

Talking of sharing, here’s the link to today’s video!

Time for the creative soul – A Zentangle Inspired Bookmark WIP

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Slowly, I’m learning about using colour digitally, and I love it! I’m beginning to understand how I can use layers effectively. Bringing dimension to my ‘flat’ pen drawings is so fascinating!

I realise now that I need to spend more time working with colour digitally. I’m finding getting that feeling of volume in my artwork is relatively easy. But, choosing colours isn’t my best skill for sure! So, once the process of layers is incorporated into my mental “muscle memory”, I need to learn more about how to choose colours.

I’ll get there. It may be that monochrome is the way to go for me. But only time will tell.

For now, I need a bit of a break from the computer as well as another mug of tea!

Draw with me … A Zentangle Inspired Bookmark | #TimeForTheCreativeSoul

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It’s been a lovely day today. I’ve spent time drawing, which is always a pleasure and relaxing to boot! I had a lovely long phone chat with a pal too, partway through filming. But it was lovely to chat!

I’ve decided that on Saturdays, I’ll focus on arty projects that could be useful or gifted. All about taking time out not just to feed my creative soul, but to share that with others.

A bookmark seemed a good idea for today. It’s a relatively small project. Useful too! I’ll laminate this when I’m happy with it. I already have a recipient in mind.

Of course I’ve scanned the drawing in and I’ll be using it to practice adding shadow, colour, highlights/lowlights digitally.

There’ll be no social media posts from me tomorrow – I have a day with many pleasant online events. I’ll be back on Monday for sure!

Oh, before I forget, here’s today’s video.

Fragment Friday! 11 Feb ’22

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I love alliteration! Back in the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, the time between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, alliteration was used for rhymes. One reason I’d love to learn to speak, write and read Anglo-Saxon.

I’ve decided to have a different alliterative social media theme for each day.

Fragment Friday was a natural choice. I absolutely enjoyed creating variations for each of the fragments in the “Fragments of Your Imagination Challenge” that ran through January. I miss doing these variations. So that led to this particular theme.

For my first Friday Fragment, I decided to use ‘Hearts’ as the theme. Today it’s not so much creating variations on a particular fragment but the use of a particular motif within each variation. Some of the variations are familiar fragments or tangle patterns. Others go off in surprising directions.

Of course I filmed the process (though not the addition of colour and shadow with marker pens). You can see the video by clicking on this link.

Doodleworlds – A5 Illustration WIP

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Adding colour digitally lets me try things

I’ve learned a new ‘trick’! New to me that is. I’ve finally worked out how I can use grey shadow underpainting to increase contrast in my artwork! It’s new to me, but not new to the art world I’m sure.

I’m really happy with the result. Digital art makes it so easy to try things out in layers. So, this is the way for me to go.

Yesterday morning, I started adding shadows to some pen drawn motifs with marker pens. I wanted to see what that would look like. I prefer these shadows to those done with graphite or chalk pastel pencils.

Then, I added colour using watercolour pencils and a damp brush, just to see what would happen. I liked the result! Lots!

I filmed part of this process today, and here’s the video on YouTube