Given how unsettled my maelstrom and tsunami stricken inner being is, I really needed to draw a mandala.
I love the soothing creativity that drawing a mandala brings. This one, partly coloured in monochrome greens with those little dashes of purple-ruby, looks like some weird succulent or an alien sea creature of some kind. Maybe a jellyfish.
A bit of a calming time was needed this morning before attending to my business of the day. I thought a mandala in blues, greens and purples would hit the mark.
I enjoy using a flexible ink pen ‘brush’ to achieve the varying line widths. This allows me to build up abstract patterns and textures quite nicely I think. I have a way to go to find my ‘voice’ with this style of art. The more I do, the more will become clear to me I’m sure.
I’m not sure that the design flows as much as in yesterday’s mandala. I wonder if that’s because I only put one rather geometric series of rings in the centre of the design.
I had a tough EMDR session yesterday. Today, I feel content and upbeat but I’m realising just how tired I am mentally, despite 10 hours sleep. Yesterday’s session had a lot of body processing going on. That means stored trauma is processed via physical sensations. Yesterday those included electric shocks in my leg/foot, side, arm, pains like hooks in my shoulders, a blunt pushing/stabbing force from my stomach up towards my heart, pain in my eye. Those are just a few I remember. The pain/sensations weren’t more than I could bear, though some came close to it!
30 or 40 minutes of this is enough in a session I find, and that little amount of time out of my day is worth it for the long term benefits it brings of helping me recover from CPTSD. The tiredness I feel will pass in a day or so.
This mandala is coming along slowly, but surely.
I’m definitely learning new ways to work digitally, but also new ways to express my creativity as well.
I’ve said it before and I’m amazed at what I’m creating. I never, ever thought that I’d be able to create anything like this, but I have and am doing so.
As usual, I’ve used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro along with a Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio to express my creativity.
The colours are bright and bold, which seems to be my signature style. They’re quite psychedelic too – all due to my love of playing with complementary colours.
I am child of the 60s in the respect I was born then and have some early memories of the music and art of that period thanks to my older half-sister who is 10 years my senior.
Perhaps I’m expressing my inner hippy. Or maybe I’m just expressing me, Angela.
I’ve said it before that I like to create things that are pretty, beautiful even. I don’t always get it right, but the more I do, the more I learn. I find my confidence little by little.
I’m tired but content. My stomach still isn’t right and it’s pulling my energy levels and my ability to concentrate on my art down.
I’ve had my moments of tears in the past day or so when I have been so tired once again. I’m not very resilient to the inner critic when I’m over tired or run down that’s for sure.
When I’m tired the inner critic seems to want to convince me I’m lonely, unloveable and unloved, worthless, useless.
I know when I feel this way to do anything artsy can be a self-defeating task as I’m never satisfied with what what I do and this feeds the inner critic who becomes nastier and nastier.
So, I don’t feed the inner critic and do other things until I find the energy I need to be stronger than the inner critic.
Today I did a little more on this mandala and I’m now doubting it greatly, even though I’m really pleased with it. I can feel the pressure bearing down on me to believe that this is horrible, it’s not as good as I’d like to think it is, that it’s ugly, it doesn’t work, that the black was a huge mistake and I’ll never get it right.
So, instead of sitting and worrying about it I shall go and do something else that the critic could have plenty to say about but it doesn’t bother me all that much. So, I’m working on crocheting a blanket for a friend. I’m not at all sure it’s going to work out; I’m doing a ‘scrap’ blanket to use up yarn from my stash so it’s not going to be planned out and that causes me some concern. However, I shall keep going.
My #tuesdaytip is to do just this – create every day!
It doesn’t matter for how long – 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, longer. Just take time to create.
You can create something new. You can work on practicing, say, your hand lettering. You could re-work or add to something you thought was finished. You could try a new skill or technique or medium. You could doodle aimlessly.
There’s just so many possibilities, so many ways to be creative – art, crafts, cooking, gardening, wood-turning, sculpting, decorating, sewing, colouring, are just a few of the possibilities.
Just create. Have fun. Play. Relax.
Take a break from the worries, stresses and strains of everyday life by focusing on being creative.
I use art to help me find my inner calm and stay there. My whole body exhales, calms and relaxes when I ‘art’. It’s a daily practice for me that has a similar effect as meditation and mindfulness does. Even if I don’t meditate every day, I ‘art’ every day, just for pleasure (as well as for my work).
When the days are very trying for me, as they have been lately due to a nightmare of a car breakdown and recovery that took 8 hours Saturday night into Sunday morning, I find creating collections of doodles and patterns for my BuJo or hand-writing quotes or words really soothing, especially if they are familiar to me. That’s what I needed at that time, something I could do automatically, that didn’t cause more stress for me. The rhythm and flow soothed. Just the process of repeating the drawings and drawing of letters involved practice and improvement of my favourite motifs, patterns, words; and when calm, I could move on to create something new.
Being creative isn’t just about making great works of art or craft, or any thing else. It’s also about feeding your heart, your soul, your being and finding calm and joy in what you do.
It’s WIP Wednesday once again over at the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. This is my current work in progress. I think I’m in touch with my inner bohemian/hippy once again in my colour choices, or maybe I just need a break from all the Christmassy/Winter colour schemes. Perhaps I just need some bright colour in my life at the moment. I do know using bright, vibrant colours always makes me smile.
#createdonsurface #autodesksketchbook
I have been adding new items to my collection on Vida. All feature my artwork, and the collection includes tops, scarves, wraps, bags, jewellery and tapestries.
There’s a 40% off deal until midnight PST 30th Sept; use the code BESTEVER to get the discount! This isn’t available with any other offer.
Also, there’s offers on my collection until the 10th October 2017. The code WELCOME-25 will give you a discount of $25 off orders over $75, and the code WELCOME-75 will give you $75 off orders over $200.
Autumn Mandalas, a collection of ten Autumn and Halloween themed designs, is now available in Colorist!
Colorist is an app for Windows that allows you to colour in the templates as if you were using pencils or gel pens!
There’s now a total of eight digi stamps of whimsical, simple flower designs available in my Etsy Shop, including the one to the left.
The large open spaces in the designs mean you can go to town on shading, or you can add doodles or patterns.
The beauty of digital stamps is that you can print them again and again on paper that is best suited to the media you’re using. Also, you can re-size the image to suit the card, picture or other item that you’re making. Not only that, these can be layered as the background is transparent, but the flowers and leaves are white.
A pair of lovely ladies who love my work have created a Facebook group for those who also love my colouring pages. They’re Krystal and Brett.
Why not pop across there and join up! They’re determined to make it a friendly, kind nook on the internet. It’s in it’s early days, so will grow and develop as Krystal and Brett work on it and with the members.
One thing I can guarantee is that I’ll create unique colouring pages just for members of that group! The first one will be live on the page very soon.
I also know they have a poll on the go to find out what you, the colorists, would like as theme for my next book!
Also, I’ll wander through there from time to time, though I don’t think I’ll have time to comment about everyone’s beautifully interpreted and coloured templates, I’m sure to leave a comment to let people know I’ve take and least a quick peek and answer any questions pointed in my direction.
I finally got the dragonfly artwork finished as a vector graphic. How frustrating was that? Every line drawn as a series of points. It took me days to re-draw a drawing that took just a day or so to draw.
Still, I’ve learned how to do it, I have a request for some other bits and bobs, as well as a suggestion that I should create vector graphics and sell them as there’s a market out there for that kind of thing.
Something else for me to wrangle with!
Someone has suggested that my designs would make lovely embroidery patterns.
I’m not an embroiderer, nor do I have a clue about what to do, but if there’s anyone out there or if any one knows someone who’d like to work with me to do this then please either contact me or suggest they contact me!
I already have a few cross-stitch designs available via Paine Free Crafts.
All this means I feel like I’m getting a little overwhelmed at the moment. Learning time management seems to be something I have to do sooner rather than later.
I have, however, found time start to create this year’s knitted pumpkin patch; the one from a few days ago is no longer alone … I think I’m going to need to find homes for these…
Between working on things for Etsy, sorting out a collection at Vida, doing Vector graphics, completing the Autumn mandalas for Colorist, and everything else, I’ve not had time to play with the 3D forms or other ideas I have.
Lots of drawing done over the past three or so days and I haven’t had a chance to upload these.
The set of four are approx. 4″ square and the paper has been coloured with distress inks.
The bigger one is drawn on ombre paper for ‘scrapbookers’. The central image is 6″ square. It was a bit of a ‘mare to draw; the paper isn’t absorbent and the ink takes ages to dry, which means smudging was a bit of a problem, but I’ve managed to mostly disguise it with patterns. I need to dry different pens on this paper, as I do like the colours. If I can’t find a way to draw on it, then I’ll be using it to mount other artwork on and in mixed media and card making endeavours.
Yes, it did seem a good idea at the time! It could be back to colouring all my own paper again ….
Just finished drawing this and assembling it.
I drew and edited the construction lines in Serif’s Affinity Designer. I then opened the saved file in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Book and created layers, including a mask as the top layer. Then I doodled. Printed out two copies. Cut one out, scored and folded along the grey construction lines, then assembled using Cosmic Shimmer Acrylic Glue.
Assembly was a bit of a ‘mare, and it wasn’t helped by me not scoring and folding a couple of lines, but when put together, it kind of works. Even where the edges aren’t likely to marry up nicely, the still seem to work.
One thing I will need to remember to do on the next one is to go round the cut edges with a black marker of some kind which will help those edges to blend in a bit more. Maybe.
I do rather like the heavy black lines on this one, and coloured in they’d look like stained glass!
No numbers, so it’d not really work as a d20 (20 sided die), but coloured in that maybe possible with a key of some kind.
All good fun stuff!
Yes, I am being busy with arty crafty stuff today … and it’s not ended yet as I had some soft polymer lino in the post the other day and I haven’t tried carving that yet!
Ok, not the best photo in the world, but the octahedron (bipyramidal) was fun to draw, and the colour certainly brought it to life (death?).
Quite apt I’ve done some autumnal themed work on the Autumnal Equinox.
Having more fun! This time a 20-sided icosohedron. And I’ve just noticed I lost the plot slightly in creating the montage above – the same image repeated, d’oh go me! First time I’ve ever done a photo montage though, so maybe I can be forgiven!
Angela Porter 