Sakura pens

Inktober Tangles 2021 | Day 3

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This Zentangle tile contains the first three tangle patterns of the Inktober Tangle 2021 prompt list. They are Lunar Flux, Naaki and Dewd, by Debbie New CZT, Nadine Roller CZT, and Zentangle Inc. respectively.

I’ve used Lunar Flux in a similar way to my tile for Day 1. I just think it’s lovely as sprigs of foliage. Dewd works well as a filler pattern behind Lunar Flux. Finally, I used Naaki in the square to create a border.

A 15cm x 10.5cm (approx 4⅛” x 5⅞”) piece of Bristol board coloured with Rusty Hinge Distress ink was the base for the design. The line drawing was completed with a 0.3 Unipin pen. Pastel pencils added colour and shadow to the drawing. Finally, Sakura Souffle and Sakura Metallic Gelly roll pens were used to add highlights in white and gold.

A monochrome colour scheme of warm and cool browns was the way to go here. They worked harmoniously with the Distress Ink background colour. For highlights, I didn’t use a white pastel pencil as it didn’t make much of a difference. Instead, I went with dots of white.

It’s all a bit wibbly and wobbly; well, I did draw it sat in bed whilst coming around from a deep night’s sleep.

I do have a couple more sketchbook pages of explorations of Naaki from yesterday. I do want to do similar for Dewd. I’m finding this an interesting experience. Creating variations and iterations of a pattern or motif isn’t something I’ve done much of, but I’m sure I will be doing so going forward with lots of art.

There’s also the question of whether I tackle today’s official Inktober 2021 prompt, which is “vessel”. I dunno. I’ll see how I feel about that later today.

Hello October and Inktober!

Angela Porter4 Comments

The first day of a new month, and the first day of Inktober to boot!

This year I’m definitely going to the Inktober Tangle 2021 prompt list of Zentangle patterns. I’m going to try to combine the official Inktober 2021 prompt list with them.

Today, I’ve managed that. ‘Crystals’ is the prompt from the Inktober list. The tangle pattern for today is ‘Lunar Flux’ by Debbie New CZT.

I dug out a piece of paper coloured with Distress Inks from my stash of such paper. It’s a rather grungy kind of green, which appealed to me first thing this morning.

0.1 and 0.3 Unipin pens were used to draw the design. Next, a variety of green and white chalk pastels were used to add colour, shadow and highlight to the design. Finally, embellishments were added with white Sakura Soufflé, yellow/gold Sakura Stardust, and clear Sakura Glaze pens.

There were a number of times through the process where I wondered what on Earth I was doing and was going to give up. The first was when I started to dislike the coloured paper. The next was when I thought the pen work wasn’t looking too good, I didn’t have the space to add a third stem of lunar flux (I like groups of odd numbers). Finally, adding colour with the pastels felt like I was making a bad job worse.

I’m glad I didn’t give up. I’m actually quite pleased with the finished drawing. There’s some volume to the elements, and a sense of layers too. The highlights and shadows really helped to lift the colours and the design.

It’s been a lovely, if a tad frustrating at times, way to spend a couple of hours this morning.

Yesterday evening, I spent some time playing around with the basic idea of Lunar Flux and came up with a sketchbook page full of variations. I’ll show this in tomorrow’s Sketchbook Saturday vlog.

For now, I’m going to get a fresh mug of mocha, and spend sometime drawing, making use of Lunar Flux. I’m still not feeling quite right after my upset tummy Wednesday and yesterday. I had a horrible night’s sleep, with two vivid nightmares that had me wrenching myself awake from them. I have no idea what caused them, but the unease and fear they provoked in me is lingering today, along with a sense of exhaustion too. So, self-care time is very much needed today for sure.

Sketchtember 2021 | Day 18

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Link to today’s ‘Sketchbook Saturday”, a sketchbook flip-through of this week’s art projects on YouTube.

Saturday is here again. So, over on my little corner of the YouTube universe, I do a flip-through of this week’s arty projects, and a bit of a chat about stuff at the same time.

Here, above, is my sketchbook page for Sketchtember 2021. For day 18, I’ve chosen to draw plants in pots, mostly cups, mugs, teapots and jugs it seems. They’re still plants in pots. They’re all drawn from my memory and/or imagination.

After completing the pen sketches, I added colour using Ecoline Brush Pens and a Water brush. I had to try to mix colours too, particularly varieties of green. I may have done OK with some of them. Others are abject disasters, such as the succulent style plant with red tips to it’s leaves. Ho hum.

Everything is a bit wonky, but perhaps that is no bad thing at all. A lot of my artwork is a tad wonky, and that’s part of my signature style, probably.

I’ve also used a clear Glaze pen, a gold sparkle Signo gel pen and a clear Star Sakura Gelly roll pen to add shiny highlights. A white Sakura Soufflé pen added highlights to some of the areas too.

This, like yesterday’s buttons, has been a fun project. This time, though, I’ve completed adding colour, which has surprised me no end. I suspect that increasing familiarity with Ecoline watercolour inks and how I like to apply them has helped greatly with this.

Trying to work in a more ‘illustrative’ and a bit expressive way of adding colour is helping too. It’s a work in progress, but I may just get there!

Now, all I have to work out is what to do with the rest of Saturday!

Sketchbook Saturday | Sketchtember Day 11

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In today’s vlog I show you my artwork of the past week or so, good and not so good!

Sketchtember | Days 6 to 10

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Over the past three or four days, I’ve been quietly working at Sketchtember. I’ve veered away from the list of herbs to enjoy drawing, and colouring, all kinds of seed pods – real and more imaginative.

Working with alcohol markers – Chameleon and Arteza – is the only way to get to grips with them. Marker paper does make it a little easier to blend. But not much more than the drawings on the SeaWhite all media paper that I’ve been using.

Adding highlights, lowlights, and embellishments with various Sakura and Uniball gel pens is a lovely thing to do. I have, possibly, gone a bit over the top on the poppy seed heads! Still, it’s all experiencing and learning from it.

I have quite a few more seed pod drawings done to add colour to, though not enough to see me through to the end of Sketchtember. So, I may change my theme for daily sketches when I start to come to the end of them.

Chameleon Color Tones Coloring

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Link to today’s vlog on YouTube.

After filming yesterday’s vlog, I decided to try using marker pens with a drawing I’d done on a Distress Ink background. The drawing on the left is the result of this experiment.

To add colour, I used Chameleon Color Tones marker pens. I chose colours that would be similar to those in the background.

I really enjoyed adding colour to this drawing. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy using the Chameleon pens and the ease of achieving gradients with these pens.

I completed the drawing with embellishments of white and yellow Sakura Soufflé pens, muted Sakrua Gelly Roll Moonlight pens, and some shiny areas of clear Sakura Glaze pen.

I was so happy with the result, that I started work on the drawing to the right, some of which I do in today’s vlog.

I really love the way that the background tones down the brighter colours of the marker pens. Which shouldn’t surprise me as marker pens are transparent! But it did surprise me!

Something else that I was struck with was how similar using markers is to how I add colour digitally. I haven’t made that connection before, but it is likely to inform me on my way forward in adding colour to my artwork. I may be trying to force water-soluble media and coloured pencils into behaving like markers, which is something that they’re not meant to do. I find it hard to work with the looser, possibly more chaotic water-based media, even though I love the effects that other seem to achieve with them. No matter what I do, I’m never totally happy with the end result, something I’ve blogged and vlogged about an awful lot.

Working with alcohol markers has shown me that I can work well with colour, with the medium that matches my artistic style – precise and controlled. The more chaotic, loose, aspects of this work come from the Distress Ink coloured backgrounds.

Now, if only I can accept this and focus on using markers in my work more than other media. Well, apart from digital coloring that is!