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This was a lovely way to spend an hour or so at lunchtime today. I’d finished the last couple of sketches for my next colouring book and just wanted some quiet, chilled, relaxing time drawing with no pressure at all. I woke with another migrainey headache today, and it’s left me so tired yet again.
Anyway, flowers and plants, and some rocks, were the perfect thing for me to draw during this time. I started to add pattern and colour to some of the motifs as well, with a surprising discovery!
Time to take a nap, I think, and sleep off this blasted post-migraine exhaustion.
This was a lovely way to spend an hour or so on a sunny Saturday morning! I’ve often said it and will say it again and again, I do enjoy drawing things of whimsy.
Houses are one of my current themes. As they’re all imaginary, I can ignore any architectural/structural rules. Towers I love, in particular. I’d love to be able to afford to buy or build a wonderful, quirky tower to live in. I’d like a dome on top so I can watch the night sky or thunderstorms clearly. For now, though, I can dream of living in a tower and create what I can imagine on paper with pen and ink.
I hope you’ll join in and try your hand at whimsical buildings and create your own village full of peace and harmony!
This week’s coloring template for the members of Angela Porter’s Coloring Books Fans Facebook group is a Doodleworlds design. The group is free to join and the templates are free for members’ personal use.
These kinds of pages do make me smile. The silly, whimsical nature of them certainly lifts my spirits somewhat.
Drawn with pen on paper. Colour added digitally in Clip Studio Paint.
Doodleworlds is the title of one of my coloring books. It can be found on Amazon and also in my Etsy shop – Artwyrd.
Please click on the ‘Watch on Youtube’ button. Cheers!
We all need some whimsy in life at one time or another. Given all that’s going on in the outside world, I definitely need a huge dose of whimsy! So, today, I drew three whimsical houses, one step at a time.
In today’s video, I draw these three cute, happy, whimsical houses, and I always feel I mess them up when I add colour.
The first part of the video is a chat about organising artwork, using a dot grid notebook as a visual reference/collection of my favourite patterns and motifs and variations. I also talk about some requests/suggestions made.
But the very, very first part is a huge thank you to all my subscribers on YouTube for clicking that Subscribe button (which is totally free to do!). I hit 750 subscribers a couple of days ago and I’m amazed, surprised and a tad humbled by this. So, if you’re one of those subscribers, thank you so much!
This sketchbook page is now complete! I had so much fun doing this one for sure. There’s a whole host of plants to populate any number of whimsical worlds. There’s a third video tutorial showing how to draw, step by step, the last row as simple line art as well as the start of adding colour and pattern.
Some of the motifs look a bit ‘flatter’ than I like them to, and a couple I’m not quite happy with in terms of pattern/texture. But still, it’s a page full of inspiration and possibility, something I can look back on for inspiration.
This week’s colouring page / colouring template for Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group is full of whimsy.
I think the birds are busy using balloons to populate the twilight sky with stars and some hearts. I’m not quite sure what the tentacles are doing there, or what they may be attached to. But they may just be a reminder that Hallowe’en will be back, sooner than we think no doubt. Are those fish part of a fishy totem shoal? Or are they just floating/flying past and the pole is just a perch for the bird?
I always need some whimsy in my days, especially as the news of the world outside my inner world is always rather grim at the moment, or that’s how it seems. I think this is why so many of my drawings are whimsical these days. Partly. I think there’s something in me that has recognised that this is, perhaps, my main artistic voice, certainly when it comes to colouring pages. And perhaps my other forms of art too.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. Fanciful and fun. Whimsical and witty. With a sprinkle of magic thrown in for good measure.
Carrying on with the sea-life theme, I filled a sketchbook page with simple drawings of stylised, whimsical starfish, sea urchins and mussel shells. I recorded my process as a tutorial video, showing and explaining my step by step process of drawing. I start with simple shapes and gradually add more and more complexity.
There is something very intriguing and curiosity-provoking about exploring variations based on the same simple shapes and steps. The possibilities are endless and it certainly gives creativity a bit of a workout!
These kinds of exercises are what sketchbooks are perfect for. A sketchbook is a safe place to experiment and explore, and the end result is a valuable resource of ideas as well as a visual record of your development of artistic skills. They’re a place to practice fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and for trying out new media or techniques.
Sketchbooks chart the development of our skills, our pattern and motif preferences, and show how we develop and evolve our artistic style.
This revelation about sketchbooks is exciting to me. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to work this out. I think the Inktober Tangle Pattern Challenge back in 2021, the Fragments of Your Imagination Challenge earlier this year (both challenges hosted by the 7F5R Challenge Facebook group) as well as the Lettering Sketchbook course on Domestika have definitely been significant activities that have helped me reach this realisation.
The other major realisation I’m having at this time is that I think I’ve finally found what kind of YouTube content I like to make!
I was a science teacher for 28 years. Teaching is part of who I am. My focus as a teacher was always to inspire and encourage my students, to help them to believe they could do science, and to have better self-esteem and self-confidence. I loved to see them grow and develop and gain skills and knowledge they never thought they could, and that was a wonderful thing to be a part of.
If I can do the same thing for others, who have no confidence in drawing. If I can use my love of whimsical and stylised art/motifs, the function of a sketchbook to encourage others to take up pen and paper and draw, then that is a good thing!
I also think it’s important that I show my process, warts and all. Variations that are lovely, and others that are not so. It’s all part of the process of developing as an artist. I think my work with traditional coloured media is a testament to my ability to make a total mess of a fairly nice drawing! I am better with digital colours, but not much!
It all takes time to work these things out, and I can be really dense and stubborn at times! But I do get there … eventually. ‘There’ being a point of understanding myself and accepting something or a sudden revelation, you know the kinds of things. But ‘there’ isn’t the final destination. The journey of exploration and development never ends, and a sketchbook is now, for me, a vital companion going forward.
After drawing whimsical fish floating through the air, I thought it was time to draw some other water-based things. Sand dollars (or sea urchins) and cockle/scallop shells seemed like a good place to start. And I do my best to start simple and gradually get more complex!
Sand dollars begin with a circle and a five-pointed star. Then things get more complicated, one step at a time. The first step is to divide the space up. The next step is to add pattern/texture and/or colour and/or shadow. The steps are totally interchangeable and can be repeated.
This is sketchbook work. A chance to practice drawing skills. A time to exercise creativity. And a time to relax and enjoy what you’re doing with no expectation of perfection. The only expectation is to do, experiment, explore, learn and, most importantly, experience the simple joy of a creative process.
Joy, contentment, inner peace. These are such important things to experience, even if for a short while each day. That’s why I draw so much just for pleasure. And that’s why I’m finding my feet in the realm of YouTube and realising that I can help others, you, to do the same, simply and one step at a time.
Art is the Adventure 