Taking part in Inktober Tangles 2021 is spilling over into this week’s coloring page for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. The result is a rather geometric design which has a very tiled floor or stained glass feel to it. The quadrants could be coloured in separate colour schemes to, say, represent the four seasons, four favourite colours … well anything really. I’ve just completed one quadrant as an example.
The tangle pattern for today is ‘Morisseau’ by Cheryl Moore CZT. I’ve included it, and a couple of other tangle patterns, in my typically entangled artwork to the right. I’ve started to add colour in rusty browns and oranges with blues. The brighter colours are Ecoline Brush pens. The more muted areas are Graphitint pencils with a damp brush. I think I prefer the Graphitint areas. They have a much more aged, vintage, weathered feel to them.
A sneak peek of part of this week’s coloring template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group.
As I’ve been immersed in Zentangle patterns as part of the Inktober Tangles 2021 challenge, it’s no surprise that this template is full of tangle patterns.
Oh, I enjoyed creating this page so much! I absolutely love botanical patterns, but I also have great affection for grid-based, repeating, symmetrical patterns.
Brrst, by Kelly Barone CZT, is one of those grid-based patterns. It’s based on a square ‘fragment’ that is rotated around a central point. The final pattern has so many possibilities for adding shadow and highlight.
I used the original Brrst in a ‘crazy’, assymetrical grid, which was a lot of fun to do.
However, what I loved the most was playing with the basic idea and modifying, exploring the possibilities. The ones I like best are where I’ve added spirals in the ‘tucked under’ circular area.
I think the triangular variations could be interesting to work with, but I’m not at all fussed on the circular ones.
My internal debate is whether I go back to sleep, or whether I work on this week’s coloring template. I’ve been awake since before 4am (it is Wednesday, so my grocery delivery arrives around 5am most weeks!), so it won’t be long before I can’t keep my eyes open.
I do know that this sketchbook page is all I’ll do today for the Inktober Tangles 2021 challenge. I think I’ll be putting aside the official Inktober challenge for now. I find I’m enjoy the Tangle challenge far more. Also, I do need to turn my attention soon to the templates for the Adorable Dogs book for Creative Haven, due out April 2022.
I took one ‘petal’ from the Ayame tangle, designed by Emiko Kaneko CZT, and used it for the outside border. In the inner section, I’ve used a variation of Naaki by Nadine Roller CZT, Lunar Flux by Debbie New CZT, and Printemps and Mooka by Zentangle Inc.
Yeuch to my addition of colour/shading on this one. Reminder to self – don’t use drawing pencils and a blender pencil!!!! Stick to pastel pencils …
The design is fine, I think, the colour is not so fine, generally. Still, it’s all a learning experience, even if I keep repeating the same mistakes with colour.
I’ve yet to do the Inktober 2021 Day 4 prompt, which is ‘knot’. I feel a Celtic knot coming on … possibly …
I’ve done a quick vlog showing my sketchbook pages for the first four days of Inktober Tangles 2021. You can view it here.
A vessel patterned with various tangle patterns, including the three so far in the Inktober Tangles 2021 challenge.
This time, it’s digital art, monochrome rusty kinds of colours. Good practice for drawing digitally – I used Autodesk Sketchbook today. I also coloured this one in Sketchbook, but part of me wishes I’d switched to Clip Studio Paint to do that. But it’s fine as it is I think.
Now, after three and a half hours of digitally working (and listening to Andy Serkis’ narration of The Fellowship of the Ring) I really do need to eat!
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.
Saturday is the day I look back over the art I’ve done from the past week, and a bit older than that too!
Inktober and Inktober Tangles 2021
Naaki by Nadine Roller CZT and ‘suit’ are the two prompts I worked with today.
Instead of creating one drawing, I decided to try out variations of the tangle pattern. And I included the symbols for the four suits in playing cards too.
I may do this for the rest of Inktober. It’s a lot of fun to do, no pressure to create a finished ’tile’ or ‘picture’. And no pressure on me is just what I need at the moment.
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.
It’s going to be interesting to see how people add colour to this design. My example here is the third attempt to find colours that I liked, and even then I really am not fussed on the stuff to the left. I do seem to have an ongoing issue with colours this week.
Drawn with a Tombow Fudenosuke pen, coloured digitally in Clip Studio Paint Pro.
Art is the Adventure 