This morning, I felt the need to draw a mandala. So I did.
Intricate, detailed drawing, with one of my favourite colour combinations that remind me of verdigris on copper. Just what I needed this morning as I gradually work myself into a creative mood. So it’s time to turn my attention to work for Entangled Starry Skies. Once I get a fresh mug of Yorkshire Tea that is.
Insomnia, again.
I didn’t sleep too well last night. I woke and drew for a while as I waited to become drowsy enough to fall back to sleep. I’m still not really with it at this time, but I’ve been focused enough over the past few hours to complete this mandala.
I now have some more weird, anthropomorphic intuitive drawings to work with in the coming weeks. Just not today.
Media used.
Autodesk Sketchbook Pro is still my art app of choice, along with my Surface Studio.
This week’s template is a combination of dangle designs and little pictures. Not one large and often intricate image to colour this week, but a series of little ones so that the template can be coloured in one little bit at a time. This is great for people who get overwhelmed by large, overly-complex colouring pages.
Just as a note, my book “A Dangle A Day” is available. It’s a tutorial book showing how you too can create your own cute and whimsical dangle designs. The dangle designs in the book are a lot smaller than this template!
This design was drawn on Rhodia Dot grid paper using a “F” Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen and then cleaned up digitally. I then added a wintry background and added some colour to some of the motifs.
I always love to see the many different and unique ways colorists bring my designs to life. Colour really does make all the difference to the templates.
Yesterday, I got so focused on editing templates that time ran away with me. I only realised at bedtime I’d not blogged! By then it was way too late as I was tired, headachy and had an upset tummy (again!).
Today, the tummy is better, thank goodness. I was up early for the weekly Abel & Cole organic grocery delivery, and after breakfasting I ended up back in bed.
Before I turn my attention for the rest of my work-day to Entangled Starry Skies, I thought I’d put together a quick montage of my latest drawings, what I’m calling Entangled Assemblages. The weird exercise cyclist makes another appearance, but there’s a couple of drawings I’m working on during my insomniac periods of night.
For someone who doesn’t do faces/people artistically, there sure are some appearing in this style of my personal art. Personal as opposed to contracted work.
Whatever, I’m enjoying drawing in the moments I can do so just for my pleasure.
I will get to colour them in at some point, and add a funky background of mandala or other design too. Just not today. Today I need to turn my attention to the artwork for Starry Skies as soon as I’ve completed social media posts.
This week’s mandala is a tad different. I decided to take my entangled assemblage drawing from yesterday and create a ring mandala behind it. The patterns in the mandala are in keeping with the focal image.
I’ve not finished colouring the focal image, yet. But I have done a little bit more since yesterday. Just a little bit more.
I rather like the contrast of teals and turquoise with browns and coppery tones, hence my colour choice for the mandala.
All in all, a fun way to start my arty work day. It’s always nice to do some warm-up drawing before I get to drawing coloring templates.
Focal design drawn using 0.35 Rotring Rapidograph and acid-free cartridge paper. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro used to add colour the to focal point, the background texture and to draw and colour the mandala.
This particular abstract intuitive drawing took an unexpected turn as pareidolia kicked in and I saw a stylised figure on some weird kind of exercise bike! Well, I just had to go with it. When you see something in the purely abstract, it is hard to un-see it.
I used a 0.35 Rotring Rapidograph pen on SeaWhite acid-free cartridge paper for the drawing.
I wanted to see how I could add colour/texture to this drawing, which I think is now complete. So, I added a Kraft paper background to the image and started to add some highlights and shadows to the image.
It never ceases to amaze me how just simple shadow and highlight can add so much to a drawing. I chose a monochromatic colour scheme. I also have left my notes to remind me which colours and digital tool I was using to achieve this effect in the image.
I really want to finish adding shadow and highlight to this image, but I must turn my attention to work. I’ve been granted an extension to the deadline for Entangled Starry Skies, but that means I need to get my nose to the grindstone and get the templates done. Yesterday, I did all the edits and reworks of the templates I drew last week. Today, it’s a couple of new templates that need drawing.
I’ve been having trouble sleeping through the night, again. I wake up feeling very hot and need to cool down again before I can, sometimes, fall asleep again. It’s pointless me tossing and turning, so I sit up and grab a sketchbook, pen and reading glasses and draw. I put the light on first though.
This is the product of last night’s periods of insomnia, and also drawing while having breakfast in bed. Once I was ready to get up, I scanned the drawing in and faffed around a little with it digitally.
The design was drawn in my 12″ x 12 ArtGecko sketchbook. I feared I’d not be able to scan the image in on my A4 scanner but I managed, just. I used a 05 Uniball Unipin pen to draw with.
I woke well before dawn. As it was rather chilly in the house (heating hadn’t kicked in yet), I sat in bed drawing. White gel pen on black paper. The above, after some digital wizardry, is the result of that.
It has a very Meso-american feel to it with plenty of my favourite curves, spirals, circles and other patterns and motifs. It’s meant to be entirely abstract, but we’ll all see things in it. The ability of our minds to see patterns and familiar items in the purely abstract is called pareidolia. It is a perfectly normal aspect of being human.
Interestingly, apophenia is the tendency seek meaningful connections in random things, such as in gambling.
Some Friday facts there!
Sunshiny day
It’s a dry day with some sunshine today, so my spirits are lifted somewhat. I may take a break from arty work for a while to go for a walk. It’s likely to be chilly and brisk out there – my weather app tells me it’s 4ºC in the outside world, which equates to almost ‘brr’! I’ll see how I feel after showering and so on.
Entangled Starry Skies Progress
I’m getting along well with Entangled Starry Skies and want to continue with the progress being made. I have 21 out of the 31 templates required, but I always do some extra so there’s a choice for the templates in the book. I do have a tendency to become fixated on an idea and so can end up with templates that are too similar. That’s something I need to bear in mind going forward.
As well as creating new templates, I do have some editing to do on a couple of the ones submitted so far based on feedback from the editorial team. This is where digital art really helps hugely and saves so much time as I rarely have to re-draw a template.
I appreciate the feedback from the editorial team. It helps me gain some perspective as well as ideas for new avenues to explore within the theme of the book – and that helps to break me out of the tunnel vision I can get myself locked into. Note how a lot of my art is Meso-American in feel at the moment.
Up early for grocery delivery, so spent the time drawing and this is the result. It’s a work in progress as I now really do need to turn my attention to ‘Entangled Starry Skies’ for the rest of the day.
Unipin pens on Canson marker paper. The grid is a piece of quadrille paper behind the marker paper.
A little drawing this morning, used to embellish a quote that describes my artistic journey, well part of it.
The quote also describes the long journey I undertook to heal CPTSD enough that I found a touchstone of contentment inside me. That touchstone was something I’d never experienced and it is a very precious part of me.
Part of the healing process through EMDR was learning to trust myself, my memory, my emotions (which I discovered in the process).
The wonky motifs that form the border are perfectly imperfect. The imperfections in my art are part of my artistic expression. I’ve learned to recognise when my art is good enough.
I accept that my art is often perfectly imperfect, much of the time. I’m still learning how to not be so hard on myself, to recognise when something is good enough with me. It’s a work in progress for sure.
The motifs were drawn with Uniball Unipin pens on Canson Marker paper. I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and Affinity Publisher to create the ‘meme’.
A mandala in my entangled assemblage style. I really enjoyed drawing this, not least because I proved to myself I can transfer this way of drawing to digital art.
Unusually, there’s not a single botanical element in this artwork. Not one leaf, not one flower, nor any seed pods. It’s purely abstract.
I think I may have used up too much of my time this morning (a deadline is about to go whoosh past me), but it has given me ideas for some of the remaining templates I need to complete.
Art is the Adventure 