Drawing

Botanical designs – a sketchbook page

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Botanical Designs (c) Angela Porter – Artwyrd.com

I’m carrying on with creating art for the pure joy of creating art, and today’s sketchbook page is a series of botanical designs.

I used Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens (F and S) along with some dot grid paper. After scanning them in, I digitally added a watercolour background, though I’ve left the dot grid in place. Also, I’ve not edited out any errors in my drawings, or tidied up where the lines may over-run in places.

In case you’re curious, the only pencil lines I used were for the circular motif in the bottom left design, and to arrange the spray of seed pods in the top left design. Otherwise, it’s pen straight to paper and purely intuitive artwork – I just let the designs flow, even if I get unhappy with what I’m producing, I just carry on and trust my intuition will lead to something I’m happy with.

And I am happy with all of these designs, now I can sit back from them and view them at a bit of a distance.

What am I going to do with them? I don’t know. They may just sit in my digital ‘flower’ sketchbook. Maybe I’ll use them as the start of one of my entangled drawings. Or maybe something else will occur to me. Or maybe you have some suggestions – leave them in a comment!

For now, they’ve served their purpose. I’ve had a nice couple of hours drawing pretty things just for the contentment that drawing brings me.

On another note, I continue to improve from the stomach bug I had earlier in the week. I still tire really easily though and my appetite is still not good. I am, thankfully, recovering slowly and taking the time to rest and recover, and rediscovering that I don’t need to be constantly busy anymore. I don’t know when that need to fill my days with constant busy-ness crept up on me, but it did.

Suddenly, my mind has become full of fluff once again, so it’s time for me to go and do that resting up thing again.

Flowers

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Flowers (c) Angela Porter – Artwyrd.com

Yesterday, as today, I wasn’t feeling too grand still. The stomach bug has laid me rather low it seems. I tire all too easily. Still, I wanted to create some art, so I thought working with flowers would be a nice thing to do.

So, I started with some pen drawings of flowers with three petals – that’s the top row. I used a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pen on dot grid paper (the dots of which you can still see!).

After scanning that drawing in, I re-drew the same designs digitally using a technical drawing pen style brush (second row) and a flexible nib ink pen brush (third row).

The fourth row of flowers is the same as the third (using digital magic to copy the drawings), but with colour gradients and some details added in the last flower of the line.

The last row was done using the drawings as a guide, but using colour so I could try a variety of brushes and techniques out on them. I used the Copic colour palette that is part of Autodesk Sketchbook Pro’s options.

Looking at the last row of flowers with fresh eyes, I can see how I could’ve added some stamens to some of the flowers, particularly the green one.

I just wanted to be arty for the sake of being arty. What I’ve ended up with is a sketchbook page that is a mixture of traditional and digital art! And there was me saying a few blogs ago that I find it hard to do art just for the sake of creating with no goal or purpose in mind.

A festive dangle design video

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This morning, I made a video of me drawing and colouring this festive dangle design and turning it into a card.

This video shows me drawing in real time, and I hope you enjoy it, despite the wobbliness in places.

Here’s a list of materials I used:

  • 8″x 8″ Winsor and Newton Bristol Board folded to make an 8″ x 4″ card
  • 7″ x 3″ piece of Winsor and Newton Bristol Board to draw the design on
  • Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen, medium
  • Pencil and ruler
  • Various Chameleon Color tones marker pens
  • White Uniball Signo gel pen
  • Tombow Mono glue
  • Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and a mini foam blending tool

I hope you have a go at drawing this dangle design and making your own papercraft or craft projects with it. If you do, I’d love to see them!

If you’d like to know more about drawing dangle designs, or would like more inspiration, step by step instructions, and encouraging words, then my book “A Dangle A Day” is a good place to start.

Snowflake or stained glass window mandala?

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©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com

Is it a snowflake, or a stained glass window? I think it depends on the colour palette used! I started off with blues and purples to give this design a wintry, snowflake feel. However, other colours crept in. Not sure how much I like the finished coloured mandala.

If you’d like to colour this design in, then a black and white template is available exclusively to members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. Pop along and join in – they’re a really lovely bunch of people!

Festive Dangle Designs

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©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com

Feeling in a festive mood? Fancy getting a little creative? Well, there’s no better way than creating some dangle designs to decorate your own Christmas and holiday projects. They’re also a great way to practice hand lettering and drawing cute, whimsical and simple designs.

Being creative is also a great way to relax and take some time out of the hustle and bustle that can overwhelm us at this time of year. I always find it relaxing to sit down with some pens, dot grid paper and a big mug of tea (or mocha as it’s the last days of autumn here in the UK) and just draw for enjoyment. Mind you, all my drawing work is enjoyment, but drawing for just the pleasure of drawing, with no specific brief to work to is a different kind of joy for me.

I’m finding that I need a focus, a project to be creative at the moment. I’m in between contracts and need some time out as I’ve had a crazy few weeks. However, settling to do anything not connected to a contract can cause me some issues. I still feel the need to create for a purpose, and sometimes that simple joy isn’t enough. I still have some issues to work through in therapy it seems. However, I am now aware of them and can work towards releasing these limiting attitudes and behaviours.

Anyway, today, I’ve created a sheet of some examples of design elements, hand lettering and examples of dangle designs to use as is or just to inspire you. There’s plenty more to inspire you in my book “A Dangle A Day”.

My drawings today are a bit rough, ready and wobbly, as is my hand lettering. I coloured them in very loosely, not worrying about keeping inside the lines or perfect coverage or blending. Colour really does make a difference, doesn’t it? It brings the designs alive!

However, this is a page of sketches, ideas. Maybe I’ll use some of them another time, or maybe I’ll leave it as a page of drawing and hand lettering practice, a page that I enjoyed doing with no real reason other than enjoying the process of creating.

I had thought about doing a video of this page – if you’d like to see videos of me drawing pages like this, then leave me a comment.

I used a mixture of Tombow Fudenosuke brush pens and Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens to draw the designs on ClaireFontaine dot grid paper. I coloured the images digitally.

Mandala 19 Dec 19

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©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com

Purple is my favourite colour and I thought it would make a lovely colour to go behind this delicate, lacy mandala.

I did enjoy drawing this one, late last night. I have been out of sorts or almost a week, and I can’t seem to settle or feel enthused about anything much. However, this mandala was a pleasure to draw. It’s a familiar process, using, mostly, familiar patterns and motifs.

The familiarity in creating this mandala was soothing to me, and soothing is just what my emotions and mind need at the moment.

The colour scheme is simple: white on purple, though it did start off a pale, creamy yellow on brown kraft paper. When I’d finished drawing, those colours just didn’t seem right to me, so I played around with them until I found a combination which, at the time, pleased me.

This is the fun of working digitally. What seems a good idea at the start may not pan out upon completion. It’s easy to alter the colours or the background texture, and so many other things.

This colourway will do … for now. I may change it again as I work out what to do with all these designs I’ve created that just lurk in the depths of my hard drive.

Festive Mandala

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©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com

I needed to create a cute, whimsical, simple mandala this morning (and on into the afternoon). This is what I came up with. Plenty of bright colours glowing against the dark background.

Stars and hearts are motifs that often appear in my work, as well as arches that can be like petals, sunshine or architectural. The holly leaves and berries mark this mandala as a winter one.

Digital art worked using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and Microsoft Surface Pen and Surface Studio.

Entangled Lines – a video

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©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com

Here’s my video of my entangled design I showed yesterday. I really do have a lot to learn about making and editing videos. Still, I hope you enjoy having a look at it.

The drawing took over 55 minutes, though I’ve sped it up so it lasts around 17 minutes.

I used Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens to draw the design on a 6″ x 6″ piece of Strathmore Vellum Bristol Paper that I had previously coloured with Tim Holtz’s Distress Inks by Ranger.

Monday morning

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©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com

On Saturday, I recorded a video of me drawing this design on 6″ x 6″ Strathmore Vellum Bristol Paper coloured with Distress Inks.

This is an example of intuitive, entangled drawing; I started in the red area and worked my way out from that point. I had no idea what kind of design I wanted to create, I just wanted to draw and lose myself in that process.

The only guides I had at the start were some pencil lines to give me a border to work within, leaving a clear, plain border around the design. However, my mind seemed to do a bit of a flip when I came to drawing the bottom left of the design; I completely ignored the pencil lines for some reason totally unknown to myself. When I realised what I was doing, it was too late to change it as I was working in pen without any sketch to guide me.

It took me over 55 minutes to do, and I’m still trying to figure out in my head how to edit the video and post it, as well as making intro and outro pages.

I know that I’m busy for the rest of today, so I’m not likely to sort the video out today. I’m hoping I’ll have a bit more time tomorrow.

I was really surprised by the kind comments people left about my first, trial video, so I will do more. I do need to work out a realistic schedule for that for myself to work to amongst other projects I want to get going when I’ve finished Spectacular Sea-Life.

Talking of which, I’ve nearly completed the third out of four coloured templates, so I’ll soon have them all done. I will post some sneak previews of them as I go.

Saturday Morning Mandala

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Mandala 14 Dec 19 ©Angela Porter | Artwyrd.com

It’s another day, another new dawn, and I needed to do some art to self-soothe. When I’m like this I nearly always draw mandalas.

Carl Jung, the psychotherapist, asserted that by drawing mandalas, we get a view of what is going on in the unconscious (subconscious) mind that we are unaware of. He also recognised that drawing a mandala gives a window into the current state of mind and emotions, it also allows ordering and healing to take place.

Yesterday’s mandala and today’s are quite different, but drawn for the same Yesterday’s mandala and today’s are quite different but drawn for the same purpose. To soothe my overwhelmed emotions, and it has helped in doing that..a bit, anyway.

I’m not entirely sure how I’d interpret my own mandala, however, but I’m sure that plenty of people will read a lot more into than I will.