Uniball eye pens on heavyweight cartridge paper (acid free). Coloured using Chameleon Color Tones marker pens.
Today is #wipwednesday over on #angelaporterscoloringbookfans facebook group.
Eerie Entangled Art, Entangled Butterflies and A Dangle A Day are new books from me that are available to pre-order now.
This is the fruit of my Sunday ‘labours’, and I’m quite pleased with it, truth to be told. Now that’s not something I say about all my works. However I am, quite pleased with it.
I’ve been playing around with hand lettering and design for a while now. From placing the words on curvy lines to straight lines. Trying having the word(s) sit above the drawing with white space above and using them to split the drawing, as in this case.
I’ve used simple hand lettering, like here, and a bit more ornate.
It has been a bit of an adventure, with some successes, some not quite so. With this one, though, I think I’ve found my kind of ‘style’ for it. I like the way the flowery ‘poles’ join the top and bottom part of the design. I really like the jewel-rich tones of reds and blues that I’ve used.
If there’s one thing I wanted to do, and forgot about until now, it was to use a metallic gold pen to add dots to the centres of the circles in the bushes at the bottom. Also, maybe tiny gold dots to the centres of those little purple flowers. It’s that inner raven that loves sparkle having an influence yet again.
I like my quirky hand lettering. It may not be the best, it may not be the most precise or even. If I wanted that, then using something like Publisher or the text tool in Autodesk Sketchbook would or could work. Or I could select and move individual words, or even letters around, in Sketchbook. That, however, would remove the imprecision that gives the art a ‘human’ touch.
To create this, I used a Pentel Energel 0.5 pen to draw the design and do the hand lettering. My Copic Ciao’s were used to colour the image in, and I added white dots with white Sakura pens – Souffle and Gelly Roll 08, both of which worked well over the Copics.
I enjoyed using the Energel pen. The line is consistent in width and intensity, and my heavy hand doesn’t wreck the tip within a short space of time. I also tried out a Uniball Eye Needle point 05 pen for some of the fine details, but it didn’t seem to like writing over the paper that had been coloured with the Copics. It does, however, write smoothly on plain paper, whether that’s Bristol board or Heavy weight cartridge paper. The solvents in the Copics changes the surface structure of the paper; the Uniball Eye didn’t write smoothly on it, and it also bled into the paper, which it doesn’t do on un-Copic-coloured Bristol board.
I’ve spent all day working on this, and a pleasurable day it has been.
When it came to choosing a quote to hand letter on the image, this one by Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed perfect to me.
To colour my drawing I used my Chameleon Marker pens. I haven’t used alcohol markers in quite a while. There was a point when I’d coloured a lot of the outline art in and really didn’t like the colours I’d used and nearly gave up on it.
However, I persevered in adding the patterns and highlights and it’s worked out quite nicely I think, even with a not very good photo of the image.
I had a lovely, artsy, creative, relaxing time drawing the bottom design for this quote yesterday evening and this morning. It’s kind of a throwback to when I started drawing this kind of intricate art before I started doing all the work for colouring books, where the images have to be a fair bit less complex.
Unipin pens from Uniball, along with a blue-grey coloured pencil and a blender pencil from Derwent were the tools I used to create this.
I didn’t hand-letter the quote; I chose to use Serif’s Affinity Designer to add it instead, though I’ve not worked out how to get the text to follow a curve…yet. I will.
The quote is something I try to apply in my life. I’ve struggled with being a hyper-perfectionist all my life; learning to accept that something I produce is ‘good enough’ is something that is easier for me, though still not easy.
I cringe when I look back on earlier work.
Recently, I was approached by a lovely lady about using some old artwork of mine for her business branding logos and so on. I looked at it and knew I just had to re-work it; I recognised that my skills and style have developed and evolved a little, and I wanted to do the best I could now.
She seems to be really happy with the artwork, and I’m much happier with it too.
It’s not just in art that these words have meaning though.
It’s no secret that I am working in therapy (EMDR) at healing what I can from the CPTSD I’ve experienced all my life, especially the way it limits my life. Learning to accept that I’m good enough as a person is very difficult. Progress is slow, but it is progress.
I really am on a daisy-kick in my drawing lately! Such happy little flowers, resilient too.
I did do this drawing last Monday, but decided to post it today after I spent much of my morning colouring one of the templates for Entangled Butterflies (available to preorder).
A couple of quick (ish) drawings of kitties, the first I’ve done since I said goodbye to my companion puss of 16 years a few weeks ago. So, they’re both white as he was pure white.
Often, all anyone would see of him was his backside while I was Skype-ing with them. Sometimes his cute pink nose pressed up to the screen.
He sure left a lot of deep paw prints of love on my heart. He was one unique kittycat for sure.
This morning I finished the coloring templates for Entangled Butterflies. I do have to edit some of them, but I decided to take a break for the rest of the day and work on some ideas that flashed in my mind. These two drawings/illustrations are the result.
I like the abundance one very much. Daisies seem to be my thing at the moment. The inspire one was much better until I added shading to the banner, and then the yellow. It’s all a case of learning for the future.
Both hand drawn using a Sakura Micron PN pen, and colour added using Faber Castell Pitt Artist brush pens.
#wednesdaywisdom
A strange bouquet or a weird tree, with a wise quote above it. I really shouldn’t have continued to add elements to the drawing once I’d added the quote, but it is as the quote says, small steps in the right direction of learning.
It’s #wipwednesday over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group.
I dug out one of my Lamy fountain pens, which had a black ink cartridge in it. I swapped the black for green, and drew this on some bristol board.
From time to time I dipped the nib in the black ink so I had some gradients and variation in the drawing.
It was fun to do. Also, it’s been a while since I drew with pen on paper; most of my work of late has been digital drawing, with the occasional pencil/pen sketch on paper.
I am so lucky being self-employed, doing something that brings me pleasure and never feels like work; it always feels like the weekend for me!
I sketched the words and part of the design on paper, photographed it and opened it in Autodesk Sketchbook, then used my Microsoft Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface Book to hand-draw the letters and flower wreath.
Yes, it is hand-drawing, even though it’s done in a digital environment. I use my Surface Pen as I would any pen or pencil. I do make use of some of the tools in Autodesk Sketchbook to speed up the drawing – such as the symmetry tool, and the ability to move elements in the hand-lettering around (I’m learning not to be too fussy about size and arrangement in the sketch; that just gives me the general idea of lettering styles and sizes).
All the same, it’s a nice way to start a Friday with a decorated #fridayquote, just to get those #weekendvibes going with #thatfridayfeeling #fridayfeeling.
Art is the Adventure 