Today’s vlog is all about me trying out various media on different papers, particularly the Zig Clean Colour brush pens on Fabriano Toned paper.
Exploring different ways of working is important to me; it’s how I learn and work out what works for me. Often, I’ll return to media and techniques I may have tried in the past that didn’t work for me then, but now I can see how they could work for me, particularly in the context of a sketchbook.
In my disc-bound sketchbook, I’ve assembled various kinds of paper, mostly toned. Now, I’m working out what media would be good to have in a pencil case for sketching while out and about (when I finally become comfortable with out and about again!).
The Zig brushes and Tombow markers work really nicely on the Fabriano paper.
I spent yesterday colouring yesterday’s drawing in. That was an interesting experience!
I started out with graphite and coloured drawing pencils. But, as I coloured more and more I got frustrated with them
So, I switched to Inktense pencils and paints and a water brush. That was better, but the results were rather chalky and obscured the black lines a little. So I tried some watercolour paints. Better, but still weren’t feeling right.
Finally, I dug out my set of the Kuretake Zig Clean Colour Real Brush pens, and they hit the spot!
With each type of media I did my best to remain true to the limited colour palette of earth tones, but the more organic parts really did need that muted olive green for some variety. That decision really has helped to tie everything together in this design.
Surprisingly, The whole variety of media seems to work well together. I expected a whole hot mess from my messing around with media. Whatever I did, it’s brought the drawing to life, and there’s a lot of interest in the variations of intensity and vibrancy of colour throughout it.
I’d expected the mixed media paper to be a bit difficult to work with Inktense, watercolours and the brush pens. It wasn’t, it worked really well! Perhaps because I didn’t do much in the way of working in colour layers.
I still have some work to do to this. I want to add some gold accents in places, as well as using a white Gelly Roll pen to add dots of bright white here and there. Oh, I need to remove the margin guidelines, as well as that pesky bit of dirt that is on my scanner!
I really am smiling when I look at this piece of artwork. There’s lots of open space, yet it works. I think it’s done, though I may add some ‘ruins’ peeking above the froth of vegetation. I’ll see what happens over time.
Saturday morning and I do my best to settle into a creative mode, and this is the result. A pretty, floral wreath, drawn on watercolour paper with copic multiliner sp pens.
It’s been a hard couple of weeks and being creative has been difficult for me. I’m beginning to settle after the upheavals that have occurred, but it’s taking a while. I will get there, and being able to draw this, and colour it, shows I’m starting to settle. I am doing my best to find those weekend vibes.
The watercolour paper is 5″x 5″ and has been mounted on a 6″ x 6″ square side.
That’s right! From henceforth Friday shall be known as Dangle Day. Well, on my blog and the other places I can be found on the interwebs.
As you may know, I have a book coming out later this year that’s all about drawing dangle designs; it’s called A Dangle A Day and is available to preorder now. In it, I’ll be leading you through, step by step, drawing dangle designs, amongst other things, so you too can create dangle designs like these! Yes, you can do it!
So, I plan to post at least one completed dangle project each Friday, and this week there’s a bumper crop of five of them.
The cards I’ve made over the last day or two are dangle designs, but not ones to be found in the book. These are all drawn with pen on paper and coloured with either Tombow Dual Brush pens or Kuretake’s Zig Clean Colour Brush Pens. I’ve also added dots and highlights using Sakura’s Metallic and Stardust Gelly roll pens, not that you can easily see them in the photos.
I will, in the near future, have an announcement to make about a giveaway.
I’ve had a couple of busy days, including a Time to Change Wales anti-stigma talk with the South Wales Police. The talk wiped me out for a day or so, it always does as I get very anxious and emotional in telling my story.
So, I’ve been relatively quiet on the artsy front, but I did get these two abstract, stylised floral images done.
I rather like the bright colours, achieved using Kuretake’s Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Pens and a water pen. I like both the white and black outlines, though I do prefer the black; they make the image look more like stained glass.
Angela Porter 