Artwyrd

Angela’s Adventures with Resin – part 1

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Angela Porter Resin 26 July 2018

I’ve spent a couple of hours this morning experimenting with UV resin, and these are the results.

First off, I thought I’d try Yupo paper with various pens – Sharpies, Posca Paint pen and alcohol markers (Chameleon Duotones). You can see the results of these on the top three experiments, left to right.

The Posca pen gives lovely dark lines which I like. The Sharpie is more grey.

For some reason I expected the alcohol markers and Sharpie to bleed with the resin; they didn’t. Neither did the Posca pen.

The flower on the bottom left I drew on Yupo paper with Chameleon pencils. They gave a lovely, soft colour, but all the imperfections were magnified with the resin.

The last experiment, on the bottom middle, was a flower I drew on some paper I’d coloured with Distress Inks. I drew the flower with a UniPin pen. I was pleased that the pen didn’t bleed and the colour of the Distress Ink didn’t seem to bleed into the resin either.  I had to try a layer with some glitter in it (that inner raven of mine just loves glitter and shimmer!), which works nicely, but did obscure the drawing a little. You live and learn, and that’s why I’m experimenting!

One thing that happened with some of the experiments the Yupo or paper warped as the resin cured under the UV lamp. I think that’s because the resin contracts as it cures; it was more noticeable with the smaller pieces of Yupo and the paper .

So, I had fun, learned a bit more about resin, and have more ideas to try out another day.

One thing I did find very useful were some of my colour shaper silicone ‘brushes’ with tapered ends. They are perfect for adding resin to the pieces and helping it to spread out to the edge. I had used toothpicks on the hearts I did the other day, but they were so fiddly and a bit of a pain to use. So, my colour shaper silicone tools are the way to go!

Now, I need to go source some bezels I can use to set little drawings into. I do have some silicone moulds that I can play with too, but not today. Time to turn my attention to other matters I think.

Another Terry Pratchett Quote…

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Angela Porter 25 July 2018

I am enjoying doing these quotes, as I’ve said before.

I enjoy the intricacy of the drawing/design/illustration.

I quite like taking a black and white line drawing and turning into a rainbow line drawing too.

Today is WIP over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group – you’d be made very welcome if you pop over and join in!

Decorated Terry Pratchett Quote and Chameleon Pencils first impressions

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Angela Porter 23 July 2018

Another quote from Terry Pratchett. This one from one of my favourite characters – Death. Death tries so hard to understand humanity, yet he gets it both very wrong and quite right at the same time.

I like the way I’ve added colour to my black and white line art in this example, but one day I hope to get around to colouring in the black and white version.

Maybe I’ll print the art out and then colour it in using Chamelon Pen’s ColorTone Pencils, which arrived yesterday.

I have spent some time  colouring with them and so far I quite like them.

They are softer than Polychromos and others, but not quite as soft as Prismacolours. They blend quite nicely, and a little help from a blending pencil results in really nice blends.

I like the colour palette; the colours are nice and bright and just the colours I love to use in my art, which is a huge, huge bonus! As I often struggle to choose and use colours in a sensible manner when I have a huge choice, the limited palette of 50 colours is really useful for me, as are the double ended pencils. Being able to flip to add shadow or light is a nice touch, though I would like a bit more contrast between some of the colours as some are a bit too similar.

The leads are a bit thicker than other pencils, such as Prismacolours. However, this makes the barrels of the pencils a bit too thick for a standard pencil sharpener. My Staedtler pencil sharpener – the ones with the handles that you turn around – should cope well with them though.

At a price point of £45 on Amazon.co.uk with free prime delivery I think they’re good value for money, even though you essentially have 50 half-sized pencils. However, the thicker colour leads make up for that to some degree.

I’ve not been able to find out if you can buy individual pencils when some wear down. However, I can’t see that being a big issue as I suspect that I’ll use most of the pencils fairly equally.

 

#Weekendvibes

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Angela Porter 21 July 2018As you  may have guessed, I love Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. I’ve used a few quotes from them of late, and there’s more to come.

After printing out the quote, I drew the designs around it with Uniball Unipin pens. After scanning and printing again I added colour with Chameleon marker pens.

Drawing and colouring is definitely something that brings me #weekendvibes, which means I have those all week! I am so grateful that my job is doing something that doesn’t feel like work.

If you want to know what a person’s like – revisited

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Angela Porter 16 July 2019

I thought I’d revisit the previous quote, alter the words a bit and this is the result.

I used an oldy looking type-writer font for the quote and printed it out, I used a Sakura Pigma Micron PN pen to draw the design around it. I then scanned it in and altered the colours in Autodesk Sketchbook.

I learned a new ‘trick’ when using sketchbook, completely by accident, and it’s one I want to explore a little more in the future, especially for adding gradient colours to black and white work.

This would look lovely printed out and added to my BuJo, or even framed and hung on my wall.

If you want to know what a man’s like…

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Angela Porter 14 July 2018 Sirius Black Quote 1

One of my most favourite quotes of all, from one of my most favourite book characters.

I printed the words out using Publisher, and then I added the design around them by hand, using a Sakura Pigma Micron PN pen.

I have scanned the finished image in, created a transparent background, and filled the background with a rainbow gradient for now. It’s going to be a long term project to colour it in as I’d like it, though I’m not sure how that is going to be. Having said that, a rainbow gradient may be the most appropriate colour scheme of all for this.

I think I need to learn a lot more about typography and setting out words in a quote, however. That will come with time should I choose to continue to use fonts and computers to generate the wordage for an illustrated quote.

As always, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts, suggestions, advice and so on.

Definitely got some #weekendvibes going on here!

#dangleday

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Angela Porter 13 July 2018

I declare today, Friday, to be #dangleday! And to celebrate, here’s a dangle design, which includes a hand-lettered quote.

Want to draw your own dangle designs? Need a bit of inspiration or advice? Then my book “A Dangle A Day” is available to pre-order from Quarto.

I drew this one on paper with a Sakura Pigma Micron PN pen, scanned it in and then edited and coloured digitally using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, which is now totally free! My Microsoft Surface Book and Pen were used to do this.

I’d include this in my bullet journal (BUJO) as a really cute quote page.

It would look lovely as part of an art-journal page too, though cutting out all the fiddly bits could be a bit challenging, though re-drawing them would be easy enough I’m sure.

I do have some ideas about dangle designs and art journals and other stuff that’s running around my head, but they’ve not really become solid enough that I can bring them into practice…yet.

If I made the dangles a bit longer, then this would make a really nice bookmark. It would also work quite nicely as a tall and thin greetings card, I think. Especially as the quote could easily be changed for something different.

Over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group, it’s #furbabyfriday. I’m looking forward to seeing them all! Why not pop over and say hello?

Kindness is the light that…

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Angela Porter 11 July 2018

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.

Illustrated Quote 9 July 2018

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Angela Porter 9 July 2018

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.

Nature always wears the colours of the spirit

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Angela Porter 5 July 2018

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.