Taking part in Inktober Tangles 2021 is spilling over into this week’s coloring page for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. The result is a rather geometric design which has a very tiled floor or stained glass feel to it. The quadrants could be coloured in separate colour schemes to, say, represent the four seasons, four favourite colours … well anything really. I’ve just completed one quadrant as an example.
The tangle pattern for today is ‘Morisseau’ by Cheryl Moore CZT. I’ve included it, and a couple of other tangle patterns, in my typically entangled artwork to the right. I’ve started to add colour in rusty browns and oranges with blues. The brighter colours are Ecoline Brush pens. The more muted areas are Graphitint pencils with a damp brush. I think I prefer the Graphitint areas. They have a much more aged, vintage, weathered feel to them.
Happy Hallowe’en to you all and here is my last skully Inktober drawing for 2019.
The skull prompt was ‘duck’, so I just had to draw a duck-billed dinosaur (hadrosaur) skull! I’ve always had a love of dinosaurs and prehistoric critters, so it’s fab I can include one of their skulls.
I wanted to do a woodcut style skull drawing, but I wanted to use white ink as well as black. So, I used some digital craft paper to draw on. I think it’s worked out well, though some areas of highlights look a bit too geometric. I’ve also just realised that I didn’t add highlights/shadows to the teeth. Oh well.
The mushroom prompt was, quite appropriately, Rubroboletus satanus, and you can see outline drawings of the mushroom in the mandala.
The tangle pattern for today was Florz, and that forms the tiled floor pattern.
When I’d completed the mandala on the same kraft paper as the skulls, I realised that I needed a lighter background, so I just added a different kraft paper to the background.
Reflecting on Inktober
I’ve enjoyed Inktober this year for sure. Picking prompt lists that appealed to me helped a lot. I did start off trying out different ways of approaching drawing skulls and the like. However, I settled on combining the skull illustrations with a mandala. I’ve also discovered a great fondness for woodcut-style drawings.
I now need to work out what to do with my Inktober artworks. Some of them will become available as tee-shirts and other products in the days and weeks ahead; I do want to tweak some of them first.
I’m feeling a bit sad at it being over. Having a ‘brief’ to work to certainly helps to focus my sparkly, grasshoppery mind and takes me out of my ‘comfort zone’ (I absolutely hate that phrase!). I’ve certainly found a passion for skulls; so many more to draw, so many different angles too.
It’s the focus that has been the most helpful. This is something I need to sort out, I think. I do have themes for the colouring books I do, but I think I could do with a theme (or series of themes that repeat over a week) that will help focus my creativity outside of the book.
Inktober has taken over my creativity this month. However, I think I needed that to freshen me up.
So, I shall look forward to Inktober 2020, while doing my best to put into practice some of the things I’ve learned from this year’s challenge.
So, Angela, how are you feeling today?
I’m OK today, a bit tired and the grey, gloomy, damp weather isn’t helping much. I have used my light therapy lamp this morning; that did lift my mood somewhat, to be fair.
Yesterday was the toughest day, emotionally, I’ve had for a while. I was really feeling rather low. It had been coming, however, for over a week. I’m not entirely over it; I’m still feeling emotionally vulnerable and fragile today, but nowhere near as bad as I felt yesterday.
I do know what has caused the stormy weather; being aware of such things shows I’ve come a long way from the start of therapy for CPTSD. I also know that these storms don’t last forever, and that self-care and self-soothing is needed.
That will be the order of the day today. I do have an errand or two to run as soon as I post Inktober, and I do have something happening this evening. However, the rest of the day will be self-care, starting with making a hot, nutritious meal from scratch. I’m tending towards a veggie bolognaise, the leftovers of which can be turned into a veggie chilli for tomorrow.
So, I’d better get this social media stuff done and get on with my day!
It’s the penultimate day of Inktober 2019 and today’s drawing features a whale skull, a bowhead whale skull to be precise, complete with baleen.
The mandala in the background has the Nik tangle pattern forming the wider geometric patterned ring. The outer ring is a line drawing of Xanthoria elegans – the sunburst lichen.
I wanted the skull to stand out, so I coloured the mandala in a softer, paler version of the background colour.
I felt quite teary as I was looking at whale skulls and skeletons. They reminded me of the last time I visited the whale skeleton and leatherback turtle in the National Museum and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff. I was overwhelmed with sadness then too. This is a sure sign that I’m emotionally vulnerable once again and that I need to take a lot of care of myself, my emotions in particular.
This is digital art, drawn using my Microsoft Surface Pen and Surface Studio as the digital analogues of pen and paper, and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, which allows me to do this.
A simple illustration of a toucan skull along with a mandala background. I turned down the brightness of the white patterns a tad; pure white was just too stark against the blue chalkboard background. Also, it distracted from the skull.
I drew this design digitally using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro along with a Microsoft Surface Pen on the screen of a Microsoft Surface Studio (the digital equivalent of pen/brush/pencil on paper!).
I’m tired this afternoon. It’s been a busy day so far; also, I’m still reeling a bit from EMDR therapy yesterday. It’s all for the good, though – progress is being made, step by step. The fact I’m tired shows that good work has been done in healing my past traumas and changing how I perceive myself. I may have time for a nap before I dash out to do something this evening…
Iguana skull, ‘Well, well, who’ tangle pattern and an abstract pattern from puffball mushrooms.
Digital drawing using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and a Microsoft Surface Pen with a Microsoft Surface Studio.
I’m really not at all happy with this one today. The skulls aren’t what I’d want for them. It may be that they are just plain line art, no texture, no depth, no variation of line.
I may revisit this one at some point in the future, but not for a while. My attention must turn to other things.
Armadillo skull flower? I thought I’d try a different number of skulls arranged around a mandala. They sure do look like petals of a flower. Armadillo skull is the prompt for today’s Inktober drawing from a list by Instagrammer @book_polygamist. I’ve also used the tangle pattern crescent moon from the list by @havepen_willdraw.
I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro along with a Microsoft Surface Pen and Surface Studio as my tools.
I’m also enjoying using these grungy texture backgrounds, of which I am altering the colours as needed.
I can’t believe that Inktober is nearly over; just four more days remain. I’ll reflect on this year’s experience with my last Inktober drawing.
Today’s Inktober features a flamingo skull and a mandala.
I really can’t seem to get away from the woodcut style drawing at the moment. I am enjoying drawing in this style, and it is a bit of a challenge to work out which direction the lines and the thickness of the lines need to go in order to give that sense of dimension to the artwork.
The second ring from the centre of the mandala is formed using today’s tangle pattern – Ratoon. The fourth ring out has stylised drawings of the birds’s nest fungus (Cyanthus striatus). The rest of the mandala I just let flow as it needed to.
The colours I used for the mandala are from the plumage of flamingos. I needed a dark background for some of the colours to show up well, so I used a grungy texture which I coloured a murky, algae-green. The skull appears to be resting in the mandala thanks to the way I’ve used the colours.
This is, again, digital art, drawn using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio.
The Inktober prompt lists I’m using come from the Instagrammers @book_polygamist (skulls), @nyan_sun (mushrooms) and @havepen_willdraw (tangle patterns).
Today’s prompts are cockatoo skull, Marasmius (parachute mushrooms) and Pixiose tangle pattern. I’m using Inktober 2019 prompt lists by Instagrammers @book_polygamist, @nyan_sun and @havepen_willdraw.
I’ve returned to the woodcut style of illustration for the cockatoo skull; the contrast betwixt the bone and beak made it a natural choice for me. Also, I do like drawing in this kind of style.
As my emotional weather is on the drizzly and gloomy side, I opted for the soothing qualities of mandala drawing for today’s illustration. I don’t know why I chose to have four skulls as part of the mandala; it just seemed a good idea at the time. However, it does work out quite nicely. The spacing means I can still draw the skulls fairly large, yet have plenty of space fo the mandala to show through.
Today’s tangle pattern is a filler design, so I thought adding it in panels would work well and this formed the first ring. I also wanted to add in some tropical flowers, so the second ring has stylised flowers forming it. It was then I remembered about the fungi and so added them as the outer ring.
For now, I’ve left the design in black and white with a coloured background. I may return to this mandala at another time and add colour and more line work. For now, it’s good enough.
To create the artwork, I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro along with a Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio.
So, Angela, how are you today?
I said that my emotional weather is still gloomy and drizzly. I really don’t feel I have the oompf to do anything much today. All I want to do is sleep, and when I want to sleep all the time, it’s one of my warning signs that something’s not right emotionally. I’ve also had some of the old inner critics and thought patterns rearing their heads once again, causing a lot of tears. It seems I’m not as resilient as I think I am when doing what I can to help others.
I can still sense that contentment within, but the emotional weather seems to be clouding it somewhat today. I have used my light therapy lamp, which helped a little, especially as the weather outside is mirroring my emotions today.
I know what’s caused this change in my inner weather: therapy and a couple of recent events.
I managed to put a smiley face on to go to a meeting last night, but I was so tired after it, even though I’d slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon.
I do know this is not permanent. I’m processing some recent and less recent traumatic experiences.
So, I will do what I can to get some work done today, work that doesn’t require much in the way of focus. I do believe I have some sketches for my Spectacular Sea Life Designs colouring book scanned in ready to be inked. I think I can manage that today.
Angela Porter 