Inktober

Inktober 2018 Day 27 ‘Thunder’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 27 Thunder

A very quick one today. No finesse, No refining. Just Thor the thunder kittie…

Why very quick? I have a busy day. Soon to head to shower to dash out to run a craft corner at a Hallowe’en Coffee morning. I’m really nervous about it and scared that what I’ve chosen to do in terms of crafts won’t be good enough.  I’ve most probably bought way too much in the way of materials and so on..but I hope it will be good enough.

Then it’ll be home for a bit before heading out this evening to do a talk.

I’m also feeling really tired – that’s down to the stress involved in the craft corner. I’ve not done anything like this since I was a teacher and that was over 3 years ago now. As well as worrying about  not being good enough, I’m worrying about being overwhelmed, finding it all too noisy, having too many demands made on me by too many kids or adults at the same time.

I want to do this. It’s for a good cause. But I also worry that I may have volunteered too quickly without thinking through things taking into account my introvert nature and the CPTSD.

I suspect this afternoon will involve a long, long nap.

Anyways, I drew a Kitty Thor as it was just what popped into my head when I saw the prompt ‘Thunder’. It’s following on in the theme of whimsical kitties. It’s also a bit of a dangle design with an Angela ‘take’ on the design of Thor’s hammer, with another nestling behind the kitty sparking madly!

I did sketch quickly in pencil and inked in with a Faber-Castell broadpen.

You can still see the dot grid!

Inktober 2018 Day 26 ‘Stretch’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 26 Stretch

If there’s one thing that kitties know how to do extraordinarily well it’s stretch. So, that just had to be the drawing that went with todays Inktober Prompt!

And as it’s Friday, that drawing had to be a dangle design too.

I really do need to work on my kitties in different poses – this one’s head looks a little strange, a little flat.

But, part of the inktober challenge is to draw without editing.

I did use a pencil to sketch the dangle design out on dot grid paper from Clairefontaine. After inking it in and erasing what I could of the pencil lines it was scanned into GiMP. I use gimp to remove the dots of the dot grid and then produce a transparent background.

The drawing with a transparent background and no dot grid I then plonked into Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and added some colour and texture as well as a drop shadow.

I kept the colour palette fairly simple so I had a more cohesive look to the design.

Even with the problems with the cat’s head, I think this is cute – I couldn’t resist adding a sleeping mousie on the kitty’s tummy.

Of course, Friday is #dangleday and my book about drawing dangle designs, monograms and more is available for preorder. It’s called ‘A Dangle A Day‘.

Inktober 2018 Day 23 ‘Muddy’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 23 Muddy colored

Day 23 dawned slowly for me today it has to be said and I’m still trying to get my brain out of the sleepy fugginess that I woke with around 5am. Far too early to be awake.

Still, before I head out for the day – a trip to Worcester with my friend Liz – I wanted to get Inktober done.

The first thing that came into my head when I read the prompt for today (which is muddy) was the buddhist quote about lotus and mud. I had to look it up – thank goodness for the magic of the google!

After hand lettering the quote (hand lettering is a bit better today, but some of the word spacing is a bit iffy) I turned it into a dangle design! (Quick plug – My book ‘A Dangle A Day’ is available for preorder should you fancy some guidance and ideas on drawing your own dangle designs).

Had enough time to chuck the scanned image into GiMP to remove the dot grid and any remaining pencil guide lines and then to create a transparent background. This was followed by a quick visit to Autodesk Sketchbook for the image file so I could add a coloured background and my watermark.

I have enough time to write this blog, do the other social media stuff before diving into the shower and heading over to Liz’s to start the day’s jolly journey to Worcester (which no doubt will appear on my other blog – Curious Stops and Tea Shops).

The quote speaks to me both of the feeling I get when I meditate, but also about my journey from the mental and emotional ill-health of cptsd towards a healthier state of being.

Inktober 2018 Day 22 ‘Expensive’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 22 Expensive

Clumsy hand lettering again, but it is practice…always practice.

The pattern is rather bare and sparse of detail today too, though some colour would help with that for sure. However, I wanted to limit my time spent on Inktober today so I have time to turn my attention to other things.

I did draw this digitally surface pen on virtual paper on the surface studio screen.

#createdonsurface #inktober #inktober2018

The peace referred to is peace of mind and having peace of mind is priceless and so important.

Part of my CPTSD is the shame and embarrassment that accompanies many, many traumatic experiences throughout the whole of my life. The emotional flashbacks cause me to relive these traumas and the shame I feel about so many events, many I can’t even remember as the mind dissociates from the event, but can’t seem to do so from the trauma that’s stored in the emotions and body.

Add to that the belief I grew up with that I was always, always to blame for everything that everyone else did, even if I had no part in it, means that I can slip into the self-blame mode quite easily where I go over and over and over something trying to find out what I did wrong and what I can do to not make that mistake again. That’s even when I did nothing wrong or even had anything at all to do with the event being picked to pieces in this way. Even when I wasn’t even present for the event. It’s the root cause of my hyperperfectionism. I worry constantly that what I do is never good enough, even when the objective evidence is to the contrary.

So, for me to let some clumsy hand lettering remain. For me to show a piece of work that I’m not entirely happy with is incredibly difficult, leaves me open to the self-blame thing and shame and embarrassment, yet still I do this.

Why? Well, it’s nice to show that along the way to a finished drawing/artwork that I have stages where things aren’t so polished, that I have things to work on, even though I do tend to work intuitively.

Although I may be hypercritical of what I create and see every tiny flaw – real or imagined – in it, having others look at my work and comment and/or like it with either positive or constructive comments helps me to get glimpses of how others see my art. This then helps to stem the hypercritical self-blame and self-criticism by providing objective evidence that the inner critic isn’t always right.

So, even though the hand lettering isn’t right. Even though the drawing is bare of colour. Even though I can see flaws with the drawing,  I’m able to put this here, on instagram, facebook, twitter so others can see what I’m doing.

I also show my imperfect work to show people that we all make mistakes, we all start as novices and have to practice, practice, practice some skills to improve them, and this can take a lot of time. Hand lettering is difficult for me at any scale other than tiny.

It’s also so I can show that even though I don’t do wonderfully well at something, I don’t give up easily with it, and neither should you.

However, that doesn’t mean I’m going to persevere with something that I have no skills at such as silver smithing, which I have tried and am an absolute nightmare at! However, the experience of silver smithing led me to trying other ways to create jewellery and led me to my experimenting with textiles, wire, beads and so on to create unusual jewellery. This is something I’ve not done for years.

However, it was part of my creative journey. It gave me some peace of mind at the time I was doing it.

Peace of mind is so important. That’s why I’ve spent years in therapy in one form or another, with EMDR providing the biggest steps forward in helping me to release the stored trauma so it doesn’t return and cause problems.

This is my past. My present is I have a choice about what I do or don’t do. I’d like to think I’d make choices that will cause me to keep my peace of mind, losing that little I’ve gained would be a price to high to pay .

 

Inktober 2018 Day 20 ‘Breakable’ and Day 21 ‘Drain’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 20 Breakable and Day 21 Drain

Yesterday’s prompt ‘breakable’ got turned into ‘broken’ as that’s how I felt yesterday and still feel today in terms of creativity and inspiration.

Drain definitely became drained as that is how my brain feels at this time. I’ll be fine soon enough.

I don’t know what’s caused this, other than the icky-sickyness I’ve had for a day or two. Not as bad as Thursday night, but it seems to have left me shattered and more than a little bit ‘meh’. I seem to have slept well, but I still feel incredibly tired at the moment. Me being tired for no particular reason usually means something has overwhelmed or stressed me in someway that causes my mood to plummet which results in me feeling tired and usually tearful.

So, today I wanted to catch up on yesterday’s Inktober prompt and do a quick one for today.

And they were quick. Hand lettering practice. Making a list of things I can do for self-care when I feel this way. For me to recognise that I need some time out is a step forward in terms of me looking after myself and my mental and emotional health. Making a list  of things I can do for self-care is also a first I think.

For ‘drained’ it almost counts as a dangle design. I did draw some cute monsters and my white cat there with expressions that show I feel (even though I have a smile on my face and a bright and sunny disposition when engaging with people). I’m not sure the drunk looking skull applies to me – I just think he snuck in there just to lighten the mood a tad.

Sheesh, I really do need a lot of practice with hand lettering! However, these are just quick ‘sketches’. No colour. No fancy-schmancy designs or line patterns. Just the basics, including smudges, mistakes, pencil guide-lines that haven’t been fully erased…

Now, if I were to adapt/edit these to include in my Bullet Journal I would add colour, a few more dangles to the drained design…and perhaps a border full of intricate designs based on flowers and hearts.

It’s a big if though…maybe I will, when I feel up to it.

Today, though, I’m working through my directory of reference designs and patterns seeking out inspiration for the work on my latest Entangled book for Creative Haven. I’m also editing the collection and redrawing them so they can be housed in a new folder as the A5 filofax I was using is now full and I really want to put them on A4 sheets in a ring binder in poly pockets.

Doing familiar work like this is soothing to me. It also has the benefit of allowing me to practice my drawing skills. It lets me workout which patterns I really am likely to use and which can be left to one side in the A5 filofax. As I go through them, one by one, some jump out as being good ones to use in a template for the Entangled book, others for a different project. It also gives me a chance to try out different pens, or use pens I’d not use for any art/illustration/drawing project but I like to write with or use for things like this.

That nasty inner critic tells me I’m wasting my time. My kinder, gentler voice to do with self-care tells me I’m not as it’s helping stir up the cauldron of creativity inside me. As I re-visit and re-draw patterns/design elements they float to the surface and the potential for variety in my work is re-charged as a result.

The kind inner voice, self-talk, tells me if it soothes me when I need soothing, then that’s good.

The nasty inner critic says I’m procrastinating. Maybe that’s true, to a degree. But I’d rather take some time out to do something different, something that will stir up my creativity and recharge inspiration rather than plod on with unsatisfactory work for the book.

The kind inner version of self-talk is winning out, and that is a good thing for me! And a positive change.

What do you do when you need some time out to take care of your emotional and mental well being?

Inktober 2018 Day 19 ‘Scorched’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 19 Scorched

Watch me.
I will go to my own Sun.
And if I am burned by its fire,
I will fly on scorched wings.
-Segovia Amil-

Today is Friday, so as well as being #Inktober 2018 day 19 it is #dangleday.

I had a pretty rough night. I woke with intense pains in my abdomen and had a very upset stomach and nausea. This plagued me for a couple of hours. I eventually got back to sleep, but have woken really tired and feeling wiped out.

I wanted to do Inktober and dangleday, but knew I needed to do something that was relatively easy to do, something that would brighten me up, and something that would require a quote today.

A quick hunt around and I found this quote, which resonated for me and it needed to be included in a mandala design that would symbolise the sun but also have wings and hearts.

For I think that my own sun is my heart and the self-love that I’m working on achieving through therapy and other work. It is the true nature of me; not the self-loathing and low self-esteem and lack of confidence I have. It is through believing in myself, not in the messages I’ve had from others throughout my life from as young as I can remember, that I will find my own sun, a sun that will allow me to fly even if it’s light scorches my wings. However, I think the scorching will be more of burning away the final vestiges of the limiting beliefs about myself that were imposed on me by others from a young age and beyond.

I think I know what I’m trying to say, but the tiredness I’m feeling is making it hard to think or communicate.

Now, onto how I actually created this.

I did it digitally. I used a Microsoft Surface Pen to draw and hand-letter the design on the screen of my Microsoft Surface Studio in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.

I did make use of the symmetry tool as well as the tool that allows me to move things around so I could align my text properly.

All the lines are drawn as if I would on paper. I coloured the mandala as if I were coloring it on paper, but the dangle I did use gradient fills for.

Layers allowed me to add a drop shadow and a background gradient easily. I also used a brush tool to add some texture to the background.

The background really needed to be a glowing blue sky; blue being the complementary colour of yellow/orange/orange-red so it helps the mandala and dangle to glow against the sky.

I only added one single, simple dangle made up of golden hearts and beads. You see, dangle designs do not have to be at all complex; sometimes less really is more!

I intend to spend the rest of the day taking it easy so I can recover properly from the bout of icky-sickyness I had last night.

Oh, before I do, just a reminder that in my upcoming book ‘A Dangle A Day’ (available to preorder) I show you how I design dangles and give lots of examples for you to use, adapt and the confidence to design your own. I also have some simple hints and tips on hand lettering, bullet journals and more.

Inktober 2018 Day 18 ‘Bottle’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 18 Bottle

Not just one bottle, but several!

This was a fun one to draw – Faber-Castell Broad pen on paper. Scanned in to the Surface Studio to clean it up and print it out so I could colour it using Chameleon Color Tone and Color Tops marker pens.

I added some highlights with a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen.

I’m a bit later than usual posting the Inktober image today. I had quite a few errands to run today, including a slightly worrying recall to the opticians for photographs or my eyes, even though I only had them done around 4 weeks ago. It wasn’t pictures of my retina and optic nerve the optician wanted – it was images of the front of my eyes due to me having a wobbling blood vessel in one.

I had planned on popping into the opticians as I’d managed to drop one pair of distance glasses on a tarmac floor and had chipped the lenses (which I’d had for less than a week!) and so needed to have replacement lenses. That was the easy part…

They had trouble getting the camera to work to take pictures of the front of my eyes, so I have to have the process done on Saturday when I pick up my glasses with the new lenses in as the optician will have set the camera up. If it still won’t work, she’ll inspect my eyes with a ‘slit test’ I think it was.

I’ve never had such thorough eye tests/examinations before. I’m well impressed! And it’s with Specsavers! I’ve never had an optician comment on my differently pigmented eyes before either – one eye is mostly a light brownish-green with a small wedge of brown, the other is about half brown and the rest the same light brownish-green  as t’other eye.

Someone I met a long time ago described me as having ‘mutant eyes’ and asked if he could use them for a character in a sci-fi book he was writing. I didn’t have a problem with that!

Oh, they have no effect on my vision at all. It’s just a different level of pigmentation that has been, as far as I know, always there.

I also found out this time that my optic nerves are tilted a bit more upwards than is usual but it doesn’t affect my vision, just something noted of curiosity.

Perhaps this is why there’s an eyeball or two appearing in my latest drawings!

Anyways, my eyesight functions very well, apart from the need for glasses as I’ve aged. I’m sure the wobbling blood vessel isn’t anything to worry about either.

I’ve also ordered some beaded ‘chains’ to attach to my glasses so they don’t fall off my nose when I’m looking down again!

So, an unexpectedly extended visit to the opticians along with some shopping in the local town put me all out of sync today, but if nothing else I got my Inktober challenge of the day done!

Inktober 2018 Day 17 ‘Swollen’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 17 Swollen coloured

The first thing that popped into my weird head when I read the prompt ‘swollen’ was a puffer fish! I know … weird is the right word.

So, I had to draw one of my entangled drawings incorporating a puffer fish, lots of coral reef and sea inspired images, and a few cute monsters and critters – including a white cat and a pink badger (don’t ask!).

It took a couple of hours to draw the outline using a Faber-Castell broadpen on Rhodia dot grid paper.

I scanned the drawing into GiMP, removed the dot grid and created a transparent background.

The final step, which has taken around 4 hours, is to digitally colour the image.

It’s certainly bright and colourful, though if it wasn’t an Inktober challenge I’d want to go back and add some added textures and shadows to the image. But it’ll do for now as it is.

I also would like to add some patterns in black pen to some of the more ‘flat’ areas of the design, such as the bodies of the sea anemones.

I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, a Microsoft Surface pen and a Microsoft Surface Studio to colour the image.

#created on surface #autodesksketchbookpro #inktober #inktober2018

Inktober 2018 days 15 and 16

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 15 Clock
Inktober 2018 Day 15 ‘Clock’ finished

First up is the coloured version of Inktober 2018 day 15 ‘Clock’. I got so frustrated trying to color it digitally that I printed the drawing out and used Chameleon Color Tones and Color Tops to colour it.

I’m really not happy with some of the colours I’ve used in some places, however. But I went with it. It’s not as vibrant as I’d like and some of the colours have ended up a bit murky.

I also added some highlights with a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen, and a few shadows/textures with a fineline Faber Castell pen.

It took me most of yesterday and another hour today to complete colouring this image. It does take me a lot less time to draw the outlines!

Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 16 Angular

Today’s prompt is ‘Angular’, so I had to go with geometric designs based on straight lines and point and create a pattern sampler. Some of these patterns aren’t in my pattern directory.

Yes, I have a kind of visual directory for patterns and other images that I can refer to when I need some inspiration. So, some of these will be added to that directory later on today after I’ve run some errands.

It was not easy to draw all straight lines; I miss my curls and swirls and spirals and arches.

Having said that, it was a good workout for my straight line drawing skills.

It took me around 2 hours to draw and it’s only a tiny drawing at 12cm x 12cm in size! That’s a tad shy of 5″ x 5″ for those who work in ‘old money’.

I used Fabercastell Broadline and Fineline pens on Rhodia dot grid paper. I then scanned it in and used Gimp to remove the dot grid, mostly.

Inktober 2018 Day 15 Weak

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 15 Weak

Another day in Inktober and another hand lettered and illustrated quote.

My hand lettering really does need work/practice!

I just had to include a rude little monster tucked away in the intricate pattern around the quote.

I drew this on dot grid paper using Faber Castell Broadline and Fineline pens. I then scanned it in, removed the dot grid and created a transparent background in GiMP. I then used Autodesk Sketchbook to add a colour background and my watermark.

The drawing took a couple of pleasurable hours to do; it is smaller than my previous ones,being a round 17cm x 17cm in size (the overspills make it awkward to measure!

The design reminds me of the work I used to do before I became so immersed in coloring book design. I know this creeps out from time to time, and when I get a chance to do it I really enjoy drawing this kind of detail.

One thing I’d do, perhaps, if I were to go back and do this again I would definitely pay more attention to the hand lettering and I’d add some shadows to the line art to add some more depth/dimension to the design.