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Doodles and zentangles…not digital!

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29July2017_AngelaPorter_Minis

That’s right!  Not digital, but drawn using Pitt Artist Pens from Faber-Castell.

Something inside me told me I needed a break from playing around with digital art, and that my pen wielding skills needed a bit of a dusting off.

If anything, drawing digitally has resulted in me being a bit more confident and fluid with my pen strokes.  I also realised that it’s a lot easier for me to work out designs on paper (though I’m not happy with all of the drawings above – a bit out of practice, maybe).

I’m  my latest drawings for the Dover Publications project, I have been drawing out the bare bones of a sketch on paper, scanning in and then working on it digitally.  That has helped me with size and layout of the design for sure.

This makes me hanker after a Surface Studio even more, as I’d be able to work on a digital image at a 1:1 scale for A4 drawings at the very least.

It’s not easy for me, it seems, to get my brain around the the fluidity of scale of drawing digitally as compared to the fixed scale on paper.

All the same, I really enjoyed wielding a pen with creativity on paper rather than screen.  It has it’s own pleasures, and challenges, including having to work with the mark you make when you put ink directly on paper; there’s no easy ‘erase button’ to be used!  So, it’s more about going with the flow and the creative opportunities that the permanency of ink results in (creative opportunities being the positive way to view ‘mistakes’; as I was once told, there’s no mistakes in art, only happy accidents!).

Oh, the boxes on the images.  Well, I do intend to scan these in individually and create files for printing out, the boxes being there where a greeting or message or quote can be placed.

Also, each drawing is approx. 4″ x 4″ (10cm x 10cm)

Mandala, 27 July 2017

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Angela Porter 17 July 2017 coloured

Inbetween working on a colouring book for Dover, I get to play with mandalas from time to time.  This is today’s coloured mandala.

Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Microsoft Surface Book, Microsoft Surface Pen.

Mandala – 22 July 2017

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mandala 22 July 2017

This is today’s mandala.  I have spent arty time today designing the card for a friends wedding; it’s still a work in progress, but I’ll get there.

Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on a Microsoft Surface Book with a Microsoft Surface Pen

By the sea – update

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22coloured

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this over the past couple of days, and it’s coming along for sure.

The background colour isn’t the final one; I’ve yet to work out what colour/s would work out well, but just testing out a sandy kind of colour.

Autodesk Sketchbook Pro

Microsoft Surface Book

Microsoft Surface Pen

Mandala of the day

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mandala2 20 July 2017

I thought I’d try white on a kraft paper coloured background.  I quite like it.

Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Book

Today’s Mandala

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mandala 19 July 2017

Drawn on my Microsoft Surface Book using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and a Surface Pen.

Pastel floral mandalas

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FlowerMandala2

FlowerMandala1

This morning’s warm up art – a pair of pretty floral mandalas!

Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and Microsoft Surface Book with Surface Pen.

A little, pastel mandala

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Angela Porter mandala 17 July 2018 watermarked

Today, I’ve been artfully busy with drawings for a new book for Dover Publications Inc., but have taken time out this evening to draw a simple mandala, and to colour it in.  Oddly, I’ve chosen lots of pastels!

Mandala created using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and my Microsoft Surface Book.

By the sea, more about digital art

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EscapesByTheSea_AngelaPorter_Coloured1

At the end of this month, a new colouring book by myself is due out.  It’s called ‘By The Sea’ and is one in the Escapes series of books from Dover Publications Inc..

Above, is one of the templates from the book, along with my work in progress based on it.

I’m using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Book to do the colouring/drawing.  It’s taking me a long time to do; if I’d used my Chameleon pens, it would’ve been all done a couple of days ago!  However, it’s all a process of learning and exploring, working with different brushes and so on.  Working in layers is a revelation to me, and I love the glowing colours I can get.

Working ‘outside the lines’, or even totally ignoring the lines’ is something very new for me to do, and I’m very uncertain about the results I’m getting.

I know from past experience with different traditional media such as oil or acrylic paints, I really don’t get the hang of them.  I also don’t like the smell or texture of them.  Watercolours are fine as long as I don’t try to get fancy with them and just colour areas in then work on top with pens and pencils…

Digital art is opening up my horizons…and shaking me out of those old, comfortable ways.

I make lots of ‘mistakes’ in colour choice.  I make lots of ‘mistakes’ in using the different brushes and textures and blending.  I end up unhappy with what I’ve done for example, I’ve tried four or five times to add the wiggly seaweed strands to the bottom right of my coloured area, and I’ve been unhappy with the five times I’ve done that.

What I do know is, that I’m not going to screw my work up and chuck it.  The beauty of being able to work in layers means it’s easy to remove what you’re not happy with and re-do it.

The other side of this coin is that it’s really difficult for me to know when to stop fussing and fiddling with things!  I sometimes end up erasing work I’ve done as I’ve gone too far and can’t undo it, and the only way to go is to start that section over again.

This is all fascinating for me, as well as frustrating, and can lead to me being hard on myself.

Backing off from it isn’t an option.  Where I get very frustrated with traditional media when I try to add colour in a way I’d like it to be there, a lot of that is taken away from me as I use digital methods.

I have a lot to learn, a lot to explore, but the more I do, the more I’m determined to acquire myself a Microsoft Surface Studio.

Rainbow Mandala – another

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Rainbow Mandala01-Angela Porter

Late last night I spent some time playing with mandalas where the background is completely black and the design is in colour.  I came up with a few where the design was the same, but the colours were different.

This morning, I felt I wanted to try a bigger, more complex mandala, and this is what resulted.

I love the way the colours seem to glow against the black, there’s something almost magical about it.

Of course, I now want to play with different colour combinations, particularly complementary colours.

It’s fun!