vlog

Inktober Tangles 2021 Day 16 “Moonesque” and Saturday Sketchbook – My week in art.

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“Moonesque”

Today’s tangle pattern is the lovely grid based tangle ‘Moonesque’ by Leslee Feiwus CZT.

Grid based tangles are often my favourites, though during Inktober I’ve discovered that I really like other tangles too.

All grid based tangles are full of opportunities for variations, and so a page full of them was the most natural thing for me to do. And there’s only a few possible variations here.

Sketchbook Saturday – My week in art.

It’s become my habit to take a look back at my week in art with you via a video. It’s a really good way for me to reflect on my recent art and insights gained about myself and my arty journey.

This week, I think it’s discovering how valuable it is to work on variations of a motif or pattern. This aids in understanding the design, but also leads to variations that, perhaps. are more my style. I really think I’m going to do this with more of my favourite motifs and patterns going forward too. The result could be both a library of inspiration for myself, and a regular art practice too.

I wondered if people would like me to share that daily (or almost daily) practice with them, explaining how I draw various patterns and motifs. If it’s something you’d like to see, leave me a comment!

It’s also been a surprise that I’ve enjoyed drawing motifs and patterns on a larger scale than I would usually. That gives me much more space, both on the page and in my mind, to explore and experiment. That’s saying something from me, who tends towards the small and highly detailed, fussy kind of line drawings!

Discovering that using graphite pencils for shading can be useful and attractive is another surprise of the past couple of days. I’m not entirely convinced it will be something I use regularly in any work I do; I think it’s likely to depend on my mood at the time as well as the colours/media upon which I add it. Still, it was a surprise!

Inktober Tangles 2021

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Inktober Tangles 2021 | Day 9

Today’s tangle is ‘Xac’ by Susan Yeo CZT. It’s another floral kind of pattern, which has plenty of possibilities for variations. This sketchbook page contains just a few. The spiral variation reminds me of a succulent. I particularly like the individual leaves/petals; they look like odd seedpods, and that is something I’d like to explore more, maybe.

Sketchbook Saturday | My week in art.

In this vlog, I look back at the first nine days of Inktober.

Inktober Tangles 2021 | Day 4

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The tangle for day 4 is ‘WhipDCreem” by Doris Bisschop CZT. You can see how I used it at the bottom of the image.

Yeuch to my addition of colour/shading on this one. Reminder to self – don’t use drawing pencils and a blender pencil!!!! Stick to pastel pencils …

The design is fine, I think, the colour is not so fine, generally. Still, it’s all a learning experience, even if I keep repeating the same mistakes with colour.

I’ve yet to do the Inktober 2021 Day 4 prompt, which is ‘knot’. I feel a Celtic knot coming on … possibly …

I’ve done a quick vlog showing my sketchbook pages for the first four days of Inktober Tangles 2021. You can view it here.

Sketchbook Saturday – My week in art

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Saturday is the day I look back over the art I’ve done from the past week, and a bit older than that too!

Inktober and Inktober Tangles 2021

Naaki by Nadine Roller CZT and ‘suit’ are the two prompts I worked with today.

Instead of creating one drawing, I decided to try out variations of the tangle pattern. And I included the symbols for the four suits in playing cards too.

I may do this for the rest of Inktober. It’s a lot of fun to do, no pressure to create a finished ’tile’ or ‘picture’. And no pressure on me is just what I need at the moment.

Sketchbook Saturday | 25 Sept 2021

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As autumn has arrived, at least astronomically, As we’ve passed the astronomical point of season’s change, from summer to autumn here in the northern hemisphere, I continue to long for the fiery costume of nature. Warm memories to sustain us as the cold, architectural skeletons of nature are all that remain. A reminder burned in our minds that nature will once again blossom and bloom once the days begin to lengthen once again.

To complete the line art, I used a Tombow Fudenosuke pen. Colour was added with Stabilo Carbothello pencils and a paper tortillon.

Today’s vlog is a sketchbook flip-through showing my week in art.

Link to today’s vlog on YouTube.

Sketchtember 2021 | Day 20

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Click on this link to see today’s vlog on YouTube.

Mushrooms. Lots of mushrooms. A sketchbook page full of simple line drawings of mushrooms drawn from memory and/or imagination, some brightly coloured with Ecoline watercolour ink.

This page was a lot of fun to draw. I wasn’t aiming for realism or detail. It was all about drawing simple, stylised, imaginary mushrooms. I planned to add colour to bring volume to the drawings.

As I used imagination to draw these whimsically wonky mushrooms, it was easier to give myself permission to forgo the pressures I put on myself to be realistic in adding colour. I could use whatever colours I wanted to for each mushroom, I could be as stylised as I wished about the colour too.

Adding colour in this way is easy when I add colour to my coloring book pages/templates. As these pages are stylised, I can add colour in a simpler, more fun way. This is especially true for my Doodleworlds style of art.

Transferring that mindset to my drawings from nature, architecture and so on isn’t quite so easy for me. I still hear that critical voice of ‘It’s not good art if it doesn’t look like photograph or like the real thing’ in my head. This is a message that is repeated to us time and time again from our earliest days of starting to draw. It was these critical messages that led to me having a belief that I was no good at art, and those messages were seared deeply into my view of myself.

In fairness to myself, I have overcome some of these critical beliefs foisted upon me by others. However, some linger and rise up from time to time. I suspect their influence is most noticed in my lack of confidence in myself when it comes to colour.

Identifying these ‘inner critics’ is the first step to dispelling them. This is a multi-step process as the inner critic is armed with many weapons to destroy my self-confidence. I’ve disarmed this critic time and time again, but it always seems to find a new weapon. Eventually though, it will run out of weapons to use.

It’s a process, a long winded process, but it’s one that’s worth doing, step by step.

Sketchtember 2021 | Day 18

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Link to today’s ‘Sketchbook Saturday”, a sketchbook flip-through of this week’s art projects on YouTube.

Saturday is here again. So, over on my little corner of the YouTube universe, I do a flip-through of this week’s arty projects, and a bit of a chat about stuff at the same time.

Here, above, is my sketchbook page for Sketchtember 2021. For day 18, I’ve chosen to draw plants in pots, mostly cups, mugs, teapots and jugs it seems. They’re still plants in pots. They’re all drawn from my memory and/or imagination.

After completing the pen sketches, I added colour using Ecoline Brush Pens and a Water brush. I had to try to mix colours too, particularly varieties of green. I may have done OK with some of them. Others are abject disasters, such as the succulent style plant with red tips to it’s leaves. Ho hum.

Everything is a bit wonky, but perhaps that is no bad thing at all. A lot of my artwork is a tad wonky, and that’s part of my signature style, probably.

I’ve also used a clear Glaze pen, a gold sparkle Signo gel pen and a clear Star Sakura Gelly roll pen to add shiny highlights. A white Sakura Soufflé pen added highlights to some of the areas too.

This, like yesterday’s buttons, has been a fun project. This time, though, I’ve completed adding colour, which has surprised me no end. I suspect that increasing familiarity with Ecoline watercolour inks and how I like to apply them has helped greatly with this.

Trying to work in a more ‘illustrative’ and a bit expressive way of adding colour is helping too. It’s a work in progress, but I may just get there!

Now, all I have to work out is what to do with the rest of Saturday!

Sketchbook Saturday | Sketchtember Day 11

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In today’s vlog I show you my artwork of the past week or so, good and not so good!

Template Thursyay!

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Here’s the link to today’s vlog on YouTube.

As the calendar turns to Thursday once again, it’s time for another coloring page / coloring template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans Facebook Group members.

This week, I ran with a kind of request from a member and created two drawings which feature a rectangular area into which a photobooth photo would fit. Or anything else you can think of putting there – a precious button or coin mounted on card, a single earring kept for sentimental value, a ticket, a clipping from a magazine or newspaper, a tiny piece of embroidery, or needlefelting, or polymerclay, or fossil, or a tiny envelope containing a precious note/letter, or, or, or. You’re only limited by your creativity, and the sizes of the nested rectangles!

I’m going to be intrigued to see what people produce with these. I can be tagged in posts as @Artwyrd on Instagram or Twitter. And as Angela Porter on Facebook.

I’ve also added a geometrical pattern in the middle of the sets of nested rectangles if you don’t want to add anything to this space.

Both images would fit on an A5 card (metric/UK size), or a folded letter sized sheet of card for those of you in the US. They also could be mounted on card and framed if wished.

I’ved used Arteza Ever Blend markers from the Gray Tones set to add colour to the designs. And, for the design on the left, I’ve added white highlights with a Sakura Soufflé pen.

In today’s vlog on Youtube, I talk about the designs, and add the highlights to the left hand design.

Template Thursday…on WIP Wednesday?

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Link to today’s vlog on YouTube.

Wednesday is the day when I create the coloring page / coloring template for the members of Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. And I film and upload the process of drawing to YouTube.

This week is another page that is different. Someone said that they’d love it if I could create a drawing with a space for a photobooth image. So, I’m creating two such designs, in my signature Entangled art style.

I only have photobooth images from the Tim Holtz Idea-ology range, which I have in my stash. I’ve looked on Amazon Uk, and there are a few sets left, but not the pack I have. I think I’m going to have to trim the photo of the bloke down a bit.

Of course, if you don’t have photobooth images, you can use other photos, trimmed down, magazine or book images, stickers, or even buttons, coins, jewellery, and more attached to a sturdy piece of card sized to fit the frame. I’ll show some ideas, hopefully, in tomorrow’s video.