This morning, I spent nearly an hour adding some more colour to this entangled drawing. I estimate that a bit more than a half has been coloured.
Today’s video on YouTube is a time lapse of this process.
I’m using a fairly limited colour palette of inktense pencils.
Link to Sketchbook Flip Through Vlog on YouTube
Sketchbook Saturday is upon us once again. I’ve created a vlog for YouTube where I flip through my current sketchbook.
The drawing at the top is now finished. I used a Tombow Fudenosuke ‘hard’ pen to draw the design on paper that has been coloured with Distress Inks. The sketch book is 21cm x 21cm (approx 8″ x 8″).
Drawing on coloured paper is something that is pleasurable to do. The colours add mood to the drawing and are an inspiration for any colour scheme I may use, should I choose to add colour.
The grungy, distressed nature of the page is also interesting; already depth and dimension are added to the artwork.
I’ve enjoyed drawing on coloured paper so much, that I actually have coloured quite a number of pages in my sketchbook and you can see them all in the vlog. What I can’t remember is exactly which colours were used for each page.
Some of the pages I like so much that I really do need to scan them in so I can use them as backgrounds for digital art, social media posts and so on going forward.
The colour choices I’m making are often veering away from the bright, saturated colours that were so characteristic of my earlier work. Such colours are still used for my colouring templates / pages and that’s not likely to change much going forward. However, for my more personal art, less saturated, vintage, even grungy, are what I am drawn to so much at the moment. Also, I seem to favour analogous colour schemes, sometimes with a pop of complementary colours.
Link to a Time Lapse Coloring video on YouTube
It’s Thursday, so it’s time to release a new coloring template into the magical colorists that form the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group.
I did a bit more coloring of the template this morning, and filmed the process. A time lapse video is the result and can be found on YouTube.
I know it’s two Doodleworlds style templates in a row, but I really needed some whimsy in my life.
Of course, it’s always amazing to see the many different ways people add colour to my templates. Creativity is a wonderful thing!
It’s that time of the week again – the sneak peek of this week’s coloring template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group.
It’s another Doodleworlds style template this week, simply because I needed some whimsy in my day today! Plenty of detail and variation in motifs, with some entangled arches too.
There is a time lapse video of the drawing – which took over two hours to complete.
The template will be available to members of the facebook group tomorrow.
Link to today’s Vlog on YouTube
As I enjoyed my first mug of tea of the day, I continued to add colour to this entangled drawing.
The success of blending colours yesterday inspired me to do more of this. Little by little, I’m starting to get some sparkles of confidence in adding colour.
Inktense pencils do make this easy in a way. It’s a lot easier to control the application of colour.
Control – it’s that word again in respect to the addition of colour. Watercolour vexes me as I want to control a medium that isn’t easy to control it seems. Perhaps the exploration of watercolour and Ecoline watercolour inks are cul de sacs for me. They’re interesting to explore but lead nowhere except back to where I started, almost. I return with extra knowledge and experiences that can then be applied to other media.
Indeed, the way that I apply colour digitally has partly inspired me in this artwork. But remembering my dabbling with abstract art back in my A level days gave me a few insights into my relationship with colour.
As a scientist, all my observations – drawn or written – had to be accurate, representative of what I could see. Colours had to be correct, as I could see, so others could check what I had seen and confirm those observations are correct.
As an artist, I can put that requirement to one side; but it’s not easy to do so, especially when I’m drawing from observations.
I have little problem adding colour to my cute, whimsical, entangled coloring templates. They’re not meant to represent anything ‘real’. They’re abstract in their own way. Though, when the motifs are based on observations, then I get into trouble with colour.
Remembering the abstract oil paintings I did back in the days of A level exams, I used colour to convey the mood, feeling that went with the time, place, experiences I had when taking photographs to use to work from. The final paintings were in colours that represented these personal, emotional, and sometimes intellectual responses.
Going forward, I need to remember this in my work and to transfer it to artwork. The actual colour of something is not as important as I think it is, and to remove that pressure from myself. If I want a record of the ‘real’ colours, I can take a photograph. But to record my experience, I need to give myself permission to express my feelings, emotions and my response to it in whatever colours suit me at the time. I need to allow my intuition and imagination a greater role in my work with colour
Hopefully I’ll get there, and I probably am little by little. The value of the vlogs is that I have to start to give words to the thoughts that come as I create, and this blog allows me to expand on them.
To give words to the ephemeral, abstract, metaphoric thoughts that wander around my head is to manifest them. The words result in conscious awareness of the thoughts. The awareness is then something that can be learned from, acted upon and put into practice.
I’m learning to externalise what has usually been an internal and fleeting process of thought and analysis, and it’s an intriguing and interesting experience for sure.
Link to today’s vlog on YouTube
I’m at a bit of an impasse with my other entangled drawing works in progress. So, I’ve started to add colour to this one.
Shadow was added with a grey Pitt Artist Pen on Saturday, along with some of the colour. I think my morning ‘art and a cuppa’ will continue for the next few days, with videos being released of the process.
I’m doing my best to work with a limited colour palette. I started with reds, oranges, yellows and browns. this morning I thought a couple of complementary colours were needed to lift the colours a bit. So blue and green was added.
Inktense pencils and a damp brush are being used, and the specific colours used so far are – Cherry Red, Madder Brown, Baked Earth, Mustard, Sienna Gold, Deep Indigo, Blue Aquamarine and Spring Green.
I did post a photo of the drawing with just reds/oranges/browns on Instagram on Saturday. Adding the blues and green is making the colours seem so much brighter. That’s the magic of complementary colours – colours opposite each other on the colour wheel.
The way that complementary colours, particularly blues with reds/oranges/yellows, is something I am really fold of. I think it harks back to the album covers designed by Roger Dean, to mention one artist! Being a child in the sixties and seventies and the preponderance of psychedelic art at that time.
My original plan was to use an analogous colour scheme (colours next to each other on the colour wheel). But as my mood is so much better and back to normal, complementary colours are totally necessary now!
Link to today’s vlog on YouTube
It’s been a right weird morning. I started to work on yesterday’s drawing, but found myself at a bit of an impasse with it. So, rather than continue and risk messing it up entirely, I decided to start another.
For this one, I coloured the paper with Peeled Paint, Evergreen Bough and Chipped Sapphire Distress Inks before starting to draw.
I find working on coloured paper a real pleasure, much of the time. It sets a mood, a feel for the artwork to develop and grow upon. It can inspire me. I like that.
The one thing I didn’t do was scan the coloured paper in. My printer/scanner is having a serious amount of hissyfitting with the WiFi at the moment, disconnecting itself for no reason at all it seems. Weird, as I’d scanned in several drawings prior to this. Ho hum.
A sneak peek of this week’s template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group members. And it’s another Doodleworlds style template.
I have a video on youtube, catching up with the last few days’ art as well as starting to colour this template with chalk pastel pencils. Disaster struck as I continued after the video, so turned to digital colouring.
The template will be available in the facebook group tomorrow. Now, I need to take a nap as I really haven’t had enough sleep the past three nights and I’m barely keeping my eyes open.
Friday seems the perfect day to have a look back on the week’s sketchbook art. A vlog seems the perfect way to do that.
I also start to add colour to the latest drawing using a limited colour palette of Ecoline brush pen colours – gold ochre, burnt sienna, indigo and prussian blue. Another colour (or two) may be added to the limited palette. I’ll see how I get along.
This particular drawing is being used as a place to test out ideas concerning adding shadow and highlight, simple colour washes, and anything else that springs to mind. It may never been completed, but that’s not the point! Experimentation and experience are the points of this particular exercise.
Thursday seems to come around so quickly, and each Thursday means it’s time for another coloring template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book fans facebook group.
Yesterday, I created a timelapse video of the pen drawing of this template. You can find the time-lapse drawing video by clicking on this link.
Today, it’s another time-lapse video of colour being added to part of the template. Click on this link to see the time-lapse colouring video.
I added colour digitally, using Clip Studio Paint. Also, I added a grey background. I much prefer using a coloured background, it’s easier on my eyes. Also, the colours seem more vibrant against the grey background.
The template is a typically ‘Angela’ entangled, stylised, abstract one, with some inspiration from Zentangle patterns too.
I always enjoy the way that colour brings the drawing to life, and helps to enhance the layers in the drawing as well. It’s a bit of magic in my daily life for sure.
I’m not entirely sure about my colour choices. I wasn’t trying to keep within a colour palette, just having fun with colour and figuring more about Clip Studio Paint brushes. I really enjoy adding colour to my artwork with both digital art and a limited range of traditional media. I enjoy digital and traditional for different reasons. Digital work takes away the stress of making sure the right colours are chosen. If I mess up, it’s easy to change things without having to start over. It’s relaxing to do, just as art with traditional media, apart from colour choice.
Art is the Adventure 