Tangle Tuesday – “Sandswirl” by Karry Heun

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Tuesdays are #TangleTuesday! This week I’ve chosen “Sandswirl” to draw and work out some variations with.

Sandswirl has long been a favourite tangle pattern of mine. I’ve never thought about exploring variations of it. I really enjoyed doing so!

When shadows are added, this tangle pattern becomes really dimensional in an interesting way.

I’ve never thought of using Sandswirl as a border before. This shows that all the time I’ve spent exploring patterns and fragments is paying off! I’d always thought of Sandswirl as a filler pattern. Today, I discovered otherwise.

If you’d like to see my explorations today, then here’s the link to today’s video on YouTube.

Motif Monday – Flower Motifs #1

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Keep the alliterative theme going; today is #MotifMonday! Also, happy Valentine’s Day to you all too.

A motif is something I use either for a focal point or in clusters as part of my drawing. Although motifs can form patterns, I tend to use the term for a particular design I like to use. I tend to use the word ‘fragment’ for that kind of motif that would fit into a grid (reticulum in Zentangle-ese).

As it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d start off with roses, which led to other favourite flower motifs. Along with some, hopefully helpful, suggestions about creating volume in the drawings.

I use a lot of floral, botanical, organic motifs in my artwork, so I’m looking forward to sharing some of these with you.

Talking of sharing, here’s the link to today’s video!

Time for the creative soul – A Zentangle Inspired Bookmark WIP

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Slowly, I’m learning about using colour digitally, and I love it! I’m beginning to understand how I can use layers effectively. Bringing dimension to my ‘flat’ pen drawings is so fascinating!

I realise now that I need to spend more time working with colour digitally. I’m finding getting that feeling of volume in my artwork is relatively easy. But, choosing colours isn’t my best skill for sure! So, once the process of layers is incorporated into my mental “muscle memory”, I need to learn more about how to choose colours.

I’ll get there. It may be that monochrome is the way to go for me. But only time will tell.

For now, I need a bit of a break from the computer as well as another mug of tea!

Draw with me … A Zentangle Inspired Bookmark | #TimeForTheCreativeSoul

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It’s been a lovely day today. I’ve spent time drawing, which is always a pleasure and relaxing to boot! I had a lovely long phone chat with a pal too, partway through filming. But it was lovely to chat!

I’ve decided that on Saturdays, I’ll focus on arty projects that could be useful or gifted. All about taking time out not just to feed my creative soul, but to share that with others.

A bookmark seemed a good idea for today. It’s a relatively small project. Useful too! I’ll laminate this when I’m happy with it. I already have a recipient in mind.

Of course I’ve scanned the drawing in and I’ll be using it to practice adding shadow, colour, highlights/lowlights digitally.

There’ll be no social media posts from me tomorrow – I have a day with many pleasant online events. I’ll be back on Monday for sure!

Oh, before I forget, here’s today’s video.

Fragment Friday! 11 Feb ’22

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I love alliteration! Back in the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, the time between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, alliteration was used for rhymes. One reason I’d love to learn to speak, write and read Anglo-Saxon.

I’ve decided to have a different alliterative social media theme for each day.

Fragment Friday was a natural choice. I absolutely enjoyed creating variations for each of the fragments in the “Fragments of Your Imagination Challenge” that ran through January. I miss doing these variations. So that led to this particular theme.

For my first Friday Fragment, I decided to use ‘Hearts’ as the theme. Today it’s not so much creating variations on a particular fragment but the use of a particular motif within each variation. Some of the variations are familiar fragments or tangle patterns. Others go off in surprising directions.

Of course I filmed the process (though not the addition of colour and shadow with marker pens). You can see the video by clicking on this link.

Template Thursday! 10 Feb 2022

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Another Thursday, another colouring template (or colouring page) for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans Facebook group.

It’s another Doodleworlds meets Zentangle/Entangled kind of mashup. I have so much fun drawing these at the moment. I really do need a good dose of whimsy and cuteness in my arty life at this time. This fills the bill for sure.

I’ve not had much time today to do a lot of colouring. So, I’ve just added some flat colours. Should I get around to colouring this one in my usual way, I’ll post the results.

I had planned to do a page with two illustrations, each slightly smaller than A5 in size. That just didn’t happen. Yesterday and today have had some unexpected events, all good. So fast and dirty colouring was just the ticket.

I have been drawing this template for YouTube. Today’s instalment is below.

Template Thursday on a Wednesday and a flip-through of Whimsical Cats!

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Two videos today!

The first one is a Draw With Me as I start to draw this week’s colouring page for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans Facebook group.

This week it’s a Doodlewords meets Zentangle meets Entangled kind of affair. Can you have too much whimsical cuteness in the world?

You can see today’s Draw With Me video by clicking on this link!

While that video was uploading, the advance copies of my “Whimsical Cats” book were delivered. It’s always exciting when this happens as it’s the first time I see all of my templates put together as a book.

I thought that I’d do a flip-through to share with you as another video. You can see the flip-through by clicking on this link.

The book isn’t released yet. Here are the release dates for the USA and UK:
USA – 16 February 2022
UK – 25 March 2022

Zentangle Drawing “Love”

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Pen drawing on 5.5″ x 4″ (14.5cm x 10cm) Canson Imagine paper coloured with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink.

I’m not at all sure about this design. It started fairly well with the hand-lettering and corner designs. But it went a bit downhill from there, in my opinion. In hindsight, the use of pink metallic pen was a bit of a mistake too. Seemed a good idea at the time though!

By the end of the drawing process, I think it is more a melange of heart-themed tangle patterns than anything else. That is how I’d describe today’s video for sure.

The video is an hour-long, real-time tutorial.

Doodleworlds – A5 Illustration WIP

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Adding colour digitally lets me try things

I’ve learned a new ‘trick’! New to me that is. I’ve finally worked out how I can use grey shadow underpainting to increase contrast in my artwork! It’s new to me, but not new to the art world I’m sure.

I’m really happy with the result. Digital art makes it so easy to try things out in layers. So, this is the way for me to go.

Yesterday morning, I started adding shadows to some pen drawn motifs with marker pens. I wanted to see what that would look like. I prefer these shadows to those done with graphite or chalk pastel pencils.

Then, I added colour using watercolour pencils and a damp brush, just to see what would happen. I liked the result! Lots!

I filmed part of this process today, and here’s the video on YouTube

Doodleworlds Critters – Part 2, partly coloured

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Have you ever lost hours engrossed in an activity? It happens often, doesn’t it? This afternoon, I’ve lost seven or eight hours adding colour to this Doodleworlds drawing. Yet, contentment oozed out of every pore of me.

I think I’ve finally found the perfect digital brushes during this time. That made adding colour such an enjoyable and engrossing activity today. So much so, that I kept saying to myself, “Just one more,” or, This one will be the last.”

I think I’ve only come to a stop for now as I need some food and drink. Also, I really need to get my Welsh Lesson done on Duolingo.

I had planned to pop out this afternoon, but I got so lost in art the afternoon has flown by!

The bonus is that not only have I enjoyed this time, but I’m pretty pleased with what has been produced. I’m even considering that it may be time to find a good cause to gift a lot of my traditional media to. I’ve not quite decided on that step yet.

I tried adding colour to this drawing yesterday, using traditional media. Unfortunately, I was so disappointed with what I produced that I re-drew the picture. Yup, I forgot to scan the partly drawn version in. Ho-hum.

I feel I’m OK adding shadow to my drawings with chalk pastel pencils. But adding colour with traditional media…

So, I’ll sit with this decision, focus on drawing with pen and adding colour digitally. In most cases that is.