Dangle Design – Bee in your bonnet Porter?

Bee in your bonnet Porter? Dangle Design WIP © Angela Porter 2019 - Artwyrd.com
Bee in your bonnet Porter? Dangle Design WIP © Angela Porter 2019 – Artwyrd.com

Yup, I still have a bee, or several, in my bonnet about copyright infringement. However, I thought the bees needed a garden to fly around in and do what bees do best! Better they’re out pollinating and making honey than rattling around inside my bonnet that’s for sure.

So, I drew them a garden to live in and hung my bonnet in a dangle design I’ve incorporated into the design, along with a bit of hand lettering.

I drew the design on Winsor and Newton Bristol board using Tombow Fudenosuke pens, and a pencil from time to time.

When I was happy with the drawing, I scanned it into the ‘puter and started to add colour.

As you can see, this is very much a work in progress and I may very well change the colours in places as work continues. Yet again, the colours look very different in WordPress than they do on my ‘puter. What’s going on WordPress???

Friday is Dangle Day. In my book ‘A Dangle A Day’, I take you step by step through drawing charming, cute, whimsical dangle designs and monograms. The designs aren’t as complex as this one, though the dangles in this design are simple enough themselves. Dangles are fun to draw and a great way to add embellishment to all kinds of projects – greeting cards, note cards, bookmarks, BuJo (Bullet Journal) pages and spreads, journals, planners, diaries, and anything else you could possibly think of using them! They really are simple to draw, one step at a time, and it’s colour that brings them to life for sure!

October’s Bujo Spread

Angela Porter October BuJo Spread 2018Can you believe it? September is just about all and over with. Time does seem to be flying by at the moment.

This was a really quick bujo spread due to me being away last week.

It’s also a very messily coloured one. I can tell I’ve barely wielded a pen in the last week! Talk about shaky and wobbly and lacking the fine skills I had.

Goes to show you gotta keep working it daily, even if it’s for a short while.

Mind you, I have new glasses and getting used to them is going to take a little while. For work, I have ‘occupational varifocals’. This means the lenses gradually change from intermediate distance at the top to reading distance at the bottom. I didn’t get to use them much last week, so it’s going to take a little while and some practice with them.

I also have varifocals of the usual kind (distance, intermediate and reading). They’re great if I’m sitting down and out sketching, or drawing, or knitting and watching TV. I find them a bit disconcerting for walking around and going up/down hills or stairs or twisty turny ways they cause me to feel a bit dizzy. I know my problem is that I have really good peripheral vision and there’s a part of the varifocal lens on the outside and innermost areas that causes fuzzy vision.

So, yesterday I took my favourite pairs of glasses which double up as sunglasses (they’re very cleverly designed to have removable polaroid lenses that look like they’re part of the glasses, which essentially they are) to have single vision distance lenses put in them so I can use them for walking around and driving. I can drive with the varifocals, but that fuzzy bit bothers me.

Anyways, I have a lot of practice to do with drawing in the next day or two before I return to my next Entangled Coloring book. I’m half-way through the templates and I have some lovely reference photos from my trip for the next ones, including some ideas inspired by Forbidden Corner, maybe.

Back to the BuJo spread. I drew the design on dot grid paper using Sakura Pigma Micron pens and coloured in with Chameleon pencils.

I like the design, not fussed on my colouring skills today that’s for sure.

What theme should I go with for November? Remembrance, bonfires, fireworks…feel free to leave suggestions!

Dangle Day Friday

Angela Porter September 2018 coloured

Friday is dangle day!

We’re a week into September and autumn is nearly here in the Northern hemisphere, so I thought my dangle design should be one for this season. I think this would be a lovely BuJo page to separate the autumn months. I also think it would make a pretty notecard or greetings card. The hand lettering could be changed for another sentiment and it would be suitable for an autumn celebration. Alternatively, it would look great framed and hung as part of a quartet of designs that cover the four seasons; now there’s a project for me to do!

I drew the design on squared paper using Sakura pigma micron pens.

Then, I scanned the image in, used GiMP to remove the squares and create a transparent background

Next, I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to colour the image, create the textured background and add a shadow to the design.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love autumn! I love the way the world changes in terms of colours over the space of a few weeks, and the colours can be absolutely glorious.

I don’t know how the long, very hot and dry summer in here in the UK will affect autumn this year.

If you would like to design some dangles and not quite sure how, then my upcoming book A Dangle A Day (available for pre-order) will lead you through the steps as well as giving you plenty of ideas for dangle design.

Friday freebie

Just a reminder that today is the last day for you to enter any of my giveaways, the prizes being signed copies of Eerily Entangled Art, my latest book in Dover’s Creative Haven series of coloring books.

See my previous blog post for details on how to enter.  I’ll be drawing the winners at random tomorrow evening, UK time.

Furbaby Friday

Over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group, it’s furbaby friday.

Of course, it’s Furbaby Everyday over on the Happy Tails Animal Group facebook group.

Both groups would love to see your pictures of your furbabies, as would I.