alcohol markers

Entangled Drawing Practice

Angela PorterLeave a comment

I’ve been slowly working on this drawing over several days. Little by little, it’s been finished and brought to life with colour.

I’m not quite finished yet; I’m still adding white dots as highlights! That’ll take me a goodly amount of time, no doubt.

Slowly is the correct description of my ability to work, slowly and a little at a time with breaks in between. This muscle healing process is very slow and I’m really learning I can’t push myself too hard. But I really do feel I’m making some kind of progress, which is all that matters.

Entangled Art Infinity Card – Parts 1 and 2

Angela PorterLeave a comment

I’ve had some fun with this, and there’s more to come. And a bit of a story to tell first.

I was asked on my YouTube channel how I know which patterns go with each other. That’s not an easy question to answer; experience, experimenting, trusting instincts, and having some patterns or motifs that are your go-to ones.

Then, yesterday morning, as I was slowly coming around from sleep, I watched a video on YouTube at Jen’s Arty Inclinations on how to make a fast and simple infinity card for a junk journal.

Jen recommended going to Lynn at Playing with Paper and Glue to watch her video about making a slightly different infinity card. So I did that.

And as I watched and saw how easy it was to make the infinity card (yes, it really is!), I realised that this would be a lovely and different way to collect together my favourite go-to motifs and patterns. And that thought linked back to the comment on my YouTube channel.

So, I made an infinity card, mucked it up a bit, but learned from that. Then I made a HUGE one, which was ridiculously big! So, I made another one to the sizes Lynn gave, which you can see me doing in part 1. Then, I had to add the first panel on the left of the image above.

I went with variations of pokeroot, pokeleaf and pokepods! I’m not sure there’s a pattern called pokepods, but there is now. I cut a notch out of the card and created a little pocket for a drawing, note, colour palette, or something else to be hidden.

I drew with Copic Multiliner Sp pens (0.5 and 0.25, I think). Colour was added with yellow-grey and neutral-grey Ohuhu markers. A white gel pen was used to add dotty highlights and the pattern to the back.

In the video for part 2, I created the panel to the right. Daisies are always a flower I love to draw; I have many variations of them in my memory hoard. The flowy pattern and Diva Dance are two of my go-to patterns; they share some similarities in my head.

For this panel, I used a Uni Emott 0.4 ever fine pen to draw the design, then green-grey Ohuhu markers to add colour. Then, I used a white gellyroll pen to add the dotty highlights.

I wasn’t sure about the Tim Holtz scrapbook paper I used to make the infinity card, but as I added the panels, it mostly got covered up, just a hint of a background behind the drawings.

It may not be the best choice of paper to make the infinity card from, in terms of colour and pattern. However, as I’ve never done anything like this, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make!

Actually, I wasn’t sure about the entire project. I thought it may be a bit odd, whacky, and weird. But, now two panels are done, I’m looking forward to completing the infinity card.

I will be adding more pocketses, possibly even panels that open out to reveal more. There are, possibly, 32 panels to be done, though I’m not sure as I keep losing count! But it’s a longer-term project.

Having said that, the panels are small. Cute even. Perfect for when I have just a little time to draw.

Medieval Inspired Botanical Bookmark

Angela PorterLeave a comment

I have no idea why, but tall, thin drawings (bookmarks) just appeal to me. Indeed, they always have.

I enjoyed drawing this one, and I’m fairly pleased with the chosen colours. There’s a soft, muted, vintage palette along with the flowers, seed pods, berries and leaves mainly inspired by Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts and the work of the Arts and Crafts Movement artists.

If you’d like to follow a #comedrawwithme video for this design, just click on this link!

Two Seed Pod Posies

Angela Porter2 Comments

This morning I finished the posy to the right, and I thought it would be interesting to post both versions together.

The version on the right was actually drawn before the one on the left; it was the inspiration for yesterday’s drawing tutorial video on YouTube. I decided to add colour to it yesterday evening, and I added the subtle background pattern this morning.

I like both and would find it hard to pick one as a favourite. There are pros and cons to each for sure.

What do you think? Which do you prefer?

#DrawWithMe – Botanical Motifs

Angela PorterLeave a comment

In today’s YouTube video, I started to draw the design on the right. While the video was uploading, I finished drawing it. Also, I drew some motifs on a separate piece of paper so I could practice using alcohol markers (Arteza EverBlend).

Colour combinations do vex me, continually. And they certainly do on this practice sheet! But it’s best I practice somewhere before adding colour to my completed drawing. But first I’ll scan that drawing in so if all else fails I can add colour digitally!

Either way, it’s been lovely to spend time drawing and adding colour just for the joy of it. It is far too warm to do anything else.

Fineliners, alcohol markers and contrast – hints and tips video

Angela PorterLeave a comment

The past couple of days have seen me creating videos that go in a slightly different direction to my usual.

Yesterday’s YouTube video was a look at using and blending coloured pencils – not a skill I’m great at, especially when it comes to choosing colours.

I carried on experimenting with my drawing and trying out various media either alone or in various combinations – coloured pencils, Inktense, and/or graphite. I quite like the way graphite dirties up the colours and creates an almost metallic feeling. Not a shiny metallic, but a dull kind of one.

Today’s video was a response to a comment left for me on YouTube about fineliners smearing with alcohol markers. So, I thought I’d do a look at some of the various fineliners I have, the tricks I use to avoid this, and a bit more about achieving contrast, volume and blending markers.

Draw With Me – Alcohol markers and gesso – an experiment.

Angela PorterLeave a comment

Click on this link to watch my YouTube video that accompanies this post.

I’m most probably not the first to discover this, but it is entirely new to me!

Early this morning, I added some alcohol markers to a pen drawing I’d finished. I’d drawn over a Distress Ink background with some old book pages collaged and gessoed onto it.

I know gesso coats a surface with a waterproof and slightly textured finish. I do know this. But that didn’t occur to me as I added alcohol markers to the drawing.

I was absolutely delighted with the interesting variations in the intensity of colour that resulted. Also, the application of alcohol marker also brought out the texture where the gesso was patchy, even a little bit. The paper soaked up so much more colour than the gesso – duh go me for not realising that first, but that’s not the important thing – it’s the effects that result!

It’s not all that easy to see on the image to the left. But, behind the triangular pattern, I used just one soft blue marker, but you can see the variation in intensity! Usually, it would be a very flat kind of colour. The darker areas are where there is no gesso.

This is something I really want to use as I go forward. I love the crazy, random variations in colour and texture that happen. It seems to me a way to bring a little unpredictability to the rather predictable results you get with marker pens.

Draw With Me – A pattern and motif sampler.

Angela PorterLeave a comment
Link to today’s video on YouTube.

This seems to be the natural progression of my work earlier this week where I put motifs in boxes and added background colour only.

When looking at Rebecca Blair’s artwork, which I absolutely love, I got inspired to create the first ‘sampler’ on the left. I say sampler because splitting space up in this way reminds me of needlework samplers created to practice different stitches.

This is a lovely way for me to indulge my love of hand-lettering, patterns, stylised motifs, colour, shadow, texture and boxes split into boxes!

Colour continues to vex me. I think my favourite is the centre example in a monochrome colour scheme. No chance of any weird colour combinations with that one!

I keep saying this about me and colour, don’t I? But I really need a huge sign that lights up and flashes to remind me to stick to monochrome colours, possibly analogous, and with tiny flashes of a complementary colour. Actually, I need the sign to detect when I reach for colour and shout this advice at me!

Of course, I wanted to share my experiments with the world; well, a few hundred people may be, who may find this an interesting idea to try. If you’d like to see the video then click on this link!

It’s been a quiet day for me. My digestive system is playing up, and self-care is the order of the day. That means not doing anything that has to be the best I can do. I know today that it’ll be harder for me to get things done because I’m under the weather. Fingers crossed, I’ll be fine and dandy again tomorrow.

Draw With Me… Fungi and other organic things. An idea for a sketchbook page

Angela PorterLeave a comment

I had to revisit this idea by using the correct kind of paper for alcohol markers. And bullet tipped markers.

I really enjoyed doing this. Adding the details made a difference for sure, as did adding some shadows to the motifs.

If you’d like to see me draw these and, perhaps, draw along with me, then take a peek at this video on YouTube.

Draw With Me… Whimsical flowers and foliage – an idea for a sketchbook page

Angela PorterLeave a comment
If you’d like to see how I created this partial page for my sketchbook, take a look at this video.

I spent an hour or so doing some warm-up drawing before turning my attention to inking in some colouring pages for “Fanciful Birds”, my next colouring book in the Creative Haven series.

Whimsy is always a welcome thing, flowers and foliage in particular. I also wanted to work with colourful backgrounds for each motif.

I really wasn’t fully awake and didn’t think through the type of paper I was using. I knew I wanted to use alcohol markers to add colour gradients to the background. Did it occur to me to use marker paper? Nope! Of course not! So they bled a tad – the Ohuhu brush markers I used for some of the backgrounds are rather juicy, too juicy for the paper. I liked the backgrounds, however, and knew I could fix the bleeds with a white gel pen.

So, I thought I’d switch to Inktense pencils and a damp brush. Not quite sure that they sit well next to the alcohol marker backgrounds. There’s lots of textureand an unevenness in the colour and gradient. Again, partly down to my choice of paper (all media paper from SeaWhite of Brighton).

So, for the last couple of images, I used some Arteza EverBlend markers for the blue and warm brown backgrounds. The bullet tips let less ink flow onto the paper, minimising the bleed. There was still some bleeding, which I made worse by trying to ‘erase’ it with a colourless blender pen.

I made use of the magic of a white gel pen to cover up these bleeds.

I definitely need to write some reflections for myself to add to this page when it gets put in my sketchbook. For now, I’ll just say that I like the last two I completed the most. Those are the blue and brown backgrounds on the bottom row. I do like the other alcohol marker backgrounds too, but there’s something about the more neutral backgrounds. I just can’t put my finger on what it is.

Right then, time to finish my mug of tea and get some more inking of colouring templates in!