artywrd

Monogram R

Angela PorterLeave a comment
©Angela Porter 2018

I started work on these early this morning – around 7am. And I’ve finished for now – it’s around 9am. I’ll return to them later today or tomorrow as I have a lil trip out for lunch with a friend.

Some different kinds of styles appearing in this little bunch!

The big R at the top is mostly done – it just needs some colour I think. It’s also similar in style to the previous monograms, starting with the yellow K did a couple of days ago. It’s been drawn with 08 Unipin and 04 Sakura Pigma Sensei pens. Green metallic embellishments have been added with a metallic Sakura Gelly Roll pen.

The R at the bottom, with the thick lines, was drawn using a Tombow Fude brush pen. Not easy to control the thickness of lines, so I used a Uniball Unipin pen to tidy up the lines and add the bits on the end. Not sure how I’m going to progress with this one.

The two in the middle row have been drawn with the Unipin and Sensei pens.

The R to the right was drawn with a Uniball Unipin brush pen, which is a bit easier to control the line thickness than the Tombow Fude pen. I did neaten up the lines and ad more using the Unipin and Sensei pens.

The bigger the letter, the more space for embellishments – the paper size is A4 (approx 8″ x 10.5″) in size and it’s white and very smooth Daler-Rowney Bristol Board. The smoothness of the paper makes it so easy to draw smooth, even lines on it. It won’t take water colours or watercolour washes, but markers and coloured pencils work fine on it. Tombow Dual Brush pens and similar tend to cause the paper to pill. Of course, I can always use a scanned image to colour them digitally.

Yes, I could also add dangles to each monogram. However the purpose of this exercise is to practice my hand lettering, particularly in this rather ornate and embellished style. Dangles can be added in the future.

I cover drawing monogram dangle designs in my book ‘A Dangle A Day’, which is due to be published in just over a week! Exciting!

Another ‘A’ monogram…

Angela PorterLeave a comment
©Angela Porter 2018

This is what I’ve spent the last 2 or 3 hours doing – I lose track of time when engrossed in an artsy project.

After the K monogram yesterday I wanted to try my hand at another letter and I just chose my own initial. I really do need to do some different letters though!

For this one I started by drawing the letter in colour using Copic markers on Daler-Rowney Bristol board. I did do a vague sketch of the letter with pencil very lightly which I then erased.

Black lines to define the letter were next, followed by the lines outside of the letter and the sectioning of the spaces inside the letter.

I wanted to finish some of the lines with some interesting shapes, so naturally I defaulted to hearts and beads!

I used some of my favourite geometric and abstract patterns to fill some of the spaces, along with dots and lines.

The penultimate step was to colour in some of the blank spaces, the hearts and beads using Copic markers.

Finally, I used a glass pen and metallic gold ink from Herbin.

I worked with traditional media to do this one, so I could use gold ink, which is something I’ve not quite worked out how to do digitally.

Having said that, my process for creating this monogram is the same whether I work with traditional media or digitally. The only difference is that some of my ‘overspills’ with the lines in the tiny patterns I have to leave here and accept as it being ‘perfectly imperfect. Also, the colours aren’t as bright and vibrant as they would be digitally, but they’ll do!

Yes, I could add a dangle or three to this design, but, again, I’m happy with how it is…for now! I’m just happy exploring hand lettering in a different way to what I’ve been doing.

If anything, this hand lettering is more about shapes and patterns than it is about letters themselves. I know this is a step forward for me in finding my hand lettering style (or one of my styles at least), and I also know that as I become more comfortable with it and don’t have to work quite so hard at it (working hard is thinking about the lines and working out how to add the embellishments so they feel part of the design and not just plonked there for the sake of plonking them there) I’ll work out how to add to them in a sympathetic way.

What letter will I do next? You’ll have to wait and see!