Today’s morning art – ‘entangling’ around “Willingness”. The original is drawn on white bristol board (21cm x 21cm) with black Unipin pens (0.5 and 0.1). The word was laser printed, cut out and glued to the bristol board.
I was willing to work with a lot of new and different motifs in this drawing, though not all are new. Some familiarity is needed!
It was lovely to do and took me about 2 hours in total.
I did create a vlog of this process – link here –> Willingness vlog. The first part, up until 49:33 mins is the chatty bit, from then on, the rest of the drawing has been sped up.
It would be lovely if you’d take a look, and if you enjoy the video please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing.
I am not willing to use traditional media to add colour and/or shadow and highlight to this drawing, though I am very willing to do so digitally!
It’s been very, very windy here over the past day or so, and it has bucketed down with rain. It’s still fairly blowy, with strong gusts. So, I’m staying indoors unless the rain stops! So, I’m more than willing to keep the hatches battened down, and to settle to coloring at least some of this design. A good decision, methinks!
I’m also feeling well out of sorts after having a very, very weird dream that woke me early, and I was having a conversation in my head with one of the characters in the dream. I really wasn’t at all happy with them and told them a few home truths! Weird, just plain weird. So, it may have a knock on effect on my alertness later today.
One of the things that is really nice about being between contracts is the opportunity to create art just for the fun of creating art and not having to stay within the limits of the contract. Not that drawing to fulfil contracts isn’t fun, it is. It’s just that I have to work within the remit of the contract.
Yesterday evening and this morning I’ve been having a contented time creating some entangled monograms. I’ve cut some Winsor and Newton Bristol Board down to approx 15cm x 15cm (approx 5.75″ x 5.75″).
I penciled in some guidelines for the edges of the artwork and for the position of the monogram.
First job was to hand letter the monogram. I did start with pencil guidelines for each letter, then used a hard Tombow Fudenosuke pen to ink them in.
Then, the real fun begins, which is the entangling of the space around the monogram. I used the Fudenosuke pen along with a Sakura Pigma Sensei 04 and Uniball Unipin 0.2 and 0.1 pens.
All done in plain black and white, with just the weight and concentration of lines adding depth and dimension to the finished design.
I do want to add colour to these at some point. I love pure black and white artwork, but colour can bring them to life as well. Digital colouring is my favourite way of adding colour these days, but I may print copies out on to marker friendly paper and then use Chameleon Duotones and Color Tops to add colour. I’ll see how I feel about that.
As is my wont, I had no preconceptions of how the entangling would unfold. I just let it flow. Some of my favourite motifs and patterns have been used. I did refer to my visual BuJo for ideas/inspiration from time to time too.
Visual BuJo
Yes, a visual BuJo (bullet journal). Or, rather, it’s a collection of motifs and patterns that are being organised using ideas from the Bullet Journal system of keeping a journal. It works for me. I have a way to help me find continuations of collections, or to start a new one, and not worry about a collection being on consecutive pages.
My visual BuJo is an A5 sized, dot grid notebook from Claire Fontaine. It’s a soft back one so isn’t quite as weighty as Leuchtturms and the like. It is also a little less bulky in size, which helps when I want to travel light on a day out.
Mind you, when fill this present visual BuJo I may use a Leuchtturm for my next one. We’ll see…
It is also something that encourages me to seek out new patterns and motifs to add to it, as if I didn’t have enough already! Doing this is a good way to just practice my drawing skills and observation skills, as well as analysing a motif or pattern, breaking it down into simple shapes and steps to draw a stylised version.
I do tend to favour more stylised motifs and patterns in my art, that’s for sure.
So, I now no longer feel the need to try new ideas out for keeping my reference material, constantly redrawing them again and again. The visual BuJo is working for me for sure.
When I’m having a tough time emotionally/mentally with my CPTSD and/or EMDR it can be soothing, comforting for me to use the familiar, and of course I can still do that. I just don’t need to spend a lot of time drawing and redrawing and redrawing again the same things in my search for a perfect record keeping system for patterns and motifs.
The BuJo inspired system may not be perfect, but it works for me.
One other positive that has come from me using a BuJo is that I’ve had to learn to let mistakes go and just leave them in the notebook. The mistakes are what I need to make in order to understand how to draw a pattern or motif. Sometimes, though, a new pattern or motif arises from the mistakes.
Something else I’m starting to do is to make notes alongside the patterns with where to start, the order in which to draw the parts of the pattern or motif, and ideas for varying it.
Yesterday I had some fun drawing some postcard sized pieces of Entangled art. Especially fun as I stumbled across a book I’d bought some years ago and had forgotten about. The book is “Zibu – The power of angelic symbology” by Debbie Zylstra Almstedt.
As it says, the book contains loads of symbols with different meanings and I think that’s what drew me to the book in the first place. It was nice to stumble upon it and it seemed to be a moment of synchronicity as I was thinking about what I could put on the postcards, so this was perfect!
Transition was the first symbol I turned to, particularly symbolic for me as I’m going through a transition via my CPTSD healing journey. And in the book, the author suggests aquamarine and green are colours that go with this particular symbol, so that’s the choice of my colour scheme.
I drew the design on an A6 sized piece of Bristol Board using Sheaffer and Pilot medium point pens. After scanning the design in I coloured it digitally using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, a Microsoft Surface Pen and a Microsoft Surface Studio.
I found both the drawing and colouring rather peaceful processes, the colouring made more so as I wanted to stick to the green and aquamarine colour scheme, though I did sneak in some greyish blue and greenish yellow.
It won’t be long before I head off to Neath for my weekly EMDR session. The day is gloriously sunny and is due to be rather warm for a late winter day. I’ve a window or two open to let the fresh but cool air into my home. This weather certainly does lift my spirits somewhat. I plan to go early so I can have a walk around before my appointment later this afternoon, as well as a leisurely lunch with some journaling and drawing too.
10cm x 15cm (approx. 4″ x 6″). Uni-Pin pens and graphite pencil on acid-free cartridge paper.
The product of a couple of evenings work here.
Imagination
10cm x 10cm (approx. 4″ x 4″). UniPin pens, Inktense pencils with wash and UniBall Sparkle gel pen in gold.
Just an experiment with a quote. I’m not entirely sure that it works.
Crazy Time
Work has been manic and very stressful at times. You’d think that after a full school inspection some of the pressure would ease off. Not a chance. Or maybe it has a little, but the staff, including myself, are exhausted mentally and emotionally and are struggling on.
I was away for the best part of a week with some kind of stomach ‘flu or bug. Usually, I’d bounce back in a couple of days, but this one had me laid low. On my return I was faced with staff friends stressed out about one thing or another, complaining about the behaviour and attitude of pupils and telling me about the incidents I’d missed while I’d been away. Incidents that shocked me. I had issues to deal with nearly every lesson; one of my tutor group arrived in my room in floods of tears stressed about school work and other things, another sensitive boy lost it in another lesson as the boys wouldn’t leave him alone when he was feeling a bit overwhelmed, another pupil had left a class because the boys were picking on her because her gran had died the night before. All in two hours or so of arriving there.
The NHS
I’ve been getting on my high horse about the UK’s government’s plans to privatise the NHS through the back door.
I’m appalled at our present society. The NHS, and the welfare state, are paid for by the British tax and National Insurance payers. They are not owned by the government; the government is merely the administrator. We, the tax payers own the NHS, as well as everything our taxes have paid for. They have absolutely no right to sell them off without balloting the people.
It is not our fault the government and country is in dire financial straits. It is wrong that our taxes are used to bail out the banks and other organisations. It is wrong that the common people are hit by rising taxes, while the rich are given tax breaks when those who are most in need have to sell their homes, possessions in order to receive the care they need; this will only get worse if we end up having to pay for health care. I’m sure our nation’s dental health has suffered as a result of the changes made in charges for dental care over the years.
We’re supposed to be a civilised, caring society where all have access to the care they need, regardless of their ability to pay. Health care isn’t a business, it’s a basic human right, same as education, which has become a factory production line.
I signed a petition about the changes to the NHS and contacted my local MP.
It’s time the people realise that the government is answerable to us, the voters, that we expect them to manage things to take care of the society that contributes to the running of the country not the people who foul up financially, such as the banks, or to look after those who don’t need looking after as they are obscenely rich.
It seems that the government is stealing from the poorer echelons of society (and that includes the middle classes and professional people) in order to make sure the rich become richer.
Approx 12cm x 12cm. Black Rotring pen, Inktense pencils with water wash and various iridescent/metallic watercolour paints on Bristol Board.
The shapes and were inspired by one of the previous little textile pieces, the filling patterns by Romanesque architecture, prehistoric pottery, natural forms.
Fun to do something this fiddly and fussy and completely potty!
4″ x 3″. Rotring pens, watercolours, metallic gold paint and pens on Bristol Board.
Just playing really with the Bristol Board; it’s very white and very smooth and will take a bit of a colour wash. The design is very much influenced by early Celtic art and prehistoric rock art, though the hearts have crept in unconsciously. In fact, most of my art is created while in a meditative kind of state, the lines, shapes, textures and colours flow from my unconscious, from my inner being. Perhaps the hearts represent the self-love starting to bloom within me, or maybe the artwork symbolises the start of love being sent out and shared. I’m sticking with the title ‘Growing Love’ for now.
Angela Porter 