Click here to view today’s video where I draw the bottom right panel.
This week’s colouring page is a little different. It has four designs on it. Each one would look adorable when coloured and mounted on a blank or postcard card. They would make a lovely decoration for a bullet journal, journal or diary.
The template is available to Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans Facebook group members.
It’s Thursday, so that means it’s time for a new colouring page (template) for the facebook group Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans.
I was in a bit of a whimsical mood this morning, so spending some time visiting Doodleworlds was just perfect. I also got a tad lost in adding colour to this template.
These are a lot of fun to draw, and to colour. Because of their cute, whimsical and imaginary nature, any colours go! These are drawings I find easy to add colour to; it seems the brighter, more vibrant and varied the colours are the better! Unline a lot of my other art,w which can become confused and incoherent looking.
So, I lost myself in adding colour to this drawing, even though I’ve not totally coloured it in.
Thursday is the day I gift a colouring page (or template) to the members of Angela Porter’s Coloring Books Fans Facebook group.
This week it’s a mandala. Why? Well, I just really wanted to draw a mandala!
I enjoy the calming, meditative process of mandala drawing. And as I didn’t want to disturb that calm space I found myself in by making a right mess of adding some colour, I decided to go with an analogous colour scheme. Soft blue, teal and green are also very calming colours.
As it’s a colouring template, I’ve not added lots of textural patterns. However, that is something I can always play around with at another time. For now, the high contrast that brings a feeling of volume and dimension to the design is good enough.
This week’s template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Books Fans Facebook group is a mandala. I just felt in the mood to create a mandala this morning, and so I did.
Mandalas are mesmerising to me. There is something so soothing about their rhythmic, symmetrical design. Creating volume in the design is always part of the fun! Choosing colours is always a bit tricky for me, however. So today I’ve gone with golds, yellowy greens and turquoise blues. A fairly analogous colour scheme, which means the colours will always work together.
I’ve not finished colouring the mandala, and it’s likely to sit unfinished somewhere on my hard drive. But it’s fulfilled its purpose of making me smile; a contented half-smile that is accompanied by a soft, warm, glow in my heart. That’s such a lovely feeling, and it took me many years of EMDR therapy to discover what contentment was. That glow, my touchstone of contentment, is always there. I can sense it even when the dark storm clouds of some emotional upset gather. It’s like a gently glowing lantern that leads me on through the storm back to contentment. It’s an amazing thing for sure!
I’m feeling a tad delicate today. I ate something that disagreed with me yesterday it seems. So, some soothing art needed to be done, with no pressure involved.
Mandalas are drawings I turn to when I need soothing. I know they’ll work out for me, that I can indulge myself in abstract patterns, and even if the colours are a bit of a mess, they kind of work out in the way a kaleidoscope always does.
Having said that, I’m fairly happy with my colour scheme! The only thing I’d change is the saturation of the colours in the centre; they look a tad insipid next to the next few rings!
I really like the way the Zentangle pattern Tripoli looks all bumpy at the top and bottom too. That playing with shadow and highlight is something I really, really love.
So, this template is available for free to members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Books Fans Facebook group. It’s free to join the group too!
Thursdays seem to come around so quickly, not that I’m complaining at all! But with each Thursday that comes around, I create a new template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Books Fans Facebook group. It’s free to join the group and the weekly templates are free to members though some reasonable terms and conditions for use apply.
This week I chose to create a mandala. I do love a mandala! There is always something so soothing and relaxing about drawing and adding colour to them.
For this one, I kept to a simple palette – two bluey-greens, a pink, a purple and a yellow-orange. I really am trying to work with fairly limited palettes more often, and to focus on contrast in my art so it really has some volume and dimension.
I think I’m going to go and work on a hand-lettering project I started last night. After I’ve ordered some black felt for some slow stitching. And some other sewing supplies I think I may find useful too.
Thursdays come around quickly, or so it seems. And with Thursday comes a new colouring page (template) for members of Angela Porter’s Coloring Books Fans Facebook group. The group is free to join, and the templates are free to the members of the group.
This week, I indulged myself in creating a tile mandala kind of design. That central panel looks really awkward, but I suspect it has more to do with my colour choices than anything else! I’ll be interested to see how people tack that one. Ho hum.
It’s that time in the week again – Template Thursyay! Each week during the pandemic I’ve created a colouring page for the members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring books fans Facebook group. The template is only available to members, and it’s free to join the group and free to print the template for personal use.
It’s been almost two months since I last drew a mandala! So it’s understandable I felt the urge to create one today.
I used some of the motifs from my video in yesterday’s post. It’s always an enjoyable process using my favourite, organic motifs.
Using a limited, spring-time-ish colour palette also helped me get a coherent finish with the colours, almost. I’m really not at all sure about the purple pods!
Of course, the number of colour schemes that could be used is endless and down to personal preferences or desires at any time.
I can’t just leave a mandala on the page, there has to be a background of patterns too! The result looks like a huge dish floating above a window into some kind of sea habitat. I think that’s fun, even though I’ve only just realised that!
This week’s colouring page / colouring template for Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group is full of whimsy.
I think the birds are busy using balloons to populate the twilight sky with stars and some hearts. I’m not quite sure what the tentacles are doing there, or what they may be attached to. But they may just be a reminder that Hallowe’en will be back, sooner than we think no doubt. Are those fish part of a fishy totem shoal? Or are they just floating/flying past and the pole is just a perch for the bird?
I always need some whimsy in my days, especially as the news of the world outside my inner world is always rather grim at the moment, or that’s how it seems. I think this is why so many of my drawings are whimsical these days. Partly. I think there’s something in me that has recognised that this is, perhaps, my main artistic voice, certainly when it comes to colouring pages. And perhaps my other forms of art too.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. Fanciful and fun. Whimsical and witty. With a sprinkle of magic thrown in for good measure.
Over the past few days, I’ve been creating YouTube tutorials on drawing my style of whimsical things – fish, flowers, circles filled with patterns, fungi, and leaves. So, I thought I’d use some of these for this week’s template. And for some reason, I wanted to add a fishy totem pole, or three maybe.
Whimsical things do make me smile. And with whimsical, imaginative kinds of line art, it gives permission to use any colours that seem fun. I add colour digitally, and the colours are often vibrant and cheerful when I add them to such cute drawings.
Of course, the drawing has to be completed, but you can watch me draw this section by clicking on this link. Maybe even draw along or create your own version!
As far as I am concerned, there’s never enough whimsy in life. This kind of art lets me escape into a cute world of my own making and, at the same time, take a break from the sad, bad, heartbreaking news that can flood in from all directions. Art is something I do have some control over and, for a while, I can imagine that I’m journeying in a world that has none of our earthly problems.
Art is the Adventure 