#dangledesign

Another December Dangle Design

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As one of my current goals is to improve my hand lettering I thought it would be fun to practice it with another dangle design.

For this one, I used some dangles from my book ‘A Dangle A Day’ to build the dangle designs with a wintry, Christmassy vibe to the finished design, thanks to the traditional Christmas colours of red, green and gold, along with with some blues, purples and cool pinks thrown in.

Of course, I could’ve chosen a non-traditional series of colours too, for fun. For example, the baubles on the dangles and the wreath could be done in pink, purple and blue. Whatever your decor at this time of the year it can be reflected in your colour scheme for your dangle design.

From the initial sketch to posting it on this blog it’s taken me around 6 hours to complete. 

Yes, I started with a sketch and then inked it in traditionally, pen on paper. I scanned that drawing into GiMP so I could remove the dot grid and the faint echoes of erased pencil lines. This was followed by coloring the image. For this I used marker and blender brushes . The last steps were to add texture to the design, a coloured background, a drop shadow and then the watermarks.

I used a Microsoft Surface Pen, a Microsoft Surface Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to complete the digital colouring and so on.

The charms on the dangles are a lot easier to draw than they appear, it’s the colour that really brings them to life and gives them dimension.

It’s always fun to string charms together to make these dangles. I often tend towards more symmetrical designs, but ones like this are good to do too. They all have their own charm, pardon the dreadful pun there.

I take you designing dangles step by easy step in my book ‘A Dangle A Day‘. There are lots of examples of dangle designs in the book that are ready to use, but it’s easy to rearrange things to suit your particular needs. The release date is 8 January 2019, a new style of creativity to start in the New Year, and throughout the year as all the seasons and many different celebrations are covered in the book, along with suggestions for projects using dangle designs.

B is for … a dangle design

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Angela Porter 7 Nov 2018 B is for

B is for birthday balloons, birthday cupcakes, birthday gifts…baking … beads …beautiful cats, beautiful flowers…bullet journal (BuJo)…

It’s Friday and it’s taken me a couple or three days to get this monogram dangle design finished, mainly because yesterday was another jolly jaunty day with Liz (more of that on my other blog – Curious Stops and Tea Shops – when I get to write it, that is).

Today’s dangle design features some cute kitties, as is the theme of my current series of monogram dangle designs.

I started by sketching out my ideas in pencil on dot grid paper then scanning it into Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. The next step was digitally inking in and adjusting the design. Finally, colour and texture was added to the design before adding my watermarks. My digital tools were my trusty Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio.

I like the design, not so sure about the colour choices though. I also got a bit heavy handed with the added textures in some places.

After I’ve got my other tasks done today, I think I may print this design out and colour it with my Chameleon markers and see the difference. It looks like we’re going to have some heavy rain and some strong winds here today, so cwtching up indoors with some nice arty stuff to do could be the way to spend some of the day.

Friday means it’s #dangleday. My tutorial book about designing dangles, called ‘A Dangle A Day’ is available to preorder. In it I take you step by step through simple hand lettering, monogram dangle designs, and other kinds of dangle designs, showing how you too can draw and design your own. There’s lots and lots of examples in the book as well as suggestions of how to use them as greeting cards, notecards, bookmarks and framed pictures, as well as in BuJos, planners, diaries, scrapbooks…how to use them is limited only by your creativity!

 

Inktober 2018 Day 27 ‘Thunder’ revisited

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 27 Thunder small

Much happier with my Thunder Kitty!

Re-drawn and coloured digitally. I used my usual digital tools – Microsoft’s Surface Pen and Surface Studio along with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.

Thunder Kitty had to be ginger! I couldn’t resist some rainbow stars and raindrops either, as well as adding to the dangles on the original sketch.

Nice way to spend an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon after having had a sleep – I really was exhausted after the stress for me surrounding the craft corner at the coffee morning, doing the craft morning and an evening with people, as lovely as all the people were.

The introvert me likes spending time with arty crafty projects.

Inktober 2018 – Day 4 – ‘Spell’. A Dangle Design

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 4 - Spell

I’m a day behind in the Inktober Challenge as far as the calendar goes. Not that it’s all that important methinks.

One thing I’m sure of is that the prompt for day 4 – ‘spell’ – just spoke dangle design to me, and as I’ve made Friday #dangleday, well it was perfect that I worked on it today.

I started by drawing the black line art on dot grid paper with a black Papermate Ink Joy gel pen. These pens are a joy to use, often a bit too thick a line for much of my drawing, but perfect for this one. I drew the design in one go – no pencil lines for anything, even though my letter S is a bit squiffy and there’s a wonky dangle.

I scanned my ink drawing into GiMP so I could remove the dot grid and create a transparent background for the line art.

Next it was using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to add simple colour to the design and background, then to add texture using brushes. Oh, and a drop shadow. That drop shadow helps to lift the design from the background just a bit.

I’m actually quite pleased with this design, though it was touch and go whether I’d finish it or show it at one point.

When I’d finished the line drawing I thought ‘oh no, how awful this looks!’. I didn’t give up, though. I was going to try to keep it monotone, adding shading in stipples and lines and so on, but I decided colour may be the thing that brings it to life.

I’m always doing my best to say thank you to members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans Facebook page and other colorists for bringing my line art to life by wielding their magical coloured pens and pencils and other media, and commenting on how wonderful they make my line art/coloring template/illustrations look.

I often cringe at some of the drawings I did for books just a few years ago, and often at the work I do now, today’s dangle design in it’s line art version being an example of that.

Then, when colour is added it works like a magic spell in making the art look wonderful, even the simple colouring I’ve done with this dangle design.

So, all of you colorists out there, continue to work your magic spells on the black and white coloring templates and please show me the results of your color spells on my coloring templates by tagging me on Facebook, Instagram or twitter.

This would look really nice as a bujo, planner or scrapbooks spread for Hallowe’en. I think it would make a lovely greetings card or note card. It would look fabulous printed and framed in a spooky black, glittery frame and displayed as part of some Halloween decorations. In fact, it would look great all year round for fans of magical fiction, films or TV.

What would you do with it? Where do you think it could be used? Please leave comments.

Just a reminder that my book ‘A Dangle A Day’ is available for preorder and it’s due for publication in January 2019.

#Inktober2018 #adangleaday #angelaporterillustrator