Have a wonderful day, and find even a few minutes to colour, relax, unwind and calm!
Here’s my finished version of my Coloring Day Template 2017. I’ve enjoyed colouring it, muchly, but now need to turn my attention back to drawing eerie lineart for Dover Publications.
Oh, I coloured it using my Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Book in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. It took around 15 hours or so to complete, I think; I lost time while doing it!
The day be soon upon us! National Coloring day in the USA, but that can apply to the whole world!
In celebration, I’ve created a free coloring template, a partly coloured version of which you can see above. You can get the template by visiting my facebook page, just click on this link to go directly to the post – Angela Porter Illustrator.
Have fun! I have been – lost several hours colouring in the template, and it’s only about half done, if that! Yes, I’ve been doing this one digitally, well partly. The mandala was drawn using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, printed out, and then the doodles and zentangles and so on were drawn using a Sakura Micron Pen. Scanned the finished image in, cleaned it up in Sketchbook Pro, then started to colour it digitally, and I actually like how the colouring is turning out. I’m finally getting to a stage where I can say I like what I’m doing … for this style of drawing at least. Somehow, I think that bold, bright colours with high contrast shadows and highlights to create a strong illusion of depth/dimension is me, and I perhaps need to forgo the desire to do ‘watercolours’…we’ll see in the fullness of time!
That’s right! Not digital, but drawn using Pitt Artist Pens from Faber-Castell.
Something inside me told me I needed a break from playing around with digital art, and that my pen wielding skills needed a bit of a dusting off.
If anything, drawing digitally has resulted in me being a bit more confident and fluid with my pen strokes. I also realised that it’s a lot easier for me to work out designs on paper (though I’m not happy with all of the drawings above – a bit out of practice, maybe).
I’m my latest drawings for the Dover Publications project, I have been drawing out the bare bones of a sketch on paper, scanning in and then working on it digitally. That has helped me with size and layout of the design for sure.
This makes me hanker after a Surface Studio even more, as I’d be able to work on a digital image at a 1:1 scale for A4 drawings at the very least.
It’s not easy for me, it seems, to get my brain around the the fluidity of scale of drawing digitally as compared to the fixed scale on paper.
All the same, I really enjoyed wielding a pen with creativity on paper rather than screen. It has it’s own pleasures, and challenges, including having to work with the mark you make when you put ink directly on paper; there’s no easy ‘erase button’ to be used! So, it’s more about going with the flow and the creative opportunities that the permanency of ink results in (creative opportunities being the positive way to view ‘mistakes’; as I was once told, there’s no mistakes in art, only happy accidents!).
Oh, the boxes on the images. Well, I do intend to scan these in individually and create files for printing out, the boxes being there where a greeting or message or quote can be placed.
Also, each drawing is approx. 4″ x 4″ (10cm x 10cm)
I’ve decided to do my best to be brave and confident and use my own drawings and designs in my mixed media work. The poppy seed heads and the ‘zentangle’ patterns are drawn by myself.
The inchie with the quote on – creative journey – is milky as the Glossy Accents on the tile hasn’t dried yet, but it will dry clear and glossy.
Here’s a list of the media I used:
I’ve completed the six tiles I cut from a single piece of mixed-media paper that I had coloured using Distress Oxide inks.
Next, I used Faber-Castell Pitt artist pens to draw the designs and add the patterns on each tile.
To add depth to the designs, I used Inktense pencils and Faber-Castell’s Albrecht Durer Watercolour pencils with a water brush.
Finally, I used either iridescent/metallic watercolour paints or a metallic gel pen to add some shimmering, shining details to each.
I really enjoyed doing these; again, they’re a little different to a lot of the work I’ve done for colouring books, so it’s nice to explore different ways of creating.
The thicker black lines I’m using at this time mean my art reminds me a little of stained glass and also of lino cuts. I do like the very bold lines; it almost seems like I’m making a statement.
Today, I’ve taken a bit of a break from drawing doodle art and played with Distress Oxides and other media. The photo above shows just a couple of the small pieces of art I’ve created.
The top two are drawn on Strathmore Bristol paper with a vellum surface which was prepared with Distress Oxide inks brushed on using a stencil brush. That worked really nicely! I used a Faber-Castell Pitt Artists pen to draw the design on and then I used Inktense pencils to deepen colours and add shading, before adding just a few metallic highlights here and there. I really enjoyed drawing these ones, and I have some more pieces of the inked paper ready to draw on – that’s the rest of my evening sorted then!
The bottom two are from some experimenting I did earlier in the day. Both were drawn using a Sakura Glaze pen. I used Derwent Color Soft pencils to add colour to the design drawn on Kraft paper, and Inktense pencils with a damp brush on the other.
I also had some 3D Crystal Lacquer made by Sakura Hobby Craft arrive today, so I added dots of that to various elements in the bottom two to see what it’s like.
I have been trying out watercolouring with the Distress Oxides, and they end up with a finish that is similar to gouache. I’m not sure I like using them in this way, however.
Today, I picked up the first 12 colours in the new Distress Oxide inks from my fabulous local art shop – Dandie Crafts. I’ve been looking forward to getting them since I saw them launched by Tim Holtz just prior to and during the Creativation 2017 craft show.
The above image is a typical ‘Angela-doodle’ drawn using Sakura Micron and UniBall UniPin pens on a background prepared using the new Distress Oxide inks. Before I let you know what I think of them, here’s a little bit about them.
The Distress Oxide inks are designed by Tim Holtz and made by Ranger. This is the description of them from the Ranger website:
Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Ink Pads are water-reactive dye & pigment ink fusion that creates and oxidized effect when sprayed with water. Use with stamps, stencils, and direct to surface. Blend using Ink Blending Tools and Foam. Re-ink using Distress Oxide Reinkers.
My first job on opening my ink pads was to test them out on different papers so I gained an idea of the colours they’d be, as well as how they react with water. To create these test swatches I stamped two ‘feathers’ with each colour on the paper/card. I then used an ink blending tool to smear some colour onto the paper. Next, I used a wet paintbrush to add water to the second feather before swiping the paintbrush across the smear and adding droplets of water to it.
Here’s the inks on watercolour paper:
Secondly, here they are on Kraft card:
Finally, I made test swatches on black paper:
The first thing I noticed was how easy it was to stamp with the Distress Oxide inks. The original Distress Inks tend to stamp ‘blotchy’ – that’s the nature of them though! These, because of the pigment portion of the formulation, stamp with a more solid line. Not only that, the Distress Oxide inks are much more opaque than Distress Inks.
Blending the Distress Oxide inks using a mini Smoothie blending sponge by Crafter’s Companion was an absolute dream! The inks went on so smoothly and, because they stay wetter for longer than Distress inks. Admittedly, I may not have picked the best paper for applying the Distress Oxide inks to, and there was some unevenness in the blend/smear, but it was much better than I’d manage to get with Distress Inks, unless I used a stencil brush to apply the Distress Inks very thinly and build the layers up.
I don’t think I let the inks dry for long enough before adding water as I did note that some of the pigment moved when I brushed the feather with a wet brush, and the smear. That may be because I used a brush rather than using a spray bottle to mist water on them.
It took longer for the Oxide effect to develop as I’d added more water than a misting would have, but the colours kind of soften on the white watercolour paper, and brighten on the Kraft and black papers. The opacity of the pigment ink is increased by the addition of water, and the colours really seem to glow.
I then just had to go and create a background using the Distress Oxide inks. I used mini ink blending tools this time, and I used Strathmore Bristol paper with a vellum surface. The inks didn’t want to blend all that smoothly on this surface, however I wasn’t really too concerned as I just wanted a background to draw on. When I was happy with the colour blend, I did mist the surface with water to bring up the Oxide effect, as well as to have a few small water splatters on the surface.
The Distress Oxide colours are much more ‘me’ than the original Distress Inks. They’re so creamy and rich in colour thanks to the pigment part. I also love the suede-like feel that results after a light misting with water.
I’m really happy with these new inks and I look forward to experimenting with them more. I plan to use them like watercolour paints, I want to try using stencil brushes with them to blend the colours out, and no doubt I’ll find other ways to make colourful backgrounds for me to draw upon.
I’ve done it! I’ve worked out how to easily add a watermark to my scanned artwork to try to protect it as I share it online.
Autodesk Sketchbook Pro made it a doddle to do and so I’ll make sure I do this in the future.
To draw this one I found, after much searching, my Rotring Rapidograph pens. It’s been a while since we were acquainted with each other, but yesterday was the day! I’d forgotten what a joy they can be to draw with. Also, unlike the UniBall UniPin or Sakura Micron pens I generally favour to draw with, I don’t wreck the nibs in a short space of time. I must press a lot harder than I think I do with them…
So, onwards to more art. A lesson learned about protecting my ownership of my art and some control of it when I release an image of it into the wilds of the world weird web.
The rant
Over the past week or so I’ve been feeling incredibly stupid and naive. I’m quite proud of the art I create; the process of creation brings me a lot of pleasure and I like to share images so others can share in the pleasure when they see the art and appreciate it.
I’ve had to think long and hard about whether to share my drawings on the internet, and if I continue do how I stop them from being treated as if they are free for all and sundry to print and use as they wish.
My art is how I make an income now, having gone self-employed last summer. Some of my recent images I shared and naively thought that I’d be able to put them together in some kind of publication to sell.
That is now impossible for many of the images as they’ve been declared and shared as ‘freebies’, even though I never gave express permission that this was the case. I deliberately uploaded images of relatively poor quality and small size to discourage this from happening, and it’s still happened.
I feel really upset and rather low as tam really proud of my latest drawings and I thought they’d be of some commercial value.
Now they are of no value, to me or to anyone else.
Stupidly, naively, I forgot that as soon as you post something on the internet, you lose control of it, you seemingly lose your rights as the copyright holder.
A lesson to learn for me. And I’m trying to remind myself constantly that the more I draw in this style, the better I get at it and the more ‘Angela’ it becomes.
Despite this, I still want to share some of my drawings, and I think the best way to do this will be to colour the images in someway to discourage this happening again. I know it won’t discourage the determined die hards who have no conscience, but I do hope that it will make others stop and think about the consequences of their actions.
I do, from time to time, draw images that I do offer as ‘freebies’ via my facebook page, and I always say they are such. What I don’t do I tell people that something is NOT a ‘freebie’, and I suspect even if I said that there would be some who would ignore it.
I hope that I have found a way round this…and that perhaps these words will make people stop and think.
What I’m trying to do is to learn from this, to take it as a message that I need to protect my work more when I put it on the internet, and to take it that the last few images I have been serving my apprenticeship in a slightly different art style as I make it ‘mine’, and keep work back that won’t be seen unless it’s published or in a portfolio for prospective employers.
If anyone has any suggestions to help me with this, apart from to never show my work (which I generally don’t do if I’m working for a publisher, but even then I do the odd sneak peek), I’d appreciate it greatly.
Rant over.
Rainbow Doodles
So, one of the things I’ve done to try to protect my work is to colour it in. It takes way too long to break out media to colour in everything I draw, so I’ve made use of Autodesk Sketchbook to apply a rainbow colour gradient to my drawings.
I’ve also uploaded them to artwyrd.deviantart.com so they become watermarked as an added bit of protection. I need to learn how to do that somehow…
I quite like the rainbow gradients.
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And here’s the badge for the award 🙂 Thank you to feedspot.com for including my blog in the Top 20 Doodle Blogs on the Web!
Art is the Adventure 