draw with me

Draw With Me… Zentangle Inspired Flowers, Seed Pods and Peace

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I invite you to draw this design with me. Link to today’s video tutorial on YouTube.

On the weekend, I like to do an artwork of some kind using some of the pattern or motif variations that I’ve developed in the week. This week, the seed pods and flowers just needed to be used in some way.

I thought of lettering the word ‘peace’ but decided on using the peace symbol as the focal point instead. Being born in the early 1960s, I do remember hippies, flower power and the peace movement, so popping plenty of flowers and foliage around the symbol seemed the right thing to do.

The seed pods fit in well, and the song ‘Sowing the seeds of love’ by Tears for Fears came to my mind too. so doubly fitting the message of peace.

Naturally, there are some hearts hidden in there too! And the plumptious moonberry blueberries too, adding some delicious goodness too.

The green background was a tad serendipitous. Partway through the drawing, I remembered that green is symbolic of peace and harmony, among other things. Rather fitting!

I’ve only got the skeleton of the design done. I’ve yet to decide on how to add colour, shadow and/or texture. So, I’m taking a bit of a break from it for my mind to mull things over subconsciously. I think I’d better scan the page before I do anything more to it though! Things tend to go awry when I start to add colour etc.

Draw with me … A flower border

Angela PorterLeave a comment

There are never enough flowers in my life. I’ve really enjoyed drawing flowers (and seed pods) over the past couple of days. So, I thought I’d make use of one of the flower motifs from yesterday to create a border on a page edge in my sketchbook.

I like the graphic contrast of the black background and the flowers and foliage. It’s going to be a lovely page to make notes or record thoughts about whatever I’m drawing in my sketchbook at this time.

If you’d like to see how to draw this, and follow along with me, then please take a look at today’s video on YouTube.

Draw With Me… Flower Variations

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Today is one of them days when I really needed some flowers in my life. So, I decided to create a bunch of them in my sketchbook!

I started with the one in the top left and just worked on variations as I went. I’m absolutely positive that I’ve not created all the possible variations, but these will do for now. Any number of them are starting points for more variations at another time.

There is a simple contentment in drawing simply. Focusing on the essential lines. Adding stylised and simple details, one by one. Using colour to add shadow and volume brings the line art to life.

I invite you to join me, drawing your own versions of these flowers by watching today’s YouTube video tutorial.

Draw With Me … A Zentangle Inspired Bookmark using ‘Siros’ – Part 1

Angela PorterLeave a comment

Today, I start to draw a bookmark using the tangle pattern “Siros” by Simone Menzler CZT. I’ve yet to decide what I do with the background, which is why I’ve stopped part way through.

It was lovely to spend some time drawing variations of Siros, as well as gaining confidence in the steps needed. The reverse ‘fengle’ version vexed me for a while, but I think I’ve now got it!

The large, open spaces in each Siros were perfect for adding pattern to.

Here’s today’s video on YouTube. Please click on the ‘Watch on YouTube’ button, if you’d be so kind.

Draw with me… “Siros”, a Zentangle pattern by Simone Menzel CZT

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Please click on the ‘Watch On YouTube’ option.

Siros is a lovely, stylised flower Zentangle style tangle pattern. It was deconstructed by Simone Menzel CZT.

It’s a totally new pattern to me, so in this video I share how to draw it, along with some of my explorations of the pattern.

Draw With Me … Zentangle Tangle Patterns Ginili and Gingo

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In today’s video, I do a little pattern exploration of two lovely, organic tangles. Ginili is by Randi Wynne-Parry, and Gingo is by Lisa Chang CZT. The deconstruction of the tangle patterns can be found on TanglePatterns.com.

On the face of it, they may appear to be rather different tangles. However, there are some commonalities between them. This means it was quite natural to look at them together.

I particularly enjoyed using the brown 01 Micron pen for the textural lines in the patterns. It really helps to separate the different ‘petals’ or ‘leaves’ of Ginili from each other.

Gingo, based on the lovely Ginko leaves (my favourites of all!) also benefited from the use of the brown pen. It gave a light, airy feel to the pattern.

Also, I made use of a white gel pen to add dotty highlights. Sometimes, however, I used a finger to smudge the gel ink while it was still wet to give a softer, more natural highlight.

This was a lovely way to spend a little while in my sketchbook this morning. I hope you have a look at the video and try drawing these patterns and variations too.

Draw With Me … Shattuck and Flurry Tangle Pattern Variations

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I always enjoy exploring tangle patterns and motifs. I never quite know what I’m going to end up with. Today, I stumbled upon ‘Flurry’, a tangle pattern by Suzanne McNeill CZT. It reminds me of ‘Shattuck’, which is one of my favourite tangle patterns to use as a border or ribbon filler.

So, I took a look at variations of Shattuck that I often use before having a little exploration of Flurry.

You can see these explorations, which are the top row of drawings, in today’s video on YouTube. Just click on this link.

So, as the video was uploading and processing, Used the time to draw some tripoli-style gridded patterns.

The one to the centre-right was not a happy outcome. The one to the left is much happier! It reminds me of the view through the Millenium Falcon’s windows when jumping to hyperspace, just a bit, not exactly the same. That was a fun realisation.

I didn’t do as many variations of the patterns as usual. I like the triangular shapes of the basic fragments too much.

On another positive note, I finally figured out how I can draw the tripoli style arrangement of triangles! I don’t know how long I’ve struggled with it, but finally, the penny dropped today. Huzzah!

Motif Monday – Flower Motifs #1

Angela Porter2 Comments

Keep the alliterative theme going; today is #MotifMonday! Also, happy Valentine’s Day to you all too.

A motif is something I use either for a focal point or in clusters as part of my drawing. Although motifs can form patterns, I tend to use the term for a particular design I like to use. I tend to use the word ‘fragment’ for that kind of motif that would fit into a grid (reticulum in Zentangle-ese).

As it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d start off with roses, which led to other favourite flower motifs. Along with some, hopefully helpful, suggestions about creating volume in the drawings.

I use a lot of floral, botanical, organic motifs in my artwork, so I’m looking forward to sharing some of these with you.

Talking of sharing, here’s the link to today’s video!

Template Thursday on a Wednesday and a flip-through of Whimsical Cats!

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Two videos today!

The first one is a Draw With Me as I start to draw this week’s colouring page for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans Facebook group.

This week it’s a Doodlewords meets Zentangle meets Entangled kind of affair. Can you have too much whimsical cuteness in the world?

You can see today’s Draw With Me video by clicking on this link!

While that video was uploading, the advance copies of my “Whimsical Cats” book were delivered. It’s always exciting when this happens as it’s the first time I see all of my templates put together as a book.

I thought that I’d do a flip-through to share with you as another video. You can see the flip-through by clicking on this link.

The book isn’t released yet. Here are the release dates for the USA and UK:
USA – 16 February 2022
UK – 25 March 2022

Draw with me… Doodleworlds Critters Part 2

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Yet more cute, whimsical and kawaii Doodleworlds critters! I draw them step by step in today’s video, which carries on from yesterday’s.

These are a lot of fun to draw, so much so I drew a Doodleworlds coloring page yesterday. It needs a bit of editing and tidying up, but I’ll make it available to purchase in my Etsy shop soon.