I’ve just finished this drawing; the first zendoodle/zentagle type drawing I’ve done in a while. I enjoyed drawing it – drawing always is an enjoyment.
I’ve temporarily coloured the background; I will be colouring it in ‘properly’ as time goes along.
Materials used :
I have scanned it in and cleaned the image up and created a transparent file I can work on digitally.
I’ve just completed this dangle design, which features a very appropriate message.
Learning to recognise when something is good enough has been a hard lesson for me, but bit by bit I’m getting there. The ‘practice makes perfect’ adage puts a lot of pressure on a person, so I much prefer the use of the word ‘progress’ instead of perfect.
No one has ever picked up a pen or pencil or other tool for the first time ever and created a perfectly wonderful piece of art. It takes time, patience, and, above all else, practice.
Mistakes are made along the way, or I prefer to call them ‘happy accidents’ or ‘creative opportunities’. They allow me to reflect on what I have done, to learn, and to improve or extend myself as a result. Sometimes, the happy accidents teach me something I never would’ve come up with, a surprisingly pleasing result which becomes part of my artistic vocabulary. Sometimes, they result in me changing what the artwork was meant to be into what it needs to be.
To be flexible and not too invested in a definite artistic outcome, is another lesson that imperfections, happy accidents, or creative opportunities have taught me. Learning to go with the flow and work with what happens instead of fighting it and trying to force it into what I wanted it to be, which often then results in a horrible mess of a work.
I’m happy with this ‘dangle’. If I drew it again, there are bits I’d change. If I were to colour it again, there’s bits I’d change. However, it’ll do as it is.
I sketched the design on dot grid paper, scanned it and then drew it digitally using my Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface.
Next, I printed it out on watercolour paper and used some Tombow Dual Brush Pens to colour it. I didn’t use many colours at all; the blender brush helped me to achieve colour gradients.
I did use some Copic Multiliner SP pens to add some more details to the printed image and coloured image; I regret the stippling on the centre pot, but it’ll do. I’ll remember next time to use the little lines for added shading!
My book, A Dangle A Day, due out in September 2018 and available for pre-order now, will show you how, step by step, you can create similar dangle designs.
Today, I recieved a full set of the Tombow ABT Dual Brush pens and I’ve managed to swatch them out in my BuJo.
So far, so good. They ‘stick’ a bit more to the paper in my Leuchtturm 1917 dot grid BuJo than the Zig Art and Graphic Twin pens or my Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens, but I like the colour palette. I’m sure I will get a lot of use out of them for sure.
Talking of my BuJo, I’m going to bravely share some of the ‘spreads’ I’ve done and share some of my thoughts on BuJo and how it’s working for me so far.
There’s a lot of stuff out there about bullet journaling, and a good place to start is bulletjournal.com, the website of Ryder Carroll, credited with starting the bullet journal system.
What attracted me to this system is it’s total flexibility and how you’re encouraged to make it work for you.
Rather than planning my day out, other than appointments or important dates, I use mine more as a journal where I record what I have done that day.
I find lists of things to-do can be counter productive for me; if I don’t tick things off I can be very hard on myself. However, by recording what I have done, that just feels far more positive to me.
So, I do have a couple of ‘trackers’ in my BuJo for things I would like to do on a daily basis.
Notice I wrote ‘I’d like to do’, not ‘I must’. That takes a lot of pressure off me, as well as the guilt I can have if I don’t get done what I thought I could get done in a day. I’m far more ‘productive’ if I just get along with things. I’m lucky to have the luxury of doing this as I’m self-employed, as well as being an arty, creative person.
So, here are my trackers, as they appear in my BuJo:
I’ve noticed I have some colouring to do on some of them. I decided I’d like my trackers to span a whole year, which seems to be working fine for me now. I also wanted to add some of my favourite quotes to remind me of why I want to keep track of these things and their importance to me.
I decided to add the quotes in boxes, and connect them with strings of little ‘doodles’ called dangles (the book I’m working on – A Dangle A Day – is spilling over into other areas of my creative life!) I like how they’re not all symmetrical in shape and arrangement.
I like how I can use my BuJo for daily practices of all kinds of things from drawing to hand lettering. I can keep lists and notes on things that grab my attention. I keep pages where I write down notes and ideas; not to-do lists, just notes to myself, or things I need to ask others about.
I have sections with botanical doodles/sketches, a list of sizes of picture frames and mats, the size of card blanks. I have examples of hand lettering alphabets, with notes about them. I have dangle directories too, a result of my work on A Dangle A Day.
The index is invaluable in helping me keep track of the collections, especially when they occur over multiple pages with other stuff in between.
Of course, I also have weekly ‘diary’ pages, and I’ve been trying out different formats for them, including these:
I’ve changed my monthly view for April, and here it is:
The one for march didn’t have any room to write appointments or events in. This one certainly does. Not sure what I’m going to put on the right hand page yet, though I couldn’t resist drawing part of a mandala there.
I’ve found it is easy to get lost in bullet journaling; especially the creative parts. That’s fine when it doesn’t take me away from things that must be done, such as doing books. But it’s a different way of practicing drawing, hand lettering, organising thoughts/interests/memories/ideas and so on rather than in multiple books (journal, diary, sketchbook, note book) – they can all go in one book.
If you’d like to see any of these, let me know and I may share some, or little tutorials on how I draw stuff.
The flexibility and the ability to change what doesn’t work easily is the biggest draw, as well as the ‘permission’ to do what you need to do, what is right for you. There’s no shoulds or shouldn’ts about it.
The other thing is not to get hung up on perfection. I get things wrong in it all the time, or don’t like what I’ve done. These can be ‘fixed’ by the use of correction tape or sticking a new piece of paper over the mistake if it’s a biggie. I just have to remind myself it’s a work in progress, it’s hand-made (well the content is if not the notebook itself), and it will help me, I hope, to accept that something is ‘good enough’ without it having to be perfect in all ways.
I already really dislike the heading for my Mood Tracker, but it’ll do for now. I may change it with paper and sticky stuff. Or I’ll just leave it so I can see how my hand lettering progresses over time.
I’ve been hard at work on my ‘A Dangle A Day’ book and felt I needed a break from the computer screen. As much as I love working digitally, I believe it does the soul good to work in different ways from time to time. A change is as good as a rest, it is said, and also a change can get the creative juices flowing!
A trip to Hobbycraft in Newport, Gwent, yesterday had me buying some A4 Daler-Rowney Mixed Media boards.
These are 1.4mm thick and sturdy board forms of their mixed media paper. The board did warp when I added tissue paper with matt medium, and it’s still a little wobbly today.
The pictures shows how far I’ve got for now. I’m letting the little drops of copper and golden glitter dry as I take a break from it to decide if I need to do any more to it.
The image I drew and then coloured using Distress Inks.
I’ve enjoyed getting a little inky, painty and messy for a change.
I designed this colouring template for the facebook group Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans for them to post coloured versions today.
This is my coloured version. I drew on paper with pen, but coloured it in using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface book using my Surface Pen.
It’s been nearly a month since my last blog post. The reasons? Focusing on a book at the moment. It’s called A Dangle a Day: Lettering Alphabets and Seasonal Designs with Charms , though there’s no cover image for the book yet on Amazon it is available for pre-order. It’s not a colouring book per-se, it’s more of a tutorial book, but colouring does play a big part of course.
It’s a new direction for me, I’m learning new things about publishing, and enjoying the challenge. I have to focus on this project for now, and not sure I can do ‘sneak peeks’ yet, but when I can, I will!
I do have another colouring book to do after this one …more about that later on.
The other reason is that I’ve been unwell. Nothing serious, thought to be a ‘viral wheeze’ (which is affecting me like asthma) but it’s got worse again, and is stopping me sleeping properly and lacking energy to do more than what I need to contractually do.
Finally, today my reMarkable tablet has arrived, and I am so pleased with it!
I’ve had a few worrisome moments that I may have decided on something that wouldn’t be of much use to me, or wouldn’t work for me (as was the case with the Slate).
I need not have feared.
Although I’d like a bigger screen, one that is almost or a little bigger than A4 in size, the experience of writing or drawing on the reMarkable is as close to pen and paper as I think you can get. The sound of the pen on the screen is even reminiscent of the sound of pen on paper.
The friction between the screen and the pen tip means it feels like writing on paper too.
A totally pleasurable sensory experience.
Setting up was easy enough, you’re walked through it by the device and the website.
Using it after that is easy too, it’s meant to be.
I love all the different templates for different paper types that are available; there’s even music manuscript paper, as well as an isometric grid!
I have looked at the simple sketch/doodle I’ve done on the screen on the Surface, and ok, it’s pixelly, which you’d expect from a 100dpi png image. The page size is 8 x 10.5 inches (approx) which is perfect! It means I can export an image from the reMarkable to my puter and into Autodesk Sketchbook, adjust the resolution and then use the sketch as a basis for a finished drawing.
No scanning.
I detest scanning … but it’s now not necessary as long as I use the reMarkable.
Ok, there’ll still be times when I’ll need to scan work in, such as finished coloured works of art and so on, but as far as sketching out drawings and so on, well no more!
A plus side of this is that there could be a lot less paper ‘floating’ around my home! That would be great, there’s a big pile that is overdue for sorting and filing as it is.
Not only that, I can set up sketchbooks, yes books in the plural, on the reMarkable, so it should help me organise files on my ‘puter a bit better.
So yes, I’m happy.
Oh, did I mention that there’s different styles of pens and pencils, with different thicknesses? No? Well there is! Ok, not as many as in Autodesk Sketchbook, but enough to keep me happy.
Did I mention that the pen and surface is pressure sensitive? No? Well it is.
Lots of playing around to be done by me with it, and a lot of work to be done with it.
Yes. I’m happy. Very happy with the reMarkable.
I have a set of 13 digi stamps with a whimsical Hallowe’en Pumpkin theme available in my Etsy shop, Artwyrd.
The set includes :
Use them to create cards, or to fill a page with images for a custom colouring page, or any other craft you can think of.
Lots of drawing done over the past three or so days and I haven’t had a chance to upload these.
The set of four are approx. 4″ square and the paper has been coloured with distress inks.
The bigger one is drawn on ombre paper for ‘scrapbookers’. The central image is 6″ square. It was a bit of a ‘mare to draw; the paper isn’t absorbent and the ink takes ages to dry, which means smudging was a bit of a problem, but I’ve managed to mostly disguise it with patterns. I need to dry different pens on this paper, as I do like the colours. If I can’t find a way to draw on it, then I’ll be using it to mount other artwork on and in mixed media and card making endeavours.
Yes, it did seem a good idea at the time! It could be back to colouring all my own paper again ….
Just finished drawing this and assembling it.
I drew and edited the construction lines in Serif’s Affinity Designer. I then opened the saved file in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Book and created layers, including a mask as the top layer. Then I doodled. Printed out two copies. Cut one out, scored and folded along the grey construction lines, then assembled using Cosmic Shimmer Acrylic Glue.
Assembly was a bit of a ‘mare, and it wasn’t helped by me not scoring and folding a couple of lines, but when put together, it kind of works. Even where the edges aren’t likely to marry up nicely, the still seem to work.
One thing I will need to remember to do on the next one is to go round the cut edges with a black marker of some kind which will help those edges to blend in a bit more. Maybe.
I do rather like the heavy black lines on this one, and coloured in they’d look like stained glass!
No numbers, so it’d not really work as a d20 (20 sided die), but coloured in that maybe possible with a key of some kind.
All good fun stuff!
Yes, I am being busy with arty crafty stuff today … and it’s not ended yet as I had some soft polymer lino in the post the other day and I haven’t tried carving that yet!
Having more fun! This time a 20-sided icosohedron. And I’ve just noticed I lost the plot slightly in creating the montage above – the same image repeated, d’oh go me! First time I’ve ever done a photo montage though, so maybe I can be forgiven!
Art is the Adventure 