drawing

Entangled in 3D…

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Angela Porter Entangled Tetrahedron 1_19th Sept 2017

I’ve had an idea rattling around the old brainbox for a while – to use 3D nets and entangle them to form a 3D entangled drawing.

Ok, the patterns don’t wrap around all of the edges, however, on all but one the patterns kind of match up even though they’re not the same.

I’ve not coloured or added shading to the drawing (which I scanned and printed out so I could keep the original for future use) as I just wanted to see if it was something that would work.

I think it does work.  I suspect my yuletide decorations may be made from such things, with plenty of sparkle and glimmer!  Not to mention the more spooky ones for Hallowe’en…

Fancy having some to colour and construct?  Let me know!

Making stamps and more Autumnly Entangled

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Stamp Carving

I woke up the other morning, Thursday I think it was, and had the overwhelming desire to try my hand at carving stamps from rubber blocks again.

I enjoyed doing lino cuts when I was doing my A level in art over a decade ago, well apart from the way my finger and wrist joints would hurt after doing this.  So, I thought I’d have a go with soft rubber, and above you can see the first of my efforts.

The weird flower was the first, and I’m not happy with it, though I think it would be fine as a background stamp in mixed media work, maybe.

The other circular stamps followed fairly quickly after that one, but the stylised thistle was one I did this morning. The white rubber discs are made by Essdee, and I used lino and stamp carving tools by the same company.

The leaf, heart and geometric patterns I carved this morning from a different kind of pink rubber: Speedy Carve from Speedball.

Both kinds of carving material were easy to work with, perhaps a little too soft for my liking, but only time will tell.  The only other tools I used were a pencil to draw the designs on the stamp carving material and a craft knife to cut the Speedy Carve.  Oh, and some sepia Archival Ink from Ranger, and an acrylic stamp block for the circular discs to adhere to while I stamped with them.

Autumnly Entangled

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Two more, drawn on paper coloured with Distress Oxide inks, with highlights of white gel pen and metallic gel pens added.  Also, the bottom one has had colour added using Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Pens from Kuretake and also some Prismacolour pencils.

I still have two more 10cm x 14cm sheets of coloured paper to draw on… so at least two more to come!

Autumnly Entangled 2

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AutumnlyEntangled2_AngelaPorter_14Sept2017

This morning, I spent time with pens and paper coloured with Distress Oxides, and this entangled creation appeared.  I may need to add some shading to it … but that can wait as I think I have a big vector drawing to do and that will take all of my concentration.

Autumnly Entangled 1

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AutumnlyEntangled1_AngelaPorter_14Sept2018

I’ve had a busy couple of days with this and that and the other.

Yesterday and today it’s been learning about vector files, images, graphics and how to get my artwork done as that kind of file and to a maker so she can use them to laser etch her products – more about this when I have photos of the projects!

Lots of head scratching, googling, and finally settling on downloading a program that works in vector graphics.  So, a lot of learning to do with that, but it’s easy, intuitive and makes a lot more sense than Adobe Illustrator; I chose Serif’s Affinity Designer.  I don’t know if it is as sophisticated as Illustrator, but I can’t see me wanting to get to that kind of level – I love Autodesk Sketchbook Pro way too much for that!

Certainly a different skill set is needed, but I’ll get there as I usually do.

After all the time on the ‘puter, I had the need to return to traditional media, and the photo above is what I’ve spent my evening doing.

First, the paper (approx. 14cm x 21cm), along with a few other sheets, was coloured with distress oxide inks.  Then I drew on it using a mixture of pens.

It was really nice to do, the colours of all the sheets are rather autumnal, and I’m looking forward to drawing on the others over the coming days.

Playing with colour

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Angela Porter 29 August 2017Angela Porter 29 August 2018 A

I’ve been quiet around ‘tinternet for a couple of weeks – problems with my mood, instead of starting many new things I’ve been spending time organising a reference collection of my favourite patterns and designs of things like fungi and buildings and creatures and so on and its very much a work in progress!  The process of going through the familiar and organising them is comforting to me …

I have done some new drawings for the Eerie project for Dover – not many left to do for the book, then the hard work is deciding which two I would like to colour in the most, always a problem.

Plans are afoot for a change in my online presence too … more as that happens!

The above images show one artwork I started last night and finished this morning.  Most probably about 8 or 10 hours of work.  Distress Oxides, Cosmic Shimmer watercolours and a Sakura Glaze pen were used. When light strikes the artwork at just the right angle, the metallics and iridescents bring the artwork to life; it’s like it lights up all by itself.  A joyful feeling for sure as I look at it.

It was nice to work with colour and the more traditional media rather than digital art, though, yet again, I noticed how drawing with the Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface Book are having an effect on my work on paper.

One thing I did enjoy was adding the sparkle and shimmer to the artwork, something I’ve not found out how to do digitally (or even if you can!).

So, I now have satisfied a need in me to work with colour and pen and I can turn my attention back to the illustrations for the Eerie book, and on to other things after that is done.

For today, I head off soon for counselling/EMDR, and to have my acrylic nails removed once again as they really do get in the way of me typing, art-ing, using my phone…and no doubt I’ll do some drawing while I have a late lunch between nail removing and counselling.

Cirque-doodle, mandala, zendala

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Sometimes, the simplicity of monochrome is enough!  Of course, there’s touches of gold , which don’t photograph very well.

The mandala, cirquedoodle, zendala, design was drawn using Sakura Micron and Uniball Unipin pens on a circle of mixed media paper that is approx. 4.25″ in diameter.

Today’s Entangled doodle

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This is today’s little piece of art; it’s 14cm x 10cm, drawn on natural coloured mixed media paper from Claire Fontaine.  I used a mixture of Sakura Micron and Uniball UniPin pens, along with a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen, a brown Kuretake Zig Clean Colour Brush Pen with a damp paint brush, and some dots of metallic copper paint.

It’s Friday…

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AngelaPorter11Aug2017

This week, I’ve been doing my best to get images drawn for the Eerie themed book.  Various appointments and just generally feeling down and unwell have got in the way, and today hasn’t been much better.

I have spent sometime drawing a ‘DoodleWorlds’ image, which is sitting in a file on my computer to be re-drawn and so on.

The zentangle kind of thingy above is something I’ve done not too long ago.  I drew the design using Sakura Micron pens and a white Sakura Gelly roll pen on natural coloured Mixed Media Paper from Claire Fontaine.  The paper size is 10cmx14cm.

Last weekend, I created this bit of art work:

deviantart-17-birthday

It was deviantART.com’s 17th Birthday and a challenge was set there.  I wanted to have a go as it was a bit of a challenge, it let me try out new techniques/ides with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and my Surface Book and Surface Pen, but mostly it’s because deviantART is where various editors/publishers/artwork managers have found my art and engaged me to do work for them.  That is the reason I was able to leave teaching, how I’m able to look after my mental health more, and to find a different way of life as well as being able to heal.

Thank you deviantART! And thank you everyone else who has believed in me, my work, and given me opportunities, even when I’ve not believed in myself, my ability, or the quality of my work.  And thank you everyone who has bought the books and stamps and so on … I am so grateful.

Coloring Day – 2 August 2017

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Angela Porter National Colouring Day 2018 colouredSmall

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!

Doodles and zentangles…not digital!

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29July2017_AngelaPorter_Minis

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)