Here’s my video of my entangled design I showed yesterday. I really do have a lot to learn about making and editing videos. Still, I hope you enjoy having a look at it.
The drawing took over 55 minutes, though I’ve sped it up so it lasts around 17 minutes.
I used Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens to draw the design on a 6″ x 6″ piece of Strathmore Vellum Bristol Paper that I had previously coloured with Tim Holtz’s Distress Inks by Ranger.
On Saturday, I recorded a video of me drawing this design on 6″ x 6″ Strathmore Vellum Bristol Paper coloured with Distress Inks.
This is an example of intuitive, entangled drawing; I started in the red area and worked my way out from that point. I had no idea what kind of design I wanted to create, I just wanted to draw and lose myself in that process.
The only guides I had at the start were some pencil lines to give me a border to work within, leaving a clear, plain border around the design. However, my mind seemed to do a bit of a flip when I came to drawing the bottom left of the design; I completely ignored the pencil lines for some reason totally unknown to myself. When I realised what I was doing, it was too late to change it as I was working in pen without any sketch to guide me.
It took me over 55 minutes to do, and I’m still trying to figure out in my head how to edit the video and post it, as well as making intro and outro pages.
I know that I’m busy for the rest of today, so I’m not likely to sort the video out today. I’m hoping I’ll have a bit more time tomorrow.
I was really surprised by the kind comments people left about my first, trial video, so I will do more. I do need to work out a realistic schedule for that for myself to work to amongst other projects I want to get going when I’ve finished Spectacular Sea-Life.
Talking of which, I’ve nearly completed the third out of four coloured templates, so I’ll soon have them all done. I will post some sneak previews of them as I go.
It’s another day, another new dawn, and I needed to do some art to self-soothe. When I’m like this I nearly always draw mandalas.
Carl Jung, the psychotherapist, asserted that by drawing mandalas, we get a view of what is going on in the unconscious (subconscious) mind that we are unaware of. He also recognised that drawing a mandala gives a window into the current state of mind and emotions, it also allows ordering and healing to take place.
Yesterday’s mandala and today’s are quite different, but drawn for the same Yesterday’s mandala and today’s are quite different but drawn for the same purpose. To soothe my overwhelmed emotions, and it has helped in doing that..a bit, anyway.
I’m not entirely sure how I’d interpret my own mandala, however, but I’m sure that plenty of people will read a lot more into than I will.
I woke earlier with the need for some self-caring, self-soothing art and a mandala is the only thing that does that at times.
I created a background using various shades of pink and red Distress Inks (Worn Lipstick, Abandoned Coral and Candied Apple). I scanned it in and then drew the mandala digitally.
I needed pink as a soothing colour, so I chose a monochrome (more or less) colour scheme for the mandala.
I knew I wanted a Star Wars quote, and I chose this one from The Clone Wars. I feel a Star Wars marathon coming on later today; something else that I find soothing.
First, though, I want to get some work done on colouring another illustration for the Spectacular Sea-life coloring book. This is yet more self-soothing.
I’m currently working on one of the three illustrations I need to colour for “Spectacular Sea-Life” for Creative Haven by Dover Publications Inc. This will be my next colouring book in the Creative Haven collection.
I don’t get chance to colour many of my own drawings, which is why I LOVE to see how people approach them and use their own special brand of colouring magic to bring them to life.
That’s why I love to pop over to and wander through the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. All are welcome there and the lovely people love to share their coloured templates.
I’ve already signed the contract for my next colouring book in the Creative Haven library.
Eeek! I’ve finally gone and done it – recorded a video of me drawing. It’s a little video of a little drawing. And that means I now have a YouTube channel – Angela Porter, oddly enough.
I used my mobile phone with a swan neck holder, stand, thingy. That was stable, but my desk was a little wobbly.
The drawing itself took me around 11m30s to do, but I’ve sped the video up somewhat and added some music too.
I’ve had to do some work with social media for an organisation over the past few weeks, and being thrown in the deep end of editing videos, subtitling, turning stills into videos and so on, meant I really couldn’t put off trying this myself.
I have a lot to learn it seems. However, my toes have been dipped in the waters of videoing me ‘arting’, and they haven’t been burned too badly, yet.
I hope you find it interesting to watch me draw (with or without the music). I have no idea where this will take me – only time will tell.
For the past six or so hours I’ve been busy with various social media video creation for something I’m involved in. I needed a break from it, and that meant some arty stuff.
I had this coloured ’tile’ in my stash. It’s a 4″ x 4″ piece of ClaireFontaine mixed media paper coloured with various green Distress Inks.
I used Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens to draw the design to create a border. To add some contrast to the background, I used water, Distress Ink and a brush to add darker shades to the design. I also thought some shimmer and shine was needed on the berries and flowers. So, I used some Perfect Pearls gold spray as well as some gold and silver Cosmic Shimmer Iridescent watercolour paints.
Finally, I added some spatters of the pearlescent colour to distress the background a bit more.
One thing I didn’t do was to add some shadows to lift the border from the background. I often say that I forgot to add shadows. One day I may remember!
All the same, I’m happy with this little design. The space is perfect for a quote or sentiment I think.
I’ve had a nice couple of hours this morning playing around with drawing and paper coloured (and not coloured) with Distress Ink.
I started with drawing the border with the flower straight onto the coloured square of mixed media paper (top right).
For the middle design, I cut a rectangular panel of Distress Ink coloured mixed media paper and glued it to another piece of coloured paper. Then, I decorated the panel along with some simple patterns spilling onto the background.
The bottom right design uses a square piece of plain paper with a small rectangle cut from some Distress Inked paper. I used a die with a stitched detail to cut this panel out along with a Sizzix Big Shot die cutting machine.
I’m not at all fussed on the stitched detail in this case. However, I do like the contrast of the coloured panel against the white background.
I do have a fair few pieces of paper coloured with Distress Inks, so I think some fairly quick, simple and soothing designs will be done over the next day or several.
Not sure what I’ll do with them yet. If you have any helpful suggestions, leave a comment! Also, leave a comment to let me know which design is your favourite.
Yesterday was a crazy busy day with no time for art, let alone blogging!
This morning, I finally had some time to myself. As it’s Friday I wanted to do a dangle design, and I ended up doing four!
I cut the card into the wrong dimensions to create a card, so I thought I’d just make use of the pieces I had and make some custom card blanks and envelopes for them another time.
I coloured the pieces of card with Distress Inks in shades of blue and green. I used Chipped Sapphire, Tumbled Glass, Broken China, Evergreen Bough, Cracked Pistachio and Salty Ocean in various combinations.
These colours gave the card a frosty kind of feel, so I went with some snowy, icy, wintry designs.
I drew the designs and completed the hand lettering with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens, which are waterproof.
Plain black lines on the coloured background did look a tad lacking. So, I added some shimmer and colour using Cosmic Shimmer watercolour paints.
I’m not so fussed on the ‘Let it snow’ design. However, I am quite pleased with the others.
I am going to mount them as greeting or note cards. However, the designs would look charming in a BuJo, journal, planner, diary or scrapbook. They could easily be adapted to make bookmarks too, or place cards for a special meal.
I hope you’ll give drawing these designs a go, or use them as inspiration for your own projects. I’d love to see what you create – please tag me on social media so I don’t miss them!
If you’d like to know more about dangle designs and have some guidance and inspiration for them, then my book ‘A Dangle A Day’ is a good place to start.
It’s been nice to have a couple of hours to indulge myself in art. The past four weeks or so have been crazy busy with other projects being quite demanding of my time, mind and energy. However, they will soon be over and my focus can return, properly, to art.
I thought I’d use the coloured paper from yesterday in some digital art.
Art is the Adventure 