Is it a snowflake, or a stained glass window? I think it depends on the colour palette used! I started off with blues and purples to give this design a wintry, snowflake feel. However, other colours crept in. Not sure how much I like the finished coloured mandala.
If you’d like to colour this design in, then a black and white template is available exclusively to members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. Pop along and join in – they’re a really lovely bunch of people!
Feeling in a festive mood? Fancy getting a little creative? Well, there’s no better way than creating some dangle designs to decorate your own Christmas and holiday projects. They’re also a great way to practice hand lettering and drawing cute, whimsical and simple designs.
Being creative is also a great way to relax and take some time out of the hustle and bustle that can overwhelm us at this time of year. I always find it relaxing to sit down with some pens, dot grid paper and a big mug of tea (or mocha as it’s the last days of autumn here in the UK) and just draw for enjoyment. Mind you, all my drawing work is enjoyment, but drawing for just the pleasure of drawing, with no specific brief to work to is a different kind of joy for me.
I’m finding that I need a focus, a project to be creative at the moment. I’m in between contracts and need some time out as I’ve had a crazy few weeks. However, settling to do anything not connected to a contract can cause me some issues. I still feel the need to create for a purpose, and sometimes that simple joy isn’t enough. I still have some issues to work through in therapy it seems. However, I am now aware of them and can work towards releasing these limiting attitudes and behaviours.
Anyway, today, I’ve created a sheet of some examples of design elements, hand lettering and examples of dangle designs to use as is or just to inspire you. There’s plenty more to inspire you in my book “A Dangle A Day”.
My drawings today are a bit rough, ready and wobbly, as is my hand lettering. I coloured them in very loosely, not worrying about keeping inside the lines or perfect coverage or blending. Colour really does make a difference, doesn’t it? It brings the designs alive!
However, this is a page of sketches, ideas. Maybe I’ll use some of them another time, or maybe I’ll leave it as a page of drawing and hand lettering practice, a page that I enjoyed doing with no real reason other than enjoying the process of creating.
I had thought about doing a video of this page – if you’d like to see videos of me drawing pages like this, then leave me a comment.
I used a mixture of Tombow Fudenosuke brush pens and Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens to draw the designs on ClaireFontaine dot grid paper. I coloured the images digitally.
Purple is my favourite colour and I thought it would make a lovely colour to go behind this delicate, lacy mandala.
I did enjoy drawing this one, late last night. I have been out of sorts or almost a week, and I can’t seem to settle or feel enthused about anything much. However, this mandala was a pleasure to draw. It’s a familiar process, using, mostly, familiar patterns and motifs.
The familiarity in creating this mandala was soothing to me, and soothing is just what my emotions and mind need at the moment.
The colour scheme is simple: white on purple, though it did start off a pale, creamy yellow on brown kraft paper. When I’d finished drawing, those colours just didn’t seem right to me, so I played around with them until I found a combination which, at the time, pleased me.
This is the fun of working digitally. What seems a good idea at the start may not pan out upon completion. It’s easy to alter the colours or the background texture, and so many other things.
This colourway will do … for now. I may change it again as I work out what to do with all these designs I’ve created that just lurk in the depths of my hard drive.
I needed to create a cute, whimsical, simple mandala this morning (and on into the afternoon). This is what I came up with. Plenty of bright colours glowing against the dark background.
Stars and hearts are motifs that often appear in my work, as well as arches that can be like petals, sunshine or architectural. The holly leaves and berries mark this mandala as a winter one.
Digital art worked using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and Microsoft Surface Pen and Surface Studio.
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.
Art is the Adventure 