gel pens

Exploring Mark Making and Pattern #DrawWithMe

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Click on this link to view today’s video on YouTube.

I had a lot of fun with this sketchbook page. It’s well out of my ‘comfort-zone’ as there are absolutely no black lines, not even the lines that define the basic shapes.

This is inspired by illustrator Kate Sutton, whose Domestika course I started watching yesterday. And there’s another project I have on the go that is inspiring me to explore this kind of drawing.

I’ve tried this before, but felt so uncomfortable with it that I gave up very quickly. Today, I was determined not to use any black lines at all. Instead, I picked a colour palette of just four colours of Arteza EverBlend markers. For each colour, I chose a similar one from my set of Zig Writer pens.

I started by creating the collage of simple shapes using the markers, overlapping them so that the colours mixed. I was careful not to mix the pink and green; I didn’t want to make mud!

Once I was happy with the basic design, I used the Zig writers to add patterns made from simple marks. To begin with, this felt really awkward, uncomfortable, and just plain wrong. However, the more I did, the easier it became, and the more I liked what was happening. I’m so glad that I persevered!

I dug out a white gel pen to add some brighter, lighter marks and to play with the ‘stitching’ to the top right. The idea that I was using pen ‘stitching’ to connect shapes and patterns amused me.

Using the white gel pen reminded me I had other gel pens to use, and use them I did.

I love the translucency of the marker pens and the way that the patterned shapes seem to float. The use of monochrome colours in these shapes, along with white, just gives an airy, delicate feel to them. I can now see the value of this way of using no black line. I have a lot more exploring and experimenting to do. My mind is ticking over how I can make use of this in a project I’m developing at the moment.

As eager as I am to continue my explorations, I have an errand to do first. But when I return home, well, I’m going to try out some of my ideas both on paper and digitally and see where this takes me.

Work in progress Wednesday

Angela PorterLeave a comment

Yet another work in progress! Also, another gel pen drawing, this time with Zebra Sarasa 0.5 pens in vintage tones. For this drawing I used smooth, heavy-weight cartridge paper. This paper has more texture than the bristol board and the pens didn’t work as well on this.

The colours are rich and intense, and the palette will work well with the Arteza Vintage gel pens. I like the finer line of these pens. I do like these pens, which I bought the same time as the Arteza ones. None of my posts are sponsored by any company, nor do I receive any products for free to review. I mention brands and names in case you’re interested in what I’m using to create art with.

I’ve had a poor night’s sleep. I don’t really know why. So, I was working on this during the insomnia hours. It kind of reminds me of layers or rock beneath the layers we walk and live on. I think the geology lectures I’ve been listening to have had an unconscious influence! The lower layers definitely have an intensely metamorphic feel to them.

Working with colour to draw is something new for me. I’ve dabbled in the past but always reverted to black quickly. I know understand that the colours were just too bright, or perhaps my taste in colours was for the bright tones. I still love those kinds of intense colours, but there’s something alluring about these vintage tones that I seem to need to use and express.

Always growing, developing, experimenting, learning and changing. Sometimes these changes are subtle with the art looking the same but somehow different. At other times they are sizeable changes. Sometimes these changes are a temporary diversion to explore the new. Even these temporary changes have an influence on my artistic voice.

Watercolour Tiles

Angela PorterLeave a comment

Another day, another migraine type headache. Nothing helped yesterday, not even painkillers. I woke up with the same headache, though some painkillers did ease it somewhat, eventually. Enough that I could go out for a short walk around my local cemetery.

I needed to create in order to create a mindful space within me. So, I thought a collection of square tiles may be a nice thing to do. A way to practice with watercolours and to do a bit of pattern making on them.

I used a square template to mark the squares out, not very evenly it has to be said. Faint pencil lines that would, hopefully, become part of the watercolour.

I used Daler-Rowney Aquafine Smooth watercolour paper. That shows how little I was thinking clearly. I really don’t like working on this paper at all. The watercolours dried too quickly, and when they were just wet enough to drop more wet colour into them, they just didn’t flow and mix as I like them to.

I tried using watercolour pencils, with similar frustrating results. So much for this being a meditative, mindful, relaxing exercise!

Oddly, they all look fairly OK in the photo.

Once they’d dried, I used a mixture of metallic silver, silver glitter and white gel pens to add patterns to each tile. I could’ve used white gouache and/or pearlescent watercolours or pearlescent acrylic inks with a fine brush. However, by this point I was so frustrated with brush and wet media that I just wanted to draw. So I did.

It may not be a wonderful, finished, polished piece of art – it was never meant to be. It was practice.

What I may do, on a larger scale, is to heat emboss a design in white and then add watercolours. I can do this using a Sakura glue pen or a versamark embossing pen with embossing powders. Maybe not today, but another day. And I need to use a different paper to the Aquafine to avoid frustration.