Spending a lazy Sunday morning (and early afternoon) digitally colouring this drawing and using it as an exercise in learning more about different kinds of brushes in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio are my other tools for this, though the image was drawn with a Lamy Fountain pen on Rhodia dot grid paper.
I’m finally feeling more settled than I have been all week. Just in time for EMDR tomorrow! Typical. Still, it’s nice to feel settled for sure.
Two pals sitting in a galaxy of bright yellow celandine stars. Two pals that happen to be my two favourite animals – cat and raven.
Drawn with a Lamy fountain pen on Rhodia dot grid paper then edited and coloured digitally using my trifecta of Microsoft Surface Pen, Microsoft Surface Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Simple colouring for a simple but sweet, cute and whimsical image.
I don’t know about you, but watching a beautiful sunrise or sunset lifts my spirits somewhat. Sometimes the experience makes me cry, sometimes with the beauty of it, sometimes releasing some of the stuff going on inside of me. Either way, I find myself relaxing and breathing more easily as I watch the sun set or rise.
It’s something I don’t do often enough. Not just watch the sun rise or set, but spend time in nature. Walking where I can hear birds sing. Paddling in the surf where sea meets land. Feeling the wind in my hair.
When I need to do it most is when I’m least likely to do any of these things. People scare me. Being on my own with people around when I’m emotionally and mentally vulnerable scares me. Being on my own where there’s no people around scares me. Growing up I was always scared and anxious. I always tried to get away from family to somewhere where there was no one who could pick on me. Yet when I got somewhere I’d be so nervous and anxious and scared that I’d end up returning home and then usually hiding away in my bedroom.
If I think about going out to watch a sunset, walk along a beach, sit in nature and draw/write when I most need it to soothe my emotions and mind, the inner critic pipes up in my mother’s voice saying ‘why do you want to bother to do that? what’s the point of it?’ That voice still has power at these times, the times when I really do need to ignore it but don’t have the strength to do so.
I need to fight back. I’ve never fought back, well rarely. I have rarely had ‘no’ in my vocabulary. After over fifty years of life, that voice still has power over me, still robs me of what strength I have.
It’s on notice though – I’ve just recognised you and have worked out what you are doing and your time in my head and heart is now limited.
It’s Friday, so today is both furbaby friday and dangle day, so it’s quite fitting that I have, once again, combined a furbaby and a dangle in one design. I drew the design on Rhodia Dot Grid paper using Uniball Unipin pens and then digitally coloured it using the usual Microsoft Surface Pen and Studio along with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Looking at it now, I think I missed an opportunity to attach the dangle to the cat’s tail. I also didn’t add shadows, and I’m not too sure about the circles on the cat’s coat. Also, the cat looks rather ‘flat’.
‘A Dangle A Day’ is a tutorial book I wrote and illustrated to show how you too can create dangle designs and was published earlier this year.
I’ve had a day. My mood is quite low still – sad and teary – and not feeling that I’d be able to do work for the book at a good enough standard. Also, my quick errand this morning turned into a 3 hour marathon!
After cooking a veggie-rich pasta I tried to settle to work, but ended up creating this mandala.
Part way through the process, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro encountered unspecified problems and had to shut down. I managed to recover the image, but it saved it at a resolution of 100dpi. So any chance of me uploading this to RedBubble or Society6 has gone unless I choose to re-draw and re-colour it.
That’s frustrating and a little disheartening. I’m too tired now to think about it.
I’m not sure I’ve chosen the right background colour. I’ve also realised I’ve not added highlights and shadows either. Maybe I’ll return to do that another time.
I used the usual trio of Microsoft Surface Pen and Studio along with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
Now, it’s time to put the recycling out for collection tomorrow and then watch The Crimes of Grindlewald. I missed it in the cinema so … time to watch a DVD of it.
A cute kitty to start the day with a bit of advice for self-care.
More of something for me to work towards – reaching out to a friend when I’m having a tough time with my mental/emotional wellbeing. Still a valid bit of advice.
I’m still not quite right today, feeling emotional and fragile still. I still need to get some work done, after an errand or two this morning. I think it’s a day for lots of tea and also drawing with pen and paper so I can sit in/on bed and work.
I still don’t know how EMDR could’ve floored me this week. It all seemed so gentle and nothing much came up during the session. Lots of body stuff for sure, but no memories or insights at the time. I seem to be stuck in emotional flashbacks and all I can do is hope that it’s processing trauma as part of it all.
I know this will all pass in time. I know I’m working towards healing myself with help from Linda, my EMDR therapist. I know that there are steps backwards which are really steps forward as trauma is released and processed outside of the EMDR session.
So, today it’s errands then it’s settling down to be creative and to take care of myself. Lots of tea. Lots, and lots of tea.
A bit of fun art this morning! I stumbled across the quote and thought it needed a cat, and this was the result – Piccatso!
Sometimes you just gotta have a bit more fun than usual, and this bit of fun has me smiling today. It’s also a sunny day here in Wales after many days of wild winds and rain, so a happy smiling pusscat seems quite appropriate.
Simple in appearance but it took me a good three hours to complete!
The black and white line art was drawn using a Sakura Pigma Sensei 04 pen on Rhodia dot grid paper. I used the same pen to hand letter the quote. After scanning in and removing the dot grid, pencil lines, smudges and errors, I added colour and texture using various gradient and brush tools.
I used my usual trifecta of digital tools – Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Microsoft Surface Pen adn Microsoft Surface Studio along with GiMP to do the removing of the dot grid and smudges.
I’ve worked on this image over the past three days or so. Adding the shading took a surprisingly large amount of time.
I really enjoyed creating this one. I say that about all my art though, but this one was particularly enjoyable as it helped me to calm and relax after the crazyily emotionally exhausting week I’d had.
It reminds me very much of work I used to do before I had so much work to do for colouring books, not that I’m complaining about that, not one bit. I love doing the drawings for them as much, but I can’t work in this kind of detail for them. I can’t put in all the fine line shading and shadow for them, nor the teeny-tiny details in the patterns as they’d be nigh on impossible to colour the gaps individually.
In my past couple of drawings like this, I haven’t added any shadow to them in the way I have in this particular design. The shadow really helps with that sense of ‘dimension’, though I do think I could have added some deeper shadows in some places.
Though it reminds me of the kind of drawings i used to do a lot pre-coloring books, it’s also shows a change in perhaps sophistication of line but also in the variety of patterns and design elements I like to include in my designs. I’ve even left some ares not heavily patterned so they give the eye spaces to rest without being overwhelmed with pattern and design.
Now to the nitty gritty of how I drew this.
After yesterdays discussion about digital vs traditional art I’d like to say I did this digitally, but I didn’t. I used Unipin Uniball and Sakura Pigma Micron pens on an A4 sheet of Bristol Board from Daler-Rowney. Pencil lines were sometimes used, especially for the circles, which I used stencils to draw them in lightly before inking them in free-hand. I’ve noticed I’ve not erased the pencil lines before scanning the artwork in.
To add the shading I used Chameleon Color Tones and Color Tops in shades of cool grey and neutral grey.
Today, I plan to do some more drawing similar to this before my new bullet journal arrives to replace the one I wrecked by spilling mocha over it and my lovely flowery bag. Thankfully, the notes I need to keep from the media training and events this week are still readable so I can transfer them across, as well as edit them in the process.
Clumsy hand lettering again, but it is practice…always practice.
The pattern is rather bare and sparse of detail today too, though some colour would help with that for sure. However, I wanted to limit my time spent on Inktober today so I have time to turn my attention to other things.
I did draw this digitally surface pen on virtual paper on the surface studio screen.
#createdonsurface #inktober #inktober2018
The peace referred to is peace of mind and having peace of mind is priceless and so important.
Part of my CPTSD is the shame and embarrassment that accompanies many, many traumatic experiences throughout the whole of my life. The emotional flashbacks cause me to relive these traumas and the shame I feel about so many events, many I can’t even remember as the mind dissociates from the event, but can’t seem to do so from the trauma that’s stored in the emotions and body.
Add to that the belief I grew up with that I was always, always to blame for everything that everyone else did, even if I had no part in it, means that I can slip into the self-blame mode quite easily where I go over and over and over something trying to find out what I did wrong and what I can do to not make that mistake again. That’s even when I did nothing wrong or even had anything at all to do with the event being picked to pieces in this way. Even when I wasn’t even present for the event. It’s the root cause of my hyperperfectionism. I worry constantly that what I do is never good enough, even when the objective evidence is to the contrary.
So, for me to let some clumsy hand lettering remain. For me to show a piece of work that I’m not entirely happy with is incredibly difficult, leaves me open to the self-blame thing and shame and embarrassment, yet still I do this.
Why? Well, it’s nice to show that along the way to a finished drawing/artwork that I have stages where things aren’t so polished, that I have things to work on, even though I do tend to work intuitively.
Although I may be hypercritical of what I create and see every tiny flaw – real or imagined – in it, having others look at my work and comment and/or like it with either positive or constructive comments helps me to get glimpses of how others see my art. This then helps to stem the hypercritical self-blame and self-criticism by providing objective evidence that the inner critic isn’t always right.
So, even though the hand lettering isn’t right. Even though the drawing is bare of colour. Even though I can see flaws with the drawing, I’m able to put this here, on instagram, facebook, twitter so others can see what I’m doing.
I also show my imperfect work to show people that we all make mistakes, we all start as novices and have to practice, practice, practice some skills to improve them, and this can take a lot of time. Hand lettering is difficult for me at any scale other than tiny.
It’s also so I can show that even though I don’t do wonderfully well at something, I don’t give up easily with it, and neither should you.
However, that doesn’t mean I’m going to persevere with something that I have no skills at such as silver smithing, which I have tried and am an absolute nightmare at! However, the experience of silver smithing led me to trying other ways to create jewellery and led me to my experimenting with textiles, wire, beads and so on to create unusual jewellery. This is something I’ve not done for years.
However, it was part of my creative journey. It gave me some peace of mind at the time I was doing it.
Peace of mind is so important. That’s why I’ve spent years in therapy in one form or another, with EMDR providing the biggest steps forward in helping me to release the stored trauma so it doesn’t return and cause problems.
This is my past. My present is I have a choice about what I do or don’t do. I’d like to think I’d make choices that will cause me to keep my peace of mind, losing that little I’ve gained would be a price to high to pay .
Watch me.
I will go to my own Sun.
And if I am burned by its fire,
I will fly on scorched wings.
-Segovia Amil-
Today is Friday, so as well as being #Inktober 2018 day 19 it is #dangleday.
I had a pretty rough night. I woke with intense pains in my abdomen and had a very upset stomach and nausea. This plagued me for a couple of hours. I eventually got back to sleep, but have woken really tired and feeling wiped out.
I wanted to do Inktober and dangleday, but knew I needed to do something that was relatively easy to do, something that would brighten me up, and something that would require a quote today.
A quick hunt around and I found this quote, which resonated for me and it needed to be included in a mandala design that would symbolise the sun but also have wings and hearts.
For I think that my own sun is my heart and the self-love that I’m working on achieving through therapy and other work. It is the true nature of me; not the self-loathing and low self-esteem and lack of confidence I have. It is through believing in myself, not in the messages I’ve had from others throughout my life from as young as I can remember, that I will find my own sun, a sun that will allow me to fly even if it’s light scorches my wings. However, I think the scorching will be more of burning away the final vestiges of the limiting beliefs about myself that were imposed on me by others from a young age and beyond.
I think I know what I’m trying to say, but the tiredness I’m feeling is making it hard to think or communicate.
Now, onto how I actually created this.
I did it digitally. I used a Microsoft Surface Pen to draw and hand-letter the design on the screen of my Microsoft Surface Studio in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
I did make use of the symmetry tool as well as the tool that allows me to move things around so I could align my text properly.
All the lines are drawn as if I would on paper. I coloured the mandala as if I were coloring it on paper, but the dangle I did use gradient fills for.
Layers allowed me to add a drop shadow and a background gradient easily. I also used a brush tool to add some texture to the background.
The background really needed to be a glowing blue sky; blue being the complementary colour of yellow/orange/orange-red so it helps the mandala and dangle to glow against the sky.
I only added one single, simple dangle made up of golden hearts and beads. You see, dangle designs do not have to be at all complex; sometimes less really is more!
I intend to spend the rest of the day taking it easy so I can recover properly from the bout of icky-sickyness I had last night.
Oh, before I do, just a reminder that in my upcoming book ‘A Dangle A Day’ (available to preorder) I show you how I design dangles and give lots of examples for you to use, adapt and the confidence to design your own. I also have some simple hints and tips on hand lettering, bullet journals and more.
The first thing that popped into my weird head when I read the prompt ‘swollen’ was a puffer fish! I know … weird is the right word.
So, I had to draw one of my entangled drawings incorporating a puffer fish, lots of coral reef and sea inspired images, and a few cute monsters and critters – including a white cat and a pink badger (don’t ask!).
It took a couple of hours to draw the outline using a Faber-Castell broadpen on Rhodia dot grid paper.
I scanned the drawing into GiMP, removed the dot grid and created a transparent background.
The final step, which has taken around 4 hours, is to digitally colour the image.
It’s certainly bright and colourful, though if it wasn’t an Inktober challenge I’d want to go back and add some added textures and shadows to the image. But it’ll do for now as it is.
I also would like to add some patterns in black pen to some of the more ‘flat’ areas of the design, such as the bodies of the sea anemones.
I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, a Microsoft Surface pen and a Microsoft Surface Studio to colour the image.
#created on surface #autodesksketchbookpro #inktober #inktober2018
Art is the Adventure 