I’m a day behind in the Inktober Challenge as far as the calendar goes. Not that it’s all that important methinks.

One thing I’m sure of is that the prompt for day 4 – ‘spell’ – just spoke dangle design to me, and as I’ve made Friday #dangleday, well it was perfect that I worked on it today.

I started by drawing the black line art on dot grid paper with a black Papermate Ink Joy gel pen. These pens are a joy to use, often a bit too thick a line for much of my drawing, but perfect for this one. I drew the design in one go – no pencil lines for anything, even though my letter S is a bit squiffy and there’s a wonky dangle.

I scanned my ink drawing into GiMP so I could remove the dot grid and create a transparent background for the line art.

Next it was using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to add simple colour to the design and background, then to add texture using brushes. Oh, and a drop shadow. That drop shadow helps to lift the design from the background just a bit.

I’m actually quite pleased with this design, though it was touch and go whether I’d finish it or show it at one point.

When I’d finished the line drawing I thought ‘oh no, how awful this looks!’. I didn’t give up, though. I was going to try to keep it monotone, adding shading in stipples and lines and so on, but I decided colour may be the thing that brings it to life.

I’m always doing my best to say thank you to members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans Facebook page and other colorists for bringing my line art to life by wielding their magical coloured pens and pencils and other media, and commenting on how wonderful they make my line art/coloring template/illustrations look.

I often cringe at some of the drawings I did for books just a few years ago, and often at the work I do now, today’s dangle design in it’s line art version being an example of that.

Then, when colour is added it works like a magic spell in making the art look wonderful, even the simple colouring I’ve done with this dangle design.

So, all of you colorists out there, continue to work your magic spells on the black and white coloring templates and please show me the results of your color spells on my coloring templates by tagging me on Facebook, Instagram or twitter.

This would look really nice as a bujo, planner or scrapbooks spread for Hallowe’en. I think it would make a lovely greetings card or note card. It would look fabulous printed and framed in a spooky black, glittery frame and displayed as part of some Halloween decorations. In fact, it would look great all year round for fans of magical fiction, films or TV.

What would you do with it? Where do you think it could be used? Please leave comments.

Just a reminder that my book ‘A Dangle A Day’ is available for preorder and it’s due for publication in January 2019.

#Inktober2018 #adangleaday #angelaporterillustrator