All done and coloured now, but o,h, WordPress, why do you change the colours on my images?
The colours are a lot more vibrant in my non-uploaded file. But I’m sure you get the idea.
Anyways, I drew the image with Tombow Fudenosuke pens on Winsor and Newton Bristol Board. After scanning the drawing, I used my favourite digital tools – Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Microsoft Surface Pen, Microsoft Surface Studio – to add colour and texture (and watermarks) to the image.
The original drawing was a little less that A4 (US letter-ish) in size.
I’m quite happy with this. I’m also really happy I’ve managed to incorporate some dangle designs into my art. Something I’m going to continue to do now. I think they work really well with hand lettered banners and probably really well with arches too. Hmm, perhaps dangling from the edges of large fungi too… I know I’ll work it out!
Fancy trying your hand at dangle designs? Well, I have a tutorial book that takes you through monogram and dangle designs. It’s called A Dangle A Day.
I thought I’d show you the progress I’ve made on this drawing. I hope you find it interesting to see how things are progressing with it.
Yesterday, I didn’t get much done as I was whacked out after EMDR therapy in the afternoon. It was very intense with some very powerful physical pains as well as some emotionally upsetting insights. Tears flowed. An hour of discomfort to help to release years and years of emotional/mental pain and suffering isn’t too bad is it?
Today I’ve not done anything. I did an anti-stigma talk to a group of health-care employees for the ABMU Health Board at Singleton Hospital in Swansea. This was on behalf of Time to Change Wales in my role as a champion.
The drive there was horrendous. The rain was absolutely hammering down. Then, it was really difficult to find somewhere to park. I did find somewhere eventually. Then, there was the walk to the hospital and the problem of finding my way to the Chapel/Multi-faith Centre. By that time, the stress of not finding parking easily had caused me to flip into hypervigilance mode and it wasn’t easy to see or decode information.
Eventually I must’ve looked totally lost, a nice man asked me if he could help. When I said the chapel, I noticed another chap had come over and he had a Time to Change Wales badge on and it turns out he was Martin, one of two new champions who had come to observe me.
We had directions to the chapel and the other champion was waiting outside.
I did my talk, became, for me, quite emotional, and left, after chatting with people and Martin and Connor, the other TTCW champion.
I was glad to find my way back to my car, and started to feel a bit spaced out as I drove home. Thankfully the rain had mostly stopped though the spray was horrible.
I’ve eaten and had some tea but I still feel drifty and floaty and I really, really could do with a long nap now. It’s taken nearly 4 hours for me to feel ready to nap. However, I can’t take a nap as I have to drive to Hereford this evening for around 7:15pm. My sat nav said it would be an hour and a half journey there. Perhaps I could have a quick nap …
I know tomorrow I have another anti-stigma talk to do – this time with a group of police officers at Ton Pentre police station – and a medical appointment later in the day. Thursday I’m doing another antistigma-talk to a group of trainee nurses and midwives over in Abergavenny.
I foresee some early nights ahead of me, though most probably not tonight!
Today I thought you’d like to see my current work in progress, including the tools I’m using for it – Unipin Pens from Uniball and a mechanical pencil.
The pencil was only used for drawing the margins delineating the space within which I’m working. This helps stop me run off the page as well as keeping my mind’s desire for straight-ish edges happy.
This has already taken some hours to complete; I’m not sure how many as I don’t really keep track of my time. I know that I may get it finished at some point this evening (I’m writing this mid-morning UK time) if I manage to get all my errands and other tasks done in a timely fashion.
My process is quite simple really. I start with a motif somewhere on the page, a simple outline shape. I then add detail to this shape. I then let shapes flow out from this point, first drawing the foundation lines, then adding the detail.
Finally, I’ll decide if I’m going to add shadows/shading and with what medium I’ll do that. Sometimes I may decide to colour the image, or digitally alter the colours of the lines or background.
If I decided to draw digitally, my steps are the same, though I may start with a sketch on paper of the main lines in the design so I can make sure I have some reference to the actual scale of the design.
Oh, and I rarely draw in pencil first when I work directly on paper. The only times I do is when I may use circle stencils or french curves to add a large curve/shape. Mostly, it’s pen without any pencil guides.
I work very intuitively; I just let the lines and patterns flow in a way that is pleasing to my eye and mind at the time I draw designs such as these.
Another abstract botanical. This one has gold dot highlights as well as white dots. Fun to do!
I dug out my old Ohto Graphic Liner pens to draw this one. I’d forgotten all about them until I was looking for some new Uniball Unipin pens in my pen stash.
The Ohtos are roller ball pens with pigment ink which is waterproof and fadeproof. The beauty of a roller ball, unlike fibre-tips like the unipins or Sakura Microns, is that the roller ball tip is practically indestructible, even for one with a heavy hand like me.
They work well on the lightly textured hot pressed watercolour paper I used (which is 10″ x 14″ in size).
I applied the colour first, then worked with the way the colours spread and mixed to draw the patterns generally, though I do work rather intuitively.
Happy times drawing! I drew this one with a Lamy Safari fountain pen with black ink on some mixed media paper from Claire Fontaine.
The colours are digitally added after scanning the drawing in, just for a bit of fun. I have ideas I want to try out digitally, but I’m going to wait for my Surface Studio to arrive for those explorations.
My own piece of wisdom for #WednesdayWisdom is that when you get to a point in a creative project where you think it just isn’t going to work out, don’t give up. Push past your own doubts. It can help to put the project to one side and come back to it later with ‘fresh eyes’ and a ‘fresh mind’, but don’t give up on it.
When you think you’ve finished the project there may be bits you don’t like, but there will be parts you really do like about it. The bits you like are ones to take forward and work with further.
What I’ve noticed over the years is that sometimes it’s the bits I wasn’t sure about that are the ones I really like when the project is completed. Often, the bits that are ‘mistakes’ end up being ‘happy accidents’ or ‘creative opportunities’ – discoveries of new things to try out again in the future.
I’ve most probably said this before, but I’ve been getting a lot of self-doubt lately in work I’m doing. As I often work directly in ink on to paper, my mistakes are permanent, so I have to work with them and incorporate them into the design. That’s what happens when you’re an intuitive artist; I’ve learned to trust to the process and that I can work with whatever happens.
You too can do this! I promise you, you can!
It’s also #wipwednesday over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. Plenty of people show their works in progress, but there is always, always room for more! We all love to see what people are up to.
This design started with the kind of infinity loop towards the top left. The loops coming from it eventually were seen as a letter ‘B’ and the word believe seemed to be the right one to put on this. Everything else grew, quite literally in some cases, from this point.
There are golden stars to wish upon and golden seeds and flowers and growth and sun and rain … and hope.
Approx. 6″ x 8″. The black lines were worked using Uni-Ball UniPin pens. Colour was applied using watercolours and gold watercolour paint. The paper is heavyweight cartridge.
As always, I am the owner of this creation and it may not be used, shared, distributed or altered in any kind of way without permission from me. Thank you.
These three little artworks have all been completed within the last week. Each measures approx 10cm x 15cm (4″ x 6″) and have been worked with black sharpie pens, inktense pencils, zig art and graphic pens, metallic/glitter pens/paints.
Both worked in the last 24 hours or so. Same media for both – Sakura Glaze pens, watercolours and Cosmic Shimmer iridescent/metallic watercolour paints.
Each ‘dot’ on the mandala has a metallic centre or ring around it.
Fun to do! Engaging to create and colour … very meditative.
Art is the Adventure 