I managed to finish colouring my WIP from yesterday. I have changed the colours of some elements and darkened the background.
Now, I’m working on the drawing for the next one.
One day, I’ll work on completing one or more of these with just colour and not black outlines, maybe.
Line art drawn with Sakura Micron pens on paper.
Scanned art coloured using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio.
This was drawn on paper with Sakura Pigma Micron pens, scanned in and is in the process of being digitally coloured in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. I’m using my Surface Studio and a Surface Pen, both from Microsoft.
The background may go a little darker on this one, but I’ll decide on that when I’ve completed colouring the design elements in.
It’s also work in progress Wednesday over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. We’d love to see your colouring works in progress of pages from my coloring books. Why not pop along and join in? You’d be very welcome there.
Drawn using a Microsoft Surface Pen on a Microsoft Surface Studio screen in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last hand-lettered and patterned a word, and this morning it seemed really appropriate to do so.
Yes, hand-lettered, in a digital environment. Working with the Surface Pen on the screen of a Surface Studio is just like working with pen on paper in terms of physically hand-lettering and drawing the patterns.
The ability to work in layers, add effects to layers and use gradients to colour the background is a bit different to working in traditional media.
I do like doing these words; they’re fun to do! Also, a nice way to spend a few hours of a Monday morning.
This one has taken many hours to do, and I’m not quite happy with the background colour/texture, but I need a break from it.
I drew the black and white line art on paper with Sakura Pigma Micron pens, scanned it in, created a transparent background and then coloured it digitally.
I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro with a Microsoft Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface Studio.
Fun to do. A nice way to spend time, jut playing. And it’s unusual for me to colour in one of my black and white pieces of line art.
We’re a week into September and autumn is nearly here in the Northern hemisphere, so I thought my dangle design should be one for this season. I think this would be a lovely BuJo page to separate the autumn months. I also think it would make a pretty notecard or greetings card. The hand lettering could be changed for another sentiment and it would be suitable for an autumn celebration. Alternatively, it would look great framed and hung as part of a quartet of designs that cover the four seasons; now there’s a project for me to do!
I drew the design on squared paper using Sakura pigma micron pens.
Then, I scanned the image in, used GiMP to remove the squares and create a transparent background
Next, I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to colour the image, create the textured background and add a shadow to the design.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love autumn! I love the way the world changes in terms of colours over the space of a few weeks, and the colours can be absolutely glorious.
I don’t know how the long, very hot and dry summer in here in the UK will affect autumn this year.
If you would like to design some dangles and not quite sure how, then my upcoming book A Dangle A Day (available for pre-order) will lead you through the steps as well as giving you plenty of ideas for dangle design.
Just a reminder that today is the last day for you to enter any of my giveaways, the prizes being signed copies of Eerily Entangled Art, my latest book in Dover’s Creative Haven series of coloring books.
See my previous blog post for details on how to enter. I’ll be drawing the winners at random tomorrow evening, UK time.
Over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group, it’s furbaby friday.
Of course, it’s Furbaby Everyday over on the Happy Tails Animal Group facebook group.
Both groups would love to see your pictures of your furbabies, as would I.
A new month begins and a coloring template for September 2018(above) for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group is now available.
If you’d like to access to September 2018’s uncoloured template, which is exclusive to members of the group, just wander over to the group, join and download. Please note, that terms and conditions do apply.
I drew this in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Studio using my Microsoft Surface Pen.
With the calendar turning to September, my heart lifts with the expectation of the glory of nature as autumn asserts it’s influence.
It’s my favourite season of the year. I love the bright, vivid colours that replace the darker, duller greens of summer. Nature’s picks out it’s most glorious paintbox and sets the world alight in fiery autumnal hues.
I also luxuriate in the cooler evenings and mornings and look forward to waking up to see dew, or even frost, on Binky, my Smartcar.
The fresh, clean, clear air that the turning season brings blows away the dustiness of the hot, dry summer.
There’s also the return of the pleasure and comfort of snuggling up under a duvet as night time is cooler. Not to mention the relief of sleeping well throughout the night.
There are other things I’m looking forward to this year too.
It’s hard to remember now the fear and trepidation that the return to school as a teacher that would come with the start of this month as the new school year starts.
Now, I look forward to the start of the new school year as the world is calmer, quieter during the school day and I can begin to venture forth from my home without my CPTSD panic kicking in when I hear the sound of teenagers shouting and arguing and swearing and being belligerent, just them being themselves really.
It’s not their fault, I know, but their sounds are triggers for my fear, anxiety, panic and cause me to want to hide in a quiet dark corner of my safe home. So much so, that I find it so difficult to venture out of my front door during daytime during the school holidays.
Through therapy, I will overcome this, but the reaction is so ingrained in me and goes right back to my earliest years; teaching, dealing with the dramas of teens on a daily basis as well as being the focus for some to vent their anger, just reinforced these automatic responses. This means not just unraveling the web of trauma that resulted in the panic response, it means learning a healthy response to such triggers, one that I’ve never, ever had in the first place.
Now, with the start of the school year, and a daytime world that is quieter, I’ll be able to find my courage to venture forth during the day once again. Maybe not often, but from time to time.
With it being my favourite season, with the theme of my next book being forests, to sketch and find inspiration in woods and forests during autumn is something I want to do this year.
It’s all part of my road to recovery from CPTSD. Autumn always feels like a time of new starts, more so than New Year. As nature begins to shed what is unnecessary so survival through winter is possible, so I work on shedding the trauma that has kept me in a metaphorical winter in terms of my mental and emotional health for a very, very long time.
Another bit of hand lettering or hand writing along with my particular style of entangled design.
This is very much a work in progress. I’m just laying down the ‘skeleton’ of the design before I add colour and pattern. you can see the dotgrid ‘paper’ I use as a guide for the size of the elements of the design.
Not sure I’m at all happy with the writing, but I do like the bit of wisdom for a Wednesday.
All drawn using a Surface Pen on my Surface Studio in Autodesk Sketchbook.
I did hand-letter this one, though I did do it digitally using a Surface Pen on my new Surface Studio.
I love my Surface Book, which was a joy to use most of the time. However I was beginning to become a little frustrated with turning the screen around and losing the use of the keyboard and not being able to see the whole image I was working on at the actual size it would be printed.
So, as I officially take my teacher’s pension early today as I reach the illustrious age of 55, I decided to invest some of the lump sum in a shiny new Surface Studio for my business of art, illustration and writing.
The Surface Studio isn’t without it’s frustrations, not least of which were the hours and hours it took to download and install all the upgrades for Windows and the Surface system, and then installing the software I used (not done all of it quite yet).
I did get a Surface Dial with the Surface Studio, and it works interestingly with the free Autodesk Sketchbook, but it doesn’t work at all with the Autodesk Sketchbook Pro version, which is the one I prefer, perhaps because I’m familiar with it and find it easier to access the functions I make use of.
These are minor things, the Surface Studio is a joy to use (though I do need to remember to change the tip on the surface pen to one that glides more easily on the screen!)
So, it seemed appropriate that today, the day I turn 55 and become a semi-pensioner, that I hand letter the word Joy, in my own inimitable style.
I actually quite like the neon colours on the black background. I have a feeling I’ll be doing more like this now my mind has worked out that I can do stuff like this digitally.
Will I be turning my back on more traditional art? Not at all! If anything, I treat digital art as if it is traditional art – the pen means I draw like I would on paper. All it means is I have access to tools that make some styles a little easier, the ability to use colours and textures that would be difficult for me in traditional media possible, and the ability to edit without frustrating use of white inks a dream!
Don’t forget, I do tend to work directly in ink on paper, often with no pencil lines at all.
Joy is also an appropriate word as I share my artwork because I share my joy in creating it with others, and I trust that viewing it (and hopefully my witterings like this one) joy for you.
What doesn’t bring me joy is when I find my artwork is shared or used without my permission, particularly when people use it to make money for themselves without any regard for the creator of the work. I try to protect my work by watermarking it, signing it, sharing at a low resolution, but still I find people steal my work.
That is not joy. Not joyful at all.
It is stealing too. I don’t know where people get the idea that artwork shared by artists on the interwebs means the artists give up their copyrights.
We DO NOT give up our copyrights in any way.
I sometimes create ‘freebies’, but even then there are limits to how they can be used – personal use, not for resale either coloured or uncoloured, not for inclusion in publications, and so on.
People who steal work like this, and let me be clear it is stealing, make me feel very un-joyful and on the point of removing all my accounts where I share art so people can view it and enjoy it, sometimes even buy it, or prints of it or products with it on, but not to steal it and use it without my permission.
I’m sure those of you who read this will agree with me on this and don’t need to read it, but if my words reach just one person who takes the work of others for their own personal gain in someway, without asking permission of the artist, without even crediting them or providing a link back to where they got it from, stop to think about the harm and upset they are causing to those of us who want to share our joy in our vocation with others, then my words will have done some good. Pricked a conscience or two maybe.
Perhaps then the days of me getting upset and writing emails that go unanswered to websites where I find my artwork offered to others will stop, and there will be more joy.
I can hope this will happen.
Returning to the theme of joy rather than not-joy, I do hope you find my little artwork of today brings you some joy too. Do let me know if you’d like to see more like this, or if you have suggestions of words that you’d like to see in this kind of style!
Finally, do have a joyful day yourselves. Do something that brings you peace and joy, be it art, coloring, baking, reading, dancing, playing music, a sunset walk in nature … whatever it may be, do something joyful every day.
I am so lucky being self-employed, doing something that brings me pleasure and never feels like work; it always feels like the weekend for me!
I sketched the words and part of the design on paper, photographed it and opened it in Autodesk Sketchbook, then used my Microsoft Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface Book to hand-draw the letters and flower wreath.
Yes, it is hand-drawing, even though it’s done in a digital environment. I use my Surface Pen as I would any pen or pencil. I do make use of some of the tools in Autodesk Sketchbook to speed up the drawing – such as the symmetry tool, and the ability to move elements in the hand-lettering around (I’m learning not to be too fussy about size and arrangement in the sketch; that just gives me the general idea of lettering styles and sizes).
All the same, it’s a nice way to start a Friday with a decorated #fridayquote, just to get those #weekendvibes going with #thatfridayfeeling #fridayfeeling.
A warm, sunshiny mandala.
Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Surface Book and Surface Pen.
Art is the Adventure 