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Mandala WIP – update

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Mandala WIP - update © Angela Porter 2019 - Artwyrd.com
Mandala WIP – update © Angela Porter 2019 – Artwyrd.com

I have to say I am really, really pleased with how this mandala is working out. It’s not at all what I expected in the first instance, but I am so chuffed with myself.

I also think I am really getting the hang of this digital art malarkey too. I can also say that there is no way I would have been able to create this using traditional media – I’ve tried similar things in the past and it all ends up such a mess with me.

Digital art is the media I think I may have been waiting for. It’s taken me three years to get to this artistic level with digital art. Even in this mandala you can see how I have learned and developed ideas as I’ve worked from the centre out.

I absolutely love my Microsoft products – Surface Pen, Surface Book and Surface Studio. I cut my digital art teeth on the Surface Book (not literally!) and found I enjoyed digital art and when I felt I could I got a Surface Studio as the smaller size of the Surface Book screen was frustrating me a little.

The change to the Surface Studio is what has enabled me to really take to digital art. The size of the screen, the ease at which I can change the angles at which I work with the Surface Studio, the speed of the processors, the sensitivity of the pen on the screen…

I just love it! So much so I’m on the point of destashing nearly all my traditional art media and gifting them to a worthy cause.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to draw with pen on paper, that won’t ever change so my pen collection won’t be going anywhere. But the way I can use colour and texture digitally is an absolute dream. It’s also mess-free!

I hope you noticed that I said I’m really pleased with this mandala. It’s not often I’m able to say that about my art. But today I can and I am. I am actually smiling when I look at this mandala.

My only problem now is that I’ve changed the design of the mandala in the latest ‘ring’. Oh well, I can adjust accordingly or just create a new design around this one. I’ll see how I go with that.

I also quite like the ‘ghostly’ outline mandala design as a background, though silly me managed to leave the outline above the coloured design. One of the wonderful things about working in layers is that things like this aren’t a problem!

I think I may celebrate my progress with this mandala and also my digital art skills with a nice mug of tea!

Inktober 2018 Day 26 ‘Stretch’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 26 Stretch

If there’s one thing that kitties know how to do extraordinarily well it’s stretch. So, that just had to be the drawing that went with todays Inktober Prompt!

And as it’s Friday, that drawing had to be a dangle design too.

I really do need to work on my kitties in different poses – this one’s head looks a little strange, a little flat.

But, part of the inktober challenge is to draw without editing.

I did use a pencil to sketch the dangle design out on dot grid paper from Clairefontaine. After inking it in and erasing what I could of the pencil lines it was scanned into GiMP. I use gimp to remove the dots of the dot grid and then produce a transparent background.

The drawing with a transparent background and no dot grid I then plonked into Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and added some colour and texture as well as a drop shadow.

I kept the colour palette fairly simple so I had a more cohesive look to the design.

Even with the problems with the cat’s head, I think this is cute – I couldn’t resist adding a sleeping mousie on the kitty’s tummy.

Of course, Friday is #dangleday and my book about drawing dangle designs, monograms and more is available for preorder. It’s called ‘A Dangle A Day‘.

Autumn Equinox 2018

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Angela Porter Autumn Equinox 23 September 2018 coloured

I’m a day early as tomorrow is the Autumn Equinox (Spring Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere), but here’s my mandala for this year’s equinox.

I’ve made the uncoloured template an exclusive ‘freebie’ for members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. Terms and conditions apply to it’s use, so please make sure you read them if you choose to wander over and join in.

Drawn and coloured in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro using a Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio.

Abstract Botanical 16 September 2016

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Angela Porter 16 September2018

Another abstract botanical. Here are the steps I took in creating it.

  1. Draw the black and white line art design on dot-grid paper from Rhodia using Sakura Micron pens.
  2. Scanned the drawing in, removed the dot-grid, removed noise and created a transparent background in GiMP opensource photo editing software.
  3. Imported the image with a transparent image into Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and added colour and texture.

It took a couple of hours to draw the design and several hours to colour and so on.

My digital tools are a Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio.

I love the way many of the elements seem to glow against the dark green-blue background.

Many of my latest works like this seem to have an ocean, watery background going on. So, in the one I have on the go at the moment I’ve done a kind of sunset background. I’ll see how that turns out. Working digitally means I can alter my backgrounds really easily for sure.

I’ve been creating backgrounds digitally, but I want to create some on paper with Distress Inks and scan them in to use instead of the digital backgrounds.

I also made use of a more limited colour palette in this work – going for a more cohesive look/feel. These aren’t colours I’d normally choose to go together, but they seem to work fine.

I now have a fair few of these images and so now really need to try to work out what to do with them. I may try to import them into Repper and create repeating patterns from parts of them; that could be an interesting exercise for sure, but a fun one!

If you have any ideas of how my artwork could be used, leave a comment – I’d love to hear!

 

#dangleday

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Angela Porter 13 July 2018

I declare today, Friday, to be #dangleday! And to celebrate, here’s a dangle design, which includes a hand-lettered quote.

Want to draw your own dangle designs? Need a bit of inspiration or advice? Then my book “A Dangle A Day” is available to pre-order from Quarto.

I drew this one on paper with a Sakura Pigma Micron PN pen, scanned it in and then edited and coloured digitally using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, which is now totally free! My Microsoft Surface Book and Pen were used to do this.

I’d include this in my bullet journal (BUJO) as a really cute quote page.

It would look lovely as part of an art-journal page too, though cutting out all the fiddly bits could be a bit challenging, though re-drawing them would be easy enough I’m sure.

I do have some ideas about dangle designs and art journals and other stuff that’s running around my head, but they’ve not really become solid enough that I can bring them into practice…yet.

If I made the dangles a bit longer, then this would make a really nice bookmark. It would also work quite nicely as a tall and thin greetings card, I think. Especially as the quote could easily be changed for something different.

Over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group, it’s #furbabyfriday. I’m looking forward to seeing them all! Why not pop over and say hello?

Glorious

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Angela Porter 8 June 2018

Isn’t glorious a wonderful word? I decided, after much experimentation with geometric, gem-like decoration, black outlined florals, to go with a much softer, gentler almost chalky flowers and leaves. I think the lettering looks a tad perfect, stark, against the flowers. Let me know what you think?

I’ve had a day of it with things of a computery nature. After installing the latest updates for Windows 10, my Surface Pen started to misbehave dreadfully. It took me a goodly amount of time to sort it, the fix being a simple pairing of the pen via bluetooth. Seems the updates knocked the pairing off, though not for any other of my bluetooth devices connected to my Surface Book.

It was a frustrating, and more than a tad scary, time as I panicked that the Surface and pen wouldn’t work, more so as I have a deadline for Entangled Butterflies looming.

Thank goodness I managed to find the fix, which was an obvious one, if you know about it that is!

So, I can now breathe, return to drawing entangled butterflies (I have seven illustrations left to do for the book) and calm down.

Wishing you all a #gloriousweekend #weekendvibes and #thatfridayfeeling.

Spring themed dangle design

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Angela Porter 2 May 2018 coloured Friday is #dangleday as often as I can create one.

This Fridays design features stylised hawthorn blossom and daisies, along with hearts, leaves and berries. Oh, and a pastel feather.

It would make a charming piece of framed art, or a greetings card, or a cover page for May for a BuJo, planner or journal.  I’m sure there’s many other uses that the design, or parts of it, can be put to.

If you have any ideas for how this design could be used add a comment, or visit my facebook page – Angela Porter Illustrator – and drop me a line there.  You could also try tweeting me @wyrdsmithing if you wish too.

It’s been a nice way to start the day, and to get those #weekendvibes working. I started by doing a quick sketch of the design on paper, scanned in, inked in using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Microsoft Surface Book using my Microsoft Surface Pen, and then simply coloured with some texture added.

It helps me to calm down a bit; there’s still a lot of anxiety floating around my body after the saga of my car, and I’m waiting for a call back from sales about the possibility of me having a new smartcar. I find it all very stressful, even though there’s a part of me that’s very calm, the surface emotions are all over the place, sometimes overwhelming me like an emotional tsunami. Having poor sleep because of the anxiety isn’t helping too much.

I just remind myself to breathe, that ‘this too shall pass’, and find things to do that help me calm.

Talking of calming down, over on the facebook group ‘Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans it’s #furbabyfriday.  Why not pop over and join in the fun with the lovely group members there?

If you’d like to learn a bit more about creating your own dangle designs, my book A Dangle A Day is available for preorder, just click on the link!

Eerie Entangled Art is also available for pre-order from Amazon and other places.  It’s my next book in the Creative Haven series from Dover Publications.

Saturday Mandala

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Angela Porter 28 April 2018

No quote, no lettering, just pure mandala. Drawn using my Microsoft Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface Book with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.  The background was created using Rangers Tim Holtz’s Distress Inks on mixed media paper then scanned in.

Just a quick one to start the day.  I have some editing to do for A Dangle A Day (available for preorder) before going out to a Lebanese/Moroccan restaurant called Mezza Luna with my sister. For the first time, she gets to drive!

My car is still poorly; the Mercedes garage seems to be having problems working out what has gone wrong with Smartwo Deetoo.  I hope I get her back soon; if not, I’ll have to hire a car for a day or two for some appointments I have later in the week.

I’ve still not calmed down after the drama of last weekends car breakdown.  I’m all of a dither, my mind all over the place, my digestive system is still upset, and I’m so tired all the time.  How I ever managed to function as a teacher when I felt like this all the time is beyond me, but I did until my precarious mental health crashed in on me.

Over on the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group it’s #supplysaturday.

Tuesday Tip

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Angela Porter 24 April 2018 small watermarked

My #tuesdaytip is to do just this – create every day!

It doesn’t matter for how long – 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, longer.  Just take time to create.

You can create something new.  You can work on practicing, say, your hand lettering. You could re-work or add to something you thought was finished.  You could try a new skill or technique or medium. You could doodle aimlessly.

There’s just so many possibilities, so many ways to be creative – art, crafts, cooking, gardening, wood-turning, sculpting, decorating, sewing, colouring, are just a few of the possibilities.

Just create.  Have fun.  Play. Relax.

Take a break from the worries, stresses and strains of everyday life by focusing on being creative.

I use art to help me find my inner calm and stay there.  My whole body exhales, calms and relaxes when I ‘art’. It’s a daily practice for me that has a similar effect as meditation and mindfulness does. Even if I don’t meditate every day, I ‘art’ every day, just for pleasure (as well as for my work).

When the days are very trying for me, as they have been lately due to a nightmare of a car breakdown and recovery that took 8 hours Saturday night into Sunday morning, I find creating collections of doodles and patterns for my BuJo or hand-writing quotes or words really soothing, especially if they are familiar to me.  That’s what I needed at that time, something I could do automatically, that didn’t cause more stress for me.  The rhythm and flow soothed. Just the process of repeating the drawings and drawing of letters involved practice and improvement of my favourite motifs, patterns, words; and when calm, I could move on to create something new.

Being creative isn’t just about making great works of art or craft, or any thing else.  It’s also about feeding your heart, your soul, your being and finding calm and joy in what you do.

 

 

Dangleday!

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Angela Porter 20 April 2018 dangleday coloured smallFriday means dangle day!

So, here’s my dangle for today.

It’s been rather warm and sunny here in the UK.  Spring flowers are blooming.  Trees are beginning to show their fresh-green finery. The birds are busy nest-building and singing their hearts out at dawn and dusk.

So, I wanted to reflect this in my design for today, along with some nice words, and to help me get those #weekendvibes going.

If you’d like to learn more about creating dangle designs, my book ‘A Dangle A Day’ is available for preorder now.  Just click on the link!

Over on the Angela Porter’s Colouring Book Fans facebook group it’s #furbabyfriday.