I finished this up this morning, now the migraine has lifted. I completed the embellishment of the letters. The next task was to scan the work in and remove the dot grid background in GiMP, as well as tidy up any smudges and so on.
Once I was happy with the result, I printed out the words so I could colour and add metallic highlights.
To colour, I used Chameleon Color Tone marker pens. For the metallic highlights (dots) I used a mixture of Uniball Signo glitter gel pens and metallic Sakura Gelly Roll pens.
Adding colour really helps with the read-ability of the letters. I chose to add simple color gradations and kept to one colour for each day of the week.
I really enjoyed doing this – it started as a sketch and I’ve ended up with some hand lettering that looks quite nice.
I will, at some point, do a sampler of this hand lettering style. That would be a great reference for myself, but perhaps a source of inspiration for others.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I really want to create a dangle design monogram for at least one of this style of lettering. I think that’s the next thing on my list of ‘to do’s’ on a day where I’m taking it all a bit easy; although the migraine has lifted I still feel a tad ‘fragile’.
Hand lettering and monograms are an integral part of my style of dangle designs. Although lettering as complex as this isn’t covered in ‘A Dangle A Day’, I still offer suggestions and step by step instructions for creating dangle designs.
I woke this morning with a dreadful migraine. Two emotionally draining days – therapy on Monday, an anti-stigma talk for Time to Change Wales yesterday – can cause such a reaction in me. It’s my body’s way of saying ‘Woah there Angela! Enough! Time out is needed! Self-care! Nothing else stressful for today at least, please!’.
So I’m heeding my body’s message. I was due to take all my accounts stuff to my accountant, but my vision and concentration is impaired enough that for now I don’t feel safe to drive. I know that with a quiet day and a nap later on I’ll recover.
Even though my eyesight is affected a bit, doing art actually seems to help with the headache. I think it’s a mindful activity that lets my mind and emotions relax.
So, I wanted to complete my days of the week in a Lombardic style script, and here’s my work in progress. You can see my pencil lines, both as a guide for letter heights and for the shape and spacing of letters. By drawing the outlines in pencil first it means I can easily make adjustments as I ink them in.
Next steps, when my head has cleared a fair bit more, will be to add the patterns in the letters. This really does help to define the letter shapes I think.
I definitely want to try some of these letters with dangles on them. Perhaps that’s what I’ll do while I’m waiting for this migraine headache to shift somewhat.
Today has been a bit of a busy day. I woke still drained from yesterday’s EMDR therapy session. No EMDR though as I was just too emotional and ‘raw’ to go through it, so it was a lot of talking around how one trigger event had caused several trauma ‘streams’ to rise and flood and confluence. I was stuck at that confluence where white water rapids had formed and I was being buffeted about in the eddies and currents and waves.
So, it was self-care last night when I got home, which involved a bag of chips from a local chippy, with curry sauce, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and starting to crochet an amigurumi ‘dumpling cat’ from a new book that was delivered yesterday. Then, there was the journal writing before I went to bed.
This morning I had to be up early to go give an anti-stigma talk to a group of police officers. That drained me emotionally once again. However, it was a good thing to do as they all found my talk really interesting and useful. My Time To Change Wales champions hat was polished up a little bit once again.
I came home and finally had some breakfast and ended up in bed to sleep. That’s one of my coping strategies when I’m so emotionally drained. I still feel dazed and dazzled by it all, but am on a bit of a more even keel now.
I didn’t want to let the day pass without doing something with pen and paper or screen. Hand lettering seems to be my thing at the moment so I thought I’d have a go at hand lettering some of the days of the week.
For reference I used the Lombardic Capitals set in ‘Decorated Lettering’ by Jan Pickett.
They appeal to me partly because the space inside the letters lends itself so much to adding patterns, but because of their oldy-worldy nature. I love Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Medieval illuminated manuscripts and this style of lettering, in a slightly more modern form, appeals to me.
I discovered it’s a lot easier to form the letters when you draw them big – hence why their size increased from Monday to Wednesday.
Dot grid paper is a godsend as it helps with the consistency of size of the letters, though I suspect that as I become more comfortable with my skills that I may experiment more with that.
A nice way to spend an hour or so this afternoon, and I have the rest of the days to look forward to doing, along with adding patterns to the open letters.
Mind you, the letters without patterns would look lovely just coloured with colour gradients, and I’d love to add metallic highlights/accents too.
First, I need to get a bit more proficient at hand lettering and working on plain paper.
Of course, I can always scan my lettering in and remove the background and dotgrid so I can print it out on paper suitable for a colouring medium such as watercolours and metallic paints.
Cheating? No. I don’t think so. I would’ve already done the work in the first place. Printing and colouring is, to me, perfectly acceptable.
But that’s for another day. For now, I had to get myself sorted to pop out for the evening.
I’m also musing about adding some dangles to the letters – dangles with charms that are reminiscent of medieval ornament or jewellery, for example.
Wednesday is #wipwednesday around the interwebs and sometimes it manifests itself on this blog.
This is my current work in progress, well just a part of it. I drew the design using various pens on paper and then scanned it in. I’m part way through colouring the image. It’s going to take me many hours to finish it, but that won’t be today. I have appointments this afternoon.
I am coloring it digitally with the usual tools – Microsoft Surface Studio, Microsoft Surface Pen and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. I’m trying to keep to a winter/yule/christmas kind of colour scheme. That means the purple coloured ‘berries’ may have to be changed, but that’s easy enough to alter when working digitally.
I’m home! Back in the land of reliable, fast internet. Even though I have things to do, I wanted to do a little artsy stuff after a few days with little artsy stuff. So, I coloured/textured this sweet little whimsical botanical design.
I saw a lot of landscapes, architecture and plants that caught my arty eye in my time oop t’Yorkshire Dales and it’s likely to take me a goodly long while to process it all – either in artwork or in words.
I do have a travelblog – Curious Stops and Tea Shops – for things to do with my journeys (and my pal Liz if she chooses to contribute to it) if you’d like to take a look and follow it. I suspect there’ll be more posts there in the coming days and weeks as I process my experiences and as Liz helps me to put names to places!
It’s been nice to spend sometime doing something arty, even if it is just a tiny image. No doubt I’ll do more.
For now, though, I have to get back into the routines of life back at home.
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.
I did try a small design using coloured pens to add lines, but it just doesn’t feel or look right.
I’m happy with this one, like I was with the one yesterday.
These last couple of artworks have been a bit of a change in the way I usually work. Perhaps more of quite a change.
Usually, I start by drawing my design and then adding colour. Over the past couple of days I’ve been drawing the basic shapes/design with colour from a brush, starting with the broad structure of the design. Then, I add the architecture of the design in pen.
The laying down of colour first means there is, for me, not a lot of control over the gradation of colour/tome and the precise shapes. Using watercolours means that colours can bleed from one shape into another if I forget to move to another area and let each shape dry before adding another next to it.
The resultant colour design, the variations as mentioned, is then the basis for my drawing. I work with the shapes as they are, trying not to be overly concerned if my pen lines done precisely match the edge of each shape. I try to work with the variations in colour/saturation/tone as I add the patterns.
I have tried doing something like this digitally, but so far haven’t been all that happy with the results. I will keep trying though. I know eventually I’ll work out how this will work for me.
It’s a nice way to spend a Sunday, no matter what I do precisely.
Art is the Adventure 