In this video, I take a small panel of some paper coloured with Paper Artsy Fresco Paints and white gesso and create a small design. Seed pods, Mooka, and a spiral shell – some of my favourite things to draw!
I used Inktense pencils and a damp brush to add colour and shadow. Finally some gold dots for the seeds in the pods.
Small, but nice enough and a needed change while my mind processes what I’m doing with collage and lettering and, and, and …
Click on this link to watch the accompanying video tutorial on YouTube.
This was fun! A page full of flowery, shelly, poddy motifs all starting with a circle! I’ve actually already filled nearly six pages in my A5 sketchbook with such explorations. And I’ve not finished!
A simple exercise like this really gets your creative juices flowing. There are so many, many ways to fill a circle with patterns to create a new motif. And as it’s in a sketchbook, there’s absolutely no pressure to make everything perfectly polished. The point is to get an idea down quickly and then move on to the next.
After the page (or pages) are full, there’s time to go back and add finishing details, patterns, textures, colours and/or shadows. There’s no requirement to do this to every single motif on the page. Nor is it essential that each space on a motif is filled identically. This is a space to just try things out, whether they work or not at this time. Be that drawing, patterns, textures, colours or different media.
Eventually, the sketchbook will be full of ideas and inspiration. It will be a place to dip into when at a loss. it will be full of exercises that can be done again and again or varied quite simply.
Exercises that get you drawing and being creative just for the sheer fun of it!
This is exactly what a sketchbook is for! There can be some more polished drawings in there, of course. There can be notes and ephemera and colour palettes and swatches and more too. But the fun of just drawing to see how many variations on a theme, starting with one simple shape or motif. Well, you’ll surprise yourself!
Give it a go! No one ever has to see what’s in your sketchbook. It can be a place where you play with watercolours just to watch the magic of that medium. To lose yourself in a pleasurable activity for a while and take a break from the busyness of modern life and all the stuff going on in the world around.
Drawing in a whimsical, stylised or doodly way takes the pressure off the belief that art has to look like a photograph (it doesn’t!). It allows you to just enjoy the process.
I thought it would be fun to do a really simple turtle skull drawing along with those Xerocomus fungi and turn them into a dangle design.
I kept to simple line drawings, focused on ocean-themed charms for the dangle, and added really simple colour in places just to give an idea of how it could look fully coloured in.
I worked digitally, with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro along with a Surface Pen and Surface Studio by Microsoft.
The splashes of colour show how the line drawing, as simple as it is, just comes to life with colour.
If you’d like to know more about drawing dangle designs, then my book “A Dangle A Day” is a good place to start. I show you how, one step at a time, you too can draw dangle designs and I have over 150 examples of dangle designs you can copy or use for inspiration.
My prompts for day 5 are owl skull and Favolaschia calocera. The prompt lists I’m using are from two people on instagram – @book_polygamist and @nyan_sun.
I’m partway through my design – the owl skull is drawn and I’m rather pleased with it. I have yet to draw the Favolaschia and other design elements around it.
Again, I’m working digitally for day 5 and pushing stylised design just a little bit more with this one.
Five days in and I am really enjoying it. The hardest thing for me is to not let it dominate my arty work each day. For three out of the four days so far I have also managed to get my goal of at least two illustrations for the coloring book I’m working on done. The Inktober drawings are also giving me some ideas for the illustrations for the book as well.
I’m also finding I’m ‘rediscovering’ styles of art that I haven’t done for a long time; the owl skull is an example of this and I will write more about that when I post day 5’s ink.
Can you believe that September is nearly over? I swear that the older I get the faster time seems to go.
Anyway, a new month on the horizon means a new colouring template for the members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. There just has to be a Hallowe’en theme for October’s page, and you can see a sneak peek of it above. I couldn’t resist colouring some of it in as a way of trying out some new digital brushes and some ideas too.
I put some of my favourite All Hallows’ Eve motifs into the drawing, including a raven, skulls, fungi and a vampire cat! I always enjoy drawing stuff to do with Hallowe’en; it’s my favourite time of year because I don’t have any past traumas associated with it.
If you’d like to colour this template, pop over to the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group and become a member; each month I do one drawing exclusively for group members (terms and conditions of use and sharing apply).
I used a combination of fountain pens and fine-line pens to draw the design on dot grid paper. I then scanned the drawing in and cleaned up smudges and smears digitally.
Then, I set about adding colour digitally using my usual tools – Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Microsoft Surface Pen and Microsoft Surface Studio. I also added a background and surface texture that I had purchased via Creative Market.
I am really quite pleased with how the colour is bringing the illustration to life, especially the skull in a jar. I hope to be able to continue to add colour as the month progresses, though I do know I have quite a bit of work to do and focus on.
Last year, I really enjoyed taking part in Inktober. Inktober has become a really popular social media event where artists and creatives use a daily prompt to draw (or create) something based on that prompt and share it on social media.
There is an official prompt list, but people do create alternative lists and I may look at some of them as there may be variations that might be less time intensive than last years’ was!
I shall see what I find and go from there I think.
Tired. However, I’m am quite content, my mood is good enough today. I do have EMDR later on, and I often feel ‘flat’ before my therapy session. I think my unconscious mind starts to bring stuff up in preparation for EMDR.
I know that the likelihood of me being exhausted later is rather high, so I’m not planning to do loads of stuff later on. Self care will be the order of the late afternoon and evening.
I decided to use mongrams with dangles to form today’s prompt ‘Jolt’ for Inktober 2018. I also wanted to use a bright colour scheme to jolt eyes awake, perhaps.
I started by sketching the design out on Clairefontaine Grafit dot grid paper. I scanned the sketch in then inked it in and coloured it digitally using my trusty trio of Microsoft Surface Studio, Microsoft Surface Pen and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
I have absolutely no idea what the designs in the dangles have to do with the prompt ‘jolt’. They just came to me as I was drawing them out, and today that’s good enough for me!
Inktober 2018 is almost over and it’s perhaps time to reflect on it all.
It’s the first time I’ve taken up any art challenge, apart from contracts for work that is. I thought it could be a bit of an onerous thing to do, time consuming and so on. Well there have been days where it has been a bit like that, but I’ve also had days where it’s been a relatively quick process too.
I have enjoyed having a daily prompt to get the creative juices flowing and to encourage me to draw every day. Not that I don’t draw everyday. However drawing with a prompt is different for me.
Well, I do draw with a theme, such as when working on a book. But that theme is the overarching focus for a series of illustrations. To have a different prompt each day and without the drawings having to fit to a particular size or format and just for fun is something that is different.
It’s had me thinking outside of my artsy box at times, at others it has let me draw styles that don’t usually make it into my books. With that, my mind is working on what I can do with these kinds of images. My mind is working on that…slowly.
I have been wondering if I’m going to take up another challenge in the coming month(s) and I’m not sure about that at the moment. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment!
I certainly have some ideas listed in my BuJo to think about and work on in the coming days/weeks/months.
It’s been a good thing to do, this Inktober thing, and part of me is sad to see it come to an end.
Will I do Inktober 2019? I don’t know. It will all depend on what’s going on in my life in a year’s time, but if possible I think I will.#
Just a reminder, my book about how to design and draw dangle designs and monograms – ‘A Dangle A Day’ – is available for preorder
Angela Porter 