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Finishing Up a Zentangle Greetings Card

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Link to today’s video/vlog on YouTube.

Actually, the title should be ‘How Not to finish up…’. I had a bit of an accident. More about that in a minute.

This morning, I decided to work on finishing up one card design. I knew I wanted to add another layer beneath the panel already finished before gluing it to the cream-coloured card blank.

I dug out some scrapbook paper from my stash. Nothing felt right. The colours were just ‘off’. That’s when I realised I needed to use Distress Inks to colour the lower panel.

I could have used them to colour the panel, then use pens (black, fineliner or metallic) to draw a pattern on it. Instead, I decided to try to emboss the pattern into the paper using a dotting tool / parchment craft ball tool / embossing tool.

Before I did this, I experimented on some scrap paper to see how I could colour the paper (more on this in today’s video).

I decided to emboss the paper first, then add Distress Ink (pine needles) with the black side of a piece of Cut ‘n Dry foam. That kept the embossing white. I found that if I used a blending brush (aka make-up brush!) more ink settled in the embossing. That is also a lovely look, but not what I wanted.

Inside this border, I added some gold ink to create a gold border around the upper panel.

That looked fine and dandy. The horror story came with the next step…

I added some foam tape to the back of the upper panel to add some dimension to the card, along with some glue so I had some wiggle time to make sure I got the panel centred.

The glue was the mistake I think. I had the panel nicely centred until I turned it over to add some pressure to get it to stick firmly. It must have wiggled and become de-centralised.

And when I noticed it was very firmly stuck.

I was so annoyed with myself as I know this is something that nearly always goes wrong when I try to make cards.

The only way I can ‘fix’ things is to cut out that central panel and re-make the embossed border and reassemble the card once again. This time I’d consider having the embossed pattern going under the central pattern so that if it is a little off it won’t be quite so noticeable.

I’m not, however, going to do that. This time, I’m going to make notes in the card about what I did, the media used, what I like, what I don’t like, and what I need to be very, very mindful of the next time I make a card.

Reflecting on the card creation

I know I’m fairly happy with the design. I like the central motif of holly leaves. The sutble pattern in the border around it is nice too, as is the embossed border.

I do wish I’d not used chalk pastels to add colour to this panel. There’s something dusty and muted about it that I’m not at all sure of. I think that keeping things mostly monochrome on a coloured background works best for me, with touches of gold and white, with some shading perhaps.

It’s that thing again. I love colour, but making use of it always has me feeling that it’s where I mess things up, unless I keep the colours really simple. Simple as in black, white, the background colour, and a shadow colour, and maybe touches of metallics for some sparkle and shine.

I do better with colour when I work digitally, but in traditional media I always feel like I struggle.

It’s always a learning experience, more so when things don’t go as planned or when I’m not entirely happy with what I produce. My problem is I try the same kind of thing over and over and expect it all to improve. I think I’m hoping that I’ll work out how to make the various media work for me at some point.

I say, often, I’m going to stick to monochrome, and then go and try working with colour, often with the same kind of feeling at the end. The feeling I like the pen drawing, but the colour/media isn’t what I’m looking for.

Perhaps time for me to make use of this colour printer and add colour digitally and print it out!

Winter Solstice 2020

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All the best of the blessings of the season to you one and all!

Today, the Sun passes into Capricorn, marking the astronomical start of winter. It’s one of the shortest days of the year as well, and so it seems right that as the days get longer, the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth in the Northern Hemisphere strengthens, that it is seen as the ending of one orbit around the Sun, and the start of a new one.

Of course, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, Happy Summer Solstice!

Saturday Mandala

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It’s Saturday. I woke early and got to work in one of my sketchbooks where I’m drawing thumbnails and design elements with a focus on things starry. I needed a break from that, so turned my attention to creating a mandala.

Pink seems to be a bit of a thing at the moment, today it being a dusky shade of pink.

Oddly, the mandala has a star-shaped motif in the centre. That was not a conscious decision!

Anyway, it’s been a nice way to spend an hour or two while listening to podcasts. But, after another mug of mocha, I’ll be going back to work in my sketchbook. Which is also pleasurable, but in a different kind of way. My drawings are definitely sketchy, but that’s the whole point! Just getting ideas down. A nice way to spend a lockdown day.

A festive dangle design video

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This morning, I made a video of me drawing and colouring this festive dangle design and turning it into a card.

This video shows me drawing in real time, and I hope you enjoy it, despite the wobbliness in places.

Here’s a list of materials I used:

  • 8″x 8″ Winsor and Newton Bristol Board folded to make an 8″ x 4″ card
  • 7″ x 3″ piece of Winsor and Newton Bristol Board to draw the design on
  • Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen, medium
  • Pencil and ruler
  • Various Chameleon Color tones marker pens
  • White Uniball Signo gel pen
  • Tombow Mono glue
  • Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and a mini foam blending tool

I hope you have a go at drawing this dangle design and making your own papercraft or craft projects with it. If you do, I’d love to see them!

If you’d like to know more about drawing dangle designs, or would like more inspiration, step by step instructions, and encouraging words, then my book “A Dangle A Day” is a good place to start.

Monogram S dangle design

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©Angela Porter 2019

Over the last couple of days we’ve had some glorious late winter, sunny, mild weather. The kind of weather that can uplift my spirits.

It’s also lovely to see the late winter flowers bursting into bloom – snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils – and even celandines and daisies showing the heads in the sunshine. I also spotted the first signs of pussy willow about to burst into its furry delightfulness. The cascading catkins always lift my spirits. They’re all signs that winter is coming to an end and spring is waiting ready to burst forth.

I woke this morning with the idea of a simple monogram dangle design in my head. I knew it had to have a pusscat in it along with a snowdrops. It’s been a while since I included a cat in a dangle design, but today is the perfect day for that. Actually, every day is a perfect day to draw a cute, cuddly cat. A white cat to match the white snowdrops. I also included a paw print charm; my beautiful white cat, Cuffs, certainly left very deep paw prints on my heart and though I said goodbye to him last year after over 16 years with him as my companion he lives on in those paw prints and my memories of him.

The monogram had to be an S for snowdrops and spring. The monogram also had to have a spring flower as part of it’s design.

I’ve chosen quite a pastel and simple colour scheme for this dangle design to reflect the more pastel colours of spring. I also included a black and white chequerboard frame for the monogram, to add some contrast and some ‘weight’ to the design, grounding it onto the paper.

A sunny blue background with the cooler sky colours of winter but with the warmth of the sun seemed appropriate. It reminds me of these glorious days we’ve had that are presaging the coming spring.

I started by sketching my design out with pencil on paper. I scanned this sketch in and then re-drew the design with a technical pen ‘brush’ in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro using a Microsoft Surface Pen on the screen of a Microsoft Surface Studio. Then it was time to colour, again working digitally in this instance.

My final job was to choose a square background and I wanted one that spoke of sunshine and the threshold of spring, so I went for a soft yellow watercolour wash.

The whole task has taken me around 2 hours to do. It’s a simple design, with simple colouring.

If you like this dangle design and would like to learn how to draw your own then my book ‘A Dangle A Day’ takes you through the steps and has lots of dangles you can use to create your own designs as well as suggestions for where you could use them.

Dangle Design Card and Envelope

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© Angela Porter 2019

Here’s a pretty pair of whimsical and cute dangle designs card and envelope.

For the focal point of the card I used a butterfly from a pack of Ephemera from Tim Holtz called Botanical. I added some metallic gold ink highlights to the butterfly as I knew I’d be adding gold to the design. I also edged the butterfly with some Peeled Paint Distress Ink using a sponge ink applicator.

I then cut my paper to fit the card blank I wanted to use; I learned my lesson from the the last card I made! The card blank measured 8½” by 4¼”. So, I cut a piece of Claire Fontaine Mixed Media paper 7¾” by 3¾” to create the dangle design on.

I used the butterfly as a guide as to where I wanted to add some flowers upon which it could alight. I also drew pencil guidelines in for the centre of the design and the sentiment banner.

Then it was drawing the design. I used a 05 Unipin pen from Uniball.

I started by drawing the flowers at the top of the design.

Next, it was the hand lettering for the sentiment ‘Just for you’.

Flowers, hearts, stars and spherical and teardrop shaped beads are my goto choices for dangles. I did add a charm that was based on some jewellery, as well as a square charm with a geometric pattern inside it.

When I’d drawn the main dangle I realised I wanted to add a bit of width to it. So, I added two bars stretching out from the side of the square charm and used the ends to hang dangles made up of hearts and beads.

Colouring was the next task. I used Tombow Dual Brush pens to colour the design in. The colour gradients weren’t strong enough for me, so I used Chameleon Duotone Pencils to add depth to the colours.

Then, it was time to attach the butterfly using some foam squares.

I then used a dip ink pen to add some dots of gold FW Pearlescent ink around the design. I also used gold to fill in the lettering of the sentiment and various elements of the dangle design.

Next, I added white dots highlights to some of the design elements using a Sakura Souffle pen.

I also used a blue-grey Chameleon pencil to add shadows to the design at this point.

Before affixing the design to the card blank I used a sponge ink applicator and Peeled Paint Distress Ink to edge the design. That was the card done.

I then thought it would be fun to create an example of an addressed envelope using a dangle design as a monogram. I used some of the charms from the card for this design. I also drew some simple, whimsical butterflies above the monogram. I used Chameleon Duotone Pencils to colour the dangle design and to add a shadow to the dangle.

Pencil guidelines helped me to keep my lettering evenly spaced and of a consistent size. In this case I just guesstimated them, but in future I think I will need to measure the spacing of the lines!

Finally, I added some glittery golden stars with a gold glitter Uniball Gel pen as well as some white dot highlights using a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen.

One thing I realise I didn’t do was to make the colours in the dangle more harmonious with the butterfly. The color tones of the butterfly are quite antique and grungy and I used rather bright, clean colours to colour the design with. I also am not happy with the monogram on the envelope; it’s too small and the lettering style doesn’t seem sympathetic to the rest of the lettering.

I’m going to put these down to me still suffering the lingering effects of the stinking cold I’ve had for the past three days. It’s definitely broken now, but I’m still not 100%.

It’s also a learning experience. I’m not a wonderful card maker; I do dabble in it from time to time, however dangle cards are fun to make and with the decorated envelopes it’s double the fun! I think I need to start sending happy mail to people! I’d be happy to receive this card with a letter inside – how would you feel about it?

‘A Dangle A Day’ was published on 15 Jan 2019 and many of the dangle design elements can be found in this book.

Another December Dangle Design

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As one of my current goals is to improve my hand lettering I thought it would be fun to practice it with another dangle design.

For this one, I used some dangles from my book ‘A Dangle A Day’ to build the dangle designs with a wintry, Christmassy vibe to the finished design, thanks to the traditional Christmas colours of red, green and gold, along with with some blues, purples and cool pinks thrown in.

Of course, I could’ve chosen a non-traditional series of colours too, for fun. For example, the baubles on the dangles and the wreath could be done in pink, purple and blue. Whatever your decor at this time of the year it can be reflected in your colour scheme for your dangle design.

From the initial sketch to posting it on this blog it’s taken me around 6 hours to complete. 

Yes, I started with a sketch and then inked it in traditionally, pen on paper. I scanned that drawing into GiMP so I could remove the dot grid and the faint echoes of erased pencil lines. This was followed by coloring the image. For this I used marker and blender brushes . The last steps were to add texture to the design, a coloured background, a drop shadow and then the watermarks.

I used a Microsoft Surface Pen, a Microsoft Surface Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to complete the digital colouring and so on.

The charms on the dangles are a lot easier to draw than they appear, it’s the colour that really brings them to life and gives them dimension.

It’s always fun to string charms together to make these dangles. I often tend towards more symmetrical designs, but ones like this are good to do too. They all have their own charm, pardon the dreadful pun there.

I take you designing dangles step by easy step in my book ‘A Dangle A Day‘. There are lots of examples of dangle designs in the book that are ready to use, but it’s easy to rearrange things to suit your particular needs. The release date is 8 January 2019, a new style of creativity to start in the New Year, and throughout the year as all the seasons and many different celebrations are covered in the book, along with suggestions for projects using dangle designs.

E is for … Dangle design

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It’s Friday so it’s #dangleday! E is for … echinacea (cone flower), envelope, earphones, Earth, eight (or eleven, or eighteen or eighty – you get the idea), eight-sided octagon, eighth-notes (semiquavers).

Purple and gold are complementary colours so I chose them for the pusscat, the monogram and the octagon with my initials in it. I chose silver as the colour for the frame around the monogram simply because it’s my favourite metal and I fancied a change from gold beads and so on. Pink hearts and earphone accents. Yes, the headphones had to have cat ears on them, and yes, I have a pair like this, but the ears are blue.

Cute kitties, cute charms and letters. Looking at the monogram now, the letter could do with a shadow around it, but it’ll do as is.

I sketched the design on dot grid paper. After scanning the sketch in, I inked it in using a Microsoft Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface Studio screen. When I was happy with the line art, I added colour and texture to the dangle design. The final steps were to create a coloured and textured background and a drop shadow for the design.

A nice way to spend a couple of hours on a cool, grey, damp Friday morning.

If you like dangle designs and would like to try your hand at drawing your own then my upcoming book ‘A Dangle A Day’ is available to preorder ahead of it’s release in January 2019. In the book I take you through drawing monograms and dangle designs in easy steps. The book includes lots and lots of examples and ideas for designs too.

It’s also #furbabyfriday across the interwebs, including on Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. Why not pop over and share pictures of your fur babies with the group members.

Inktober 2018 Day 30 ‘Jolt’

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 30 JoltI 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

Inktober 2018 Day 14 ‘Clock’ WIP and a letter to intellectual property thieves

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Angela Porter Inktober 2018 Day 14 Clock WIPIt took me a couple or three hours to draw this design using Faber Castell pens on paper. Then I scanned it in to the ‘puter, gave it a transparent background so I could colour it digitally. After several hours work this is as far as I’ve got!

I may get back to it later on or in a day or three…we’ll see!

The yeuchy coloured background is only temporary; trying to protect my work, don’tcha know.

A rant about intellectual property theft…

Yesterday I discovered that someone has stolen work from a published coloring book of mine (Entangled Dragonflies) and republished it as their own! Not only that, they’d also done the same with other authors from the Creative Haven series of books from Dover Publications Inc. I’ve reported it along to my editors.

So, you can understand why I’d want to try my best to protect my work. There are some very unscrupulous people out there with very low to no moral standards. They obviously only think of themselves not of others, such selfish people that they are. They should be ashamed of themselves, however I doubt they ever feel shame for anything they steal.

I don’t want to let them get to me, so I’ll still show bits and bobs of my work at a low resolution with watermarks to try to protect it, as well as coloured backgrounds if nothing else.

I do know, however, that some will stop at nothing to steal if it’s something they want to steal.

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’m ‘talking’ to those who understand, that just because something is shared on the internet doesn’t mean it’s free for anyone to copy or use or re-sell in any form they wish. Just because I show you my work doesn’t mean I give up my rights to my work – I most definitely do not!

All my work is mine thanks to intellectual property rights and I will never relinquish those rights just because I show work here, on deviantART, on facebook, on Instagram, and on twitter.

I share my work because I get a lot of pleasure from creating it and I’d like to think people get some pleasure in seeing it.

Obviously, there’s a small number who only get pleasure from stealing other people’s work to profit from themselves. It’s no different to breaking into someone’s home and stealing their property – the thieves profit while the owners miss out.

If any such thieves do happen to read this, consider this. How would you feel if someone broke into your home and stole your treasured belongings for their own ends? Would you be upset? Would you see anything wrong in it?

I bet you would.

Whenever you are stealing from the internet for your own gain it is exactly the same as breaking into someone’s home and stealing from them.

I suspect you intellectual property thieves would only care about yourselves, however. I don’t think you thieves have any empathy for anyone else.

You’re not committing a victimless crime, you’re not stealing from big business, you’re stealing from the little people like myself and profiting from me, my talents, my skills, skills I’ve worked long and hard at to develop, and you just take advantage of that, of my good nature that I share things on the internet.

And worse, you steal from published books, that are covered by copyright law too, and republish them as if it’s your own work! This is illegal, it is breaking the law. You are stealing from myself and from other artists too.

You are horrible, horrible people – the intellectual property thieves that is, not you lovely people who support my work by buying my books and writing nice things and saying you like to see what I create.

I won’t let the small numbers of truly horrible people spoil it for other people that’s for sure. However, I want them to know a little of what I think of them – and I’m keeping it very, very polite. Trust me, I can swear worse than a pirate!

Back to Inktober…

So, to go back to Inktober Day 14 which has the prompt ‘clock’ And what I can say is that hopefully time is up for some of you unscrupulous, barefaced intellectual property thieves!

For the rest of the lovely world of people who support us artists/illustrators, how do you like to spend your time?