starfish

Draw With Me | Starfish, Sea Urchins and Mussel Shells

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Click on this link to view the tutorial video that goes with this sketchbook page.

Carrying on with the sea-life theme, I filled a sketchbook page with simple drawings of stylised, whimsical starfish, sea urchins and mussel shells. I recorded my process as a tutorial video, showing and explaining my step by step process of drawing. I start with simple shapes and gradually add more and more complexity.

There is something very intriguing and curiosity-provoking about exploring variations based on the same simple shapes and steps. The possibilities are endless and it certainly gives creativity a bit of a workout!

These kinds of exercises are what sketchbooks are perfect for. A sketchbook is a safe place to experiment and explore, and the end result is a valuable resource of ideas as well as a visual record of your development of artistic skills. They’re a place to practice fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and for trying out new media or techniques.

Sketchbooks chart the development of our skills, our pattern and motif preferences, and show how we develop and evolve our artistic style.

This revelation about sketchbooks is exciting to me. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to work this out. I think the Inktober Tangle Pattern Challenge back in 2021, the Fragments of Your Imagination Challenge earlier this year (both challenges hosted by the 7F5R Challenge Facebook group) as well as the Lettering Sketchbook course on Domestika have definitely been significant activities that have helped me reach this realisation.

The other major realisation I’m having at this time is that I think I’ve finally found what kind of YouTube content I like to make!

I was a science teacher for 28 years. Teaching is part of who I am. My focus as a teacher was always to inspire and encourage my students, to help them to believe they could do science, and to have better self-esteem and self-confidence. I loved to see them grow and develop and gain skills and knowledge they never thought they could, and that was a wonderful thing to be a part of.

If I can do the same thing for others, who have no confidence in drawing. If I can use my love of whimsical and stylised art/motifs, the function of a sketchbook to encourage others to take up pen and paper and draw, then that is a good thing!

I also think it’s important that I show my process, warts and all. Variations that are lovely, and others that are not so. It’s all part of the process of developing as an artist. I think my work with traditional coloured media is a testament to my ability to make a total mess of a fairly nice drawing! I am better with digital colours, but not much!

It all takes time to work these things out, and I can be really dense and stubborn at times! But I do get there … eventually. ‘There’ being a point of understanding myself and accepting something or a sudden revelation, you know the kinds of things. But ‘there’ isn’t the final destination. The journey of exploration and development never ends, and a sketchbook is now, for me, a vital companion going forward.

Turtle skull and Xerocomus dangle design – Inktober 2019 day 4 v2

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Dangle design for Inktober day 4

Inktober Day 4 – a dangle design

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.

Inktober – day 5

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.

Reflecting on Inktober so far.

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.

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