straw

Practice, practice, practice!

Angela PorterLeave a comment

I did spend some time working on a second typographic portrait of Aneurin Bevan yesterday, using a photographic reference that had more detail in it in terms of grey scale.

Before bed, I wanted to relax with some colour (1). For some reason, I pulled out my set of Tombow Dual Brush pens and tried working with them on an A5 piece of Arteza mixed media paper. Hand lettering with gradients, with and without black outlines resulted, and then I wanted to try drawing with colour gradients.

To create gradients, I held the tip of one pen on top of the tip of the other. I then used the lower pen to draw or write with. I used the bullet nib for the lower examples. I used the brush nib for the larger lettering and also the leaves and flowers and so on.

I made some notes as I went, to remind me what I did and what I liked about them. I used a Uniball Signo DX 0.38 pen to do this, which is also waterproof. So, I used it to add lines.

This morning, I wanted to start my arty day experimenting with alcohol inks, once again (2, 3 and 4). All because I’d watched a YouTube videos where people use a straw to blow the ink and alcohol blending solution/rubbing alcohol/isopropyl alcohol/propan-2-ol around the yupo paper.

One helpful piece of advice I heard along the way was it’s best to use only a small amount of alcohol ink. Which is what I did. One drop to start with and then add more ink of the same or different colour(s) as needed.

It took me a while to work out not to blow as hard as I could, and to try different angles to hold the straw at, as well as moving the ink in different directions.

I’m much happier with the results this time, though the scans have bleached the colours out a little. I really must work out the best settings on my scanner so that this doesn’t happen.

Anyway, I need to find a way to seal the alcohol ink so I can draw on top of it without wrecking the pens. I also want to do some better scans so I can make use of these alcohol ink backgrounds in digital art.

Today I want to continue work on the typographic portrait. This second one seems to be building up more quickly than the first one. I think that’s all due to me becoming familiar with the process and accepting that my hand lettering based on my handwriting is good enough. I’m also working out my own ways to fit letters to curves and the shapes at the ends of the sections.

So, all of these activities – using waterbased media, hand lettering, hand drawn typography, and alcohol ink backgrounds all have one thing in common – practice, practice, practice!

ICAD2020 Day 02 Marigold

Angela Porter2 Comments

#DYICAD2020 #ICAD2020 – Day 02 – Marigold

I took an index card and used Dried Marigold and Bundled Sage Distress Oxide inks to colour it. I spattered on water to create some bleached spots. Then, I edged the card with Ground Espresso Distress Ink.

I knew I wanted to draw a marigold, which is what I did. In fact, I drew a few. The large one is a French Marigold (Tagetes sp.). The others are pot marigolds (Calendula sp.)

All the drawings are quick, loose, sketchy ones using an 04 Sakura Pigma Sensei pen. I did use a pencil to roughly sketch out the flowers.

As the theme for week one of the ICAD2020 challenge is typography, I added some hand lettering. I also looked for a couple of quotes about marigolds, which I hand lettered.

Finally, I added a wash of iridescent orange and yellow watercolours to the flowers, sage-y green to the leaves. I also added some graphic lines in iridescent orange to the letters. And I couldn’t resist spattering some of the iridescent paint on the card itself.

I think I may add the ICAD2020 creations into my journal, or maybe make one from them as time goes along. No need to make a decision today, I’m not really thinking straight at the moment.

Experimenting with watercolours

I woke with another raging headache this morning. So, some art was in order until the pills kick in and I can sleep the dregs of it off.

I thought I’d try some ways of adding texture and interest to watercolour backgrounds.

Putting some clingfilm (saran wrap I think it’s called in the US) onto wet watercolour creates a lovely texture. It’s not easy to see but I used it on the pieces at the top middle and top right. This is something I will definitely be experimenting with going forward.

I also tried salt again, on fairly damp, less damp and almost dry. The darker pink tile under the Marigold ICAD was where I added salt to rather damp watercolour and the blooms are just beautiful.

I also tried using white gouache. I spattered it onto a couple of tiles, but I also used it mixed with water to paint into wet watercolour. It adds a really interesting effect, the opacity of gouache looking intriguing against the transparent watercolour.

Finally, I used a straw to blow drops of watercolour around. That was a lot of fun and really created random, abstract patterns.

I added these to my journal with notes on how I achieved the effects so I can reference them in future. Today, I may not remember much about what I’ve done, all thanks to the dratted headache. All due to stress/anxiety/worry yet again.