stylised designs

Dragonfly Designs

Angela Porter2 Comments
©Angela Porter | Artwyrd

One of my ideas is to create a digital library of designs of things that interest me and that may be useful in my journal making, card making, or just other kinds of art.

For some reason, I decided on dragonflies. So, I sketched out some ideas and then inked the drawings in digitally. I also added details and patterns ot the designs that weren’t present in the sketches. The dragonflies are in my signature entangled style for sure.

I still have a few sketches to work on, and some alternatives of the wing shapes and body designs. I also want to do them as silhouettes. I like silhouettes on coloured backgrounds, like the one I’ve used today.

I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to ink in the designs. I also used it to add the background, shadows and typography.

The background is one of my own made using Distress Oxide inks and water. I love that I can recolour the image digitally; the original was in shades of pink and purple, but I thought that blues and greens would suit the dragonflies much more.

I’ve left the dragonflies uncoloured, for now, though adding colour will bring the designs to life and add some dimension to them.

I don’t have a colour printer anymore, just a black and white laser printer. I may consider getting a colour printer in the future, however, as I think being able to print my own digital art would be useful, especially for using in journal making. An inkjet printer would be the most useful; it would allow me to print on many different kinds of paper and lightweight card.

I’m also thinking of putting together digital collections of backgrounds and ephemera and/or digi stamps for sale via my Etsy shop. Let me know if you think that’s a good idea by dropping a comment.

International Women’s Day 2019

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International Women's Day 2019 - ©Angela Porter 2019 - Artwyrd.com
International Women’s Day 2019 – ©Angela Porter 2019 – Artwyrd.com

I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘If only’, not ‘as long as’. I matter. Full Stop.” – Chimamanda Adichie, Nigerian writer.

A balanced world is a better world.
How can you help forge a more gender-balanced world?
Celebrate women’s achievement. Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality.
www.internationalwomensday.com

Today is International Women’s Day, Furbaby Friday and Dangle Day so what else could I do but combine them all into one design?

I started by sketching them out on dot grid paper. My favourite sketching tool at the moment is any one of the darker tones in the Koh-I-Noor Magic multicoloured pencils range. The thickness of the lead encourages me to be bold in my hand lettering and drawing. It also encourages me to draw on a larger scale than I usually do.

Something else I’ve noticed is that drawing with such a thick (but fun and coloured) pencil,I can’t put all the small details in that appear in the final image in the sketch. It really is a sketch which I can then use as the skeleton, the framework, the architecture for the final design.

The thickness of the pencil also means that my hand lettering is bigger than usual. I can also deliberately wear the lead down into more of a chisel shape which helps with the thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes.

It’s also a pleasure to write with pencil and my writing always feels neater when I do write with a pencil. I have no idea why that is, but it just is.

Anyways, once the design was sketched out, I scanned the design into the Microsoft Surface Studio and used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and a Microsoft Surface pen to first ink in the outlines and then add colour, details and texture.

For the colours I kept to a fairly simple colour scheme with pink and purple for the flowers and hearts and the Women’s Day symbol. I just had to use a rainbow to fill the hand lettering (apart from the word ‘women’s’). And the pusscat just had to be mainly white, but I thought peachy-pink stripes would be quite nice.

My dangle design tutorial book – A Dangle A Day – is now available from all good booksellers.

Dragonfly and Bee – Pen and ink drawings.

Angela Porter2 Comments

Fly Away

Fly Away © Angela Porter 2012

Approx. 8.25″ x 5.25″ (13cm x 21cm).  Drawn using Rotring Rapidograph pens with black ink on white cartridge paper.

Bee Natural

Bee Natural © Angela Porter 2012

Approx 5″ x8″ (12.5cm x 20.5cm).  Drawn using Rotring Rapidograph pens with black ink on white cartridge paper.

Arty Nouveau Saturday

Angela Porter4 Comments

It’s not so rainy here, but it’s still grey this morning.  I’ve still not managed a decent length sleep and feel like my eyes are crossing whenever I relax!  Still, I’ve been kind of busy with arty pursuits, and exploring Art Nouveau.  These are my latest explorations…

I love the organic, flowing lines and the stylised forms.  The roses are part of a bigger work, one where I’d tried out coloured pencils as well as watercolours, but I’m really not at all happy with the coloured pencil part!

The black outlines in the top picture are worked using a 0.35mm Rotring technical drawing pen, in the roses a black Sakura ‘Glaze’ pen was used; it’s glossy, raised line makes the image more like stained glass.