This week, I decided to create a coloring page / template that is in the ‘Angela’ Entangled style, similar to yesterday’s artwork.
I made the motifs bigger and less patterned for the coloring template, however. To add colour to my version of the template I used a mixture of brown fineliners by Staedtler and Stabilo. Instead of solid colour, I used patterns and textures to add colour and complexity. I did use a pale grey fineliner to add details to the snowdrops and leaves, but the scanner didn’t pick it up. Ho hum.
After I’ve had lunch, I may return to the drawing to add shadows to bring out some dimension and depth. I’m not sure what medium I’ll use, though alcohol makers may be the best option, perhaps. I’ll see how I feel when I get to it.
Of course this is the template of the week for the members of the Angela Porter’s coloring book fans facebook group. And this week there’s a challenge to colour this template, or another of their choice, in a monochrome colour scheme.
If you’d like to print the template and join in with the challenge then just pop along to the group!
A different work in progress today. I started this one late last night and continued for a while after breakfast this morning. I used a Pilot G-Tec C4 pen, which has a very fine tip, on white acid-free cartridge paper (the camera flash has turned it a creamy colour, I have no idea why!).
It is always a pleasurable experience to draw with such a fine pen and to created such detailed and intricate designs. No real thought or planning, just trusting my intuitive creative instincts.
Purely abstract drawing, using my favourite shapes, motifs and texture patterns, along with a few new motifs that have developed as I’ve drawn this. It looks like a weird assemblage of bits and pieces, mechanical and sculptural, botanical and textural.
Assemblage is a fairly good way to describe my signature style of drawing. There are layers of all kinds of bits and pieces – flowers, mechanical tubes and pieces, textural areas, pipes, sculptural bits and bobs, seeds or berries and curls.
What is hidden beneath the various layers? Where did all the bits and pieces come from? What was disassembled or broken to liberate the pieces? Who or what did the disassembling, and why? What new things could they be assembled into? What dream fragments, story parts of my unconscious mind do they represent?
I can spot various influences in the bits and bobs present in the drawing – Mayan sculpture, dials and mechanical levers, pipes and conduits, discs and berry lights, flowers and seeds, textures and patterns, arches and columns, rocks and strata.
What do you see in this drawing? Leave me a comment, I would be intrigued to know!
I’ve spent a very enjoyable few hours this morning creating a plethora of gloriously coloured and distressed backgrounds for use with my drawings and art. I will be scanning them in to create digital backgrounds too, but only when I’m going to draw on one. I’d get overwhelmed if I tried to do that task all in one go!
How I created the backgrounds.
The papers I used are all mixed media – either ClaireFontine or Daler-Rowney. They were cut to sizes that would be suitable for mounting on cards. They’re a mixture of the following approximate sizes: 9″ x 3″; 8″ x 2″; 4″ x 4″; 3″ x 5″; 2.5″ x 4.5″; 4.5″ x 2″; 3″ x 4″; 4.5″ x 1.5″ just in case you’re curious.
They are all coloured with Distress Oxide Inks. I only have the first two collections released by Ranger; I do intend to complete the collection in the future.
For some, I used a soft Brayer roller to add the Distress Oxide to a gel printing plate. I then either sprayed water on the plate in a fine spray, or I splattered drops of water colour on to it before pulling the print with a piece of paper.
I tried brayer-ing the Ink directly to paper, but wasn’t all that happy with the results until I sprayed them with water.
My favourite way of adding colour, however, was to use a piece of Cut and Dry foam to add the ink. I tapped the black, denser foam side onto the ink pad and used that to spread the colour around the paper. I then sprayed with water.
Sometimes I’d go back and add another layer of colour, and then spray with water.
I used a heat gun to dry the paper after spraying with water or colour, which helps the distress oxide inks to ‘bleach’.
I’d add some more colour if I thought the background needed it, and then spray again, until I was happy with the end product.
My final task was to frame the backgrounds by adding a black edging. I used a foam finger dauber and black soot Distress Ink to do this, spraying the papers once more to let the edging ‘bleed’ a little.
I’m really happy with most of the backgrounds I’ve made and I’m looking forward to using them to create little pieces of art, and adding to my library of digital backgrounds I can use for my digital art. These are a little small, maybe. However, Now I’ve found out how I like to create a background with the cut and dry foam I’ll be making some A4 sized backgrounds.
Update on my back and other things.
My back is feeling a lot better today. However, I still get stiff all too easily and I still have pain down the sides of my thighs.
My mosaic crochet wrap is coming along – it’s all I’ve been focusing on while my back has been too painful to sit and draw.
The world is greening quickly. I’ve not spent much time at my studio area while my back has been sore, so I’m surprised to see the trees that were bare just a couple of days ago are now clothed in spring hues. That cheers my heart!
I’m coping quite well with the ‘lock-down’. I am trying not to get sucked into the whirling maelstrom of news and views about Coronavirus and other events going on in the world.
The virus crisis is happening, even though it’s not touched me personally. It will occur whether I pay attention to it or not. I know being stressed, anxious, fearful will have a negative impact on my immune system, so the calmer I can stay, the better. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. I do. Deeply. The only thing I can do is to stay home and not be a vehicle for transmission of the virus from person to person.
I now need a fresh mug of tea, so that’s all the words I have…for now.
Enjoyable few hours (around 6) drawing this one. I have toyed with the idea of mocking up gold foil for the N…not sure if it works though having tried it out.
I still think the edges of the N are either too wobbly or too straight … not sure if the patterns should just peek over the edge in places with clear lines in others …
Let’s go try another letter out! I will eventually crack this … I will …
I couldn’t draw anything cruel – not in my nature to do so, it upsets me so much. So, I chose to go with a quote about ‘cruel’ that is a positive one:
‘Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness.’ – Katherine Henson
I see too much cruelty in this world and I really do not want to add to it.
So, I drew something pretty, with whimsically cute critters and monsters and design elements and patterns that make me smile.
I drew this design on Frisk Bristol board using Faber-Castell Broadline and Fineline pens, scanned it in and then just added a background gradient in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. I’ll get around to colouring it in properly later, I hope…
I really do need to spend some time today on the Entangled coloring book that I’m a little more than half-way through.
Doing these Inktober challenges is helping remind me of where I think some of my drawing skills and my style or ‘voice’ lies. I hope I can translate this into some templates for the coloring book in progress. I can’t work in the cute critters/monsters as I have in this and some other previous Inktober challenges, but I can work with the other elements I’m sure.
I’m also feeling more confident with my line drawing skills after feeling distinctly wobbly and out of practice after a week away without any drawing being done.
I’m also a little less emotionally tired today. I’m surprised yet not surprised at how much the anti-stigma talk and EMDR therapy drained me this week.
I’ve been a little busy with some monograms. They’re either 7.5cm x 12cm or 10cm x 10cm in size. The rectangular ones are on watercolour paper, the square on bristol board.
This is approx. 7″ in diameter. It’s worked using UniBall Unipin pens, Caran D’Ache watersoluble coloured pencils and tiny amounts of gold paint and ink on heavy cartridge paper.
I’m not entirely sure that it works. I think I’ll have to step away from it for a while before evaluating it with fresh eyes.
In it’s defence, I must say I lost myself in the creativity of the process and it relaxed and soothed me and has let me practice some ideas.
This design started with the kind of infinity loop towards the top left. The loops coming from it eventually were seen as a letter ‘B’ and the word believe seemed to be the right one to put on this. Everything else grew, quite literally in some cases, from this point.
There are golden stars to wish upon and golden seeds and flowers and growth and sun and rain … and hope.
Approx. 6″ x 8″. The black lines were worked using Uni-Ball UniPin pens. Colour was applied using watercolours and gold watercolour paint. The paper is heavyweight cartridge.
As always, I am the owner of this creation and it may not be used, shared, distributed or altered in any kind of way without permission from me. Thank you.
Angela Porter 