Purple, blue, teal and some pinkish mauves is a rather cool color selection, quite wintry in feel. But it’s also soothing and calming to me. Just what I needed today.
I still haven’t got those mugs to look cylindrical! Not enough contrast methinks.
I decided to spend the morning quietly working with Clip Studio Paint, figuring out more about how a couple of tools and settings work. A quiet and peaceful way to spend some time while I continue to recover from being poorly. I’m still not entirely well, but not far off.
This week it’s another mandala. I’m still not feeling too well, so mandalas are great to create when under the weather.
This one is full of comforting items – a hot drink, cake (or ice-cream!), flowers, hearts and a lovely star. Well, I think the star is lovely!
I am feeling better today, just not quite well enough to do much. I did get a video posted yesterday. Today, I don’t think there’ll be one as I really need to sleep soon.
Then, I turned my attention to drawing this week’s template for the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. I did video the process, but realised close to the end of the drawing I’d mostly worked out of view of the camera. Duh! I got so engrossed I forgot to check the part of the page I was working on was in frame.
Members of the facebook group suggested things to include in the template. I’ve included a fair number of them, but others will have to be included in future templates.
This was a really fun drawing to do. I pushed past the various points where I wasn’t sure about what I was drawing. The end result is something I’m quite happy with.
I’ve been awake since before 5am, UK time. It’s now nearly half past midday (UK time again!) and I’m so tired! I think a nap is in order very soon.
Yesterday, I set up a poll in the group so members could vote on options or make suggestions for this week’s template. As you can see, a mandala with a hallowe’en theme, including cats and spider webs, is the result. Of course, there’s some drunken skulls – no party hats this week!
As I created this digitally, I didn’t film the process. I do have, however, a short vlog where I show the uncoloured template and a couple of other pieces of art and waffle on a bit!
As October has progressed, my weekly coloring templates (or coloring pages if you prefer!) have grown increasingly spooky. All in a cute and whimsical way, of course! It is now only 10 days away from Hallowe’en after all!
I’m particularly fond of my potion bottles and the drunken party skulls. Colour really does bring the line drawing to life.
I fell quite ill yesterday afternoon, digestive issues once again. I’m feeling better this morning, but still a goodly way from being ticketty boo.
I’ve yet to sort out my sketchbook page for today’s tangle pattern for Inktober Tangles 2021. I’ll do that once I’ve finished the social media stuff and had a mug of tea.
This tangle, with it’s use of heavy lines for shadow/dimension is just up my street. Or so I thought. I ended up experimenting with how the thicker lines can change whether the layer appears to be growing up from or digging down into the page.
I enjoyed varying the inny or outy nature of each layer in the pattern, but I’m not entirely sure I’ve got the shadow and highlight right for the innies!
I’m going to put it down to sheer tiredness. I had a poor night’s sleep again. I’ve been up since before 5am and I’ve done nearly a day’s work already, and I still have more to do. But first I really do need to go sleep for a while. I’m just about falling asleep at my desk.
This week’s template has a bit of everything that is ‘Angela’ in style. Entangled art, Zentangle patterns, florals and botanicals, cute and whimsical. Something for everyone. The template is available to members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group.
Unusually, it’s in landscape format, and a strange set of dimensions too. I can only say I wasn’t feeling too well yesterday – upset digestive system, extremely tired. That meant I didn’t pay much attention to the size of the paper I decided to draw upon.
I am feeling somewhat better today, but still incredibly tired after another disturbed night with an upset tummy.
I know I’ll be getting my sketchbook page for Inktober Tangles 2021 Day 14 done after I’ve had a very late breakfast. I’ll post that later in the day.
This morning, I recorded drawing the final part of the template. I did some drawing yesterday evening, but didn’t record it, so there is a gap in the process. Here it is:
Thursday comes around quite quickly, and with it comes a new coloring page, or coloring template if you prefer, for the members of the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group to bring to life with colour.
This week is a fabulous fungi fantasia. I really enjoyed drawing this one, and adding colour really brings it to life. I’ve chosen rather bright, almost psychedelic colours, as is often the case! So, I’m intrigued to see how others will use colour magic to bring the drawing to life.
The design was drawn with a Tombow Fudenosuke pen on marker paper. This version is coloured digitally in Clip Studio Paint.
Here’s the link to a timelapse video showing the drawing of this template.
Mushrooms. Lots of mushrooms. A sketchbook page full of simple line drawings of mushrooms drawn from memory and/or imagination, some brightly coloured with Ecoline watercolour ink.
This page was a lot of fun to draw. I wasn’t aiming for realism or detail. It was all about drawing simple, stylised, imaginary mushrooms. I planned to add colour to bring volume to the drawings.
As I used imagination to draw these whimsically wonky mushrooms, it was easier to give myself permission to forgo the pressures I put on myself to be realistic in adding colour. I could use whatever colours I wanted to for each mushroom, I could be as stylised as I wished about the colour too.
Adding colour in this way is easy when I add colour to my coloring book pages/templates. As these pages are stylised, I can add colour in a simpler, more fun way. This is especially true for my Doodleworlds style of art.
Transferring that mindset to my drawings from nature, architecture and so on isn’t quite so easy for me. I still hear that critical voice of ‘It’s not good art if it doesn’t look like photograph or like the real thing’ in my head. This is a message that is repeated to us time and time again from our earliest days of starting to draw. It was these critical messages that led to me having a belief that I was no good at art, and those messages were seared deeply into my view of myself.
In fairness to myself, I have overcome some of these critical beliefs foisted upon me by others. However, some linger and rise up from time to time. I suspect their influence is most noticed in my lack of confidence in myself when it comes to colour.
Identifying these ‘inner critics’ is the first step to dispelling them. This is a multi-step process as the inner critic is armed with many weapons to destroy my self-confidence. I’ve disarmed this critic time and time again, but it always seems to find a new weapon. Eventually though, it will run out of weapons to use.
It’s a process, a long winded process, but it’s one that’s worth doing, step by step.
Art is the Adventure 