Weird Fish?

Weird indeed are my drawings today. I had a delivery of some ultra smooth botanical watercolour paper yesterday, and so I had to try drawing on it! Yup, it’s nice to draw on. Then, trying out some watercolouring.

Instead of doing rather wet washes, I used the watercolour in a much more controlled manner, adding layers to get some shadow and highlight going. I’m either going to intensify those shadows and highlights with coloured pencils or digitally. But not now. I woke with a stinking headache and I’m just about at the end of my ability to focus enough to function. I’d like to go out for a walk to try to clear my head, but I’m not sure I’m safe to be let out to walk on the pavement let alone drive! This may need some serious sleep to clear. Ho hum.

The colours look different in ‘real life’ – the reds and oranges are more browny, and the yellows are more greenish. My problem in scanning the images in!

I did film my morning art for today’s vlog:

Truth – Part 1

“A lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” – Terry Pratchett
There are three truths. There’s your truth. Then there’s my truth. And then there is THE truth.

Today’s morning drawing is the start of this rather abstract design around “truth”. The paper is 20cm x 20cm (approx 8″ x 8″).

There is a time lapse with voice over vlog available – click here.

I’m feeling fine today, so no side effects of the second dose of the covid vaccine, yet. It’s been barely 24 hours so I’ll be cautious about side effects for a while yet I think.

Willingness – Part 2 – Starting to add colour

I’ve been awake since stupid o’clock. After trying to return to sleep, I decided, around 6am, to get up and do some arty stuff.

So, I thought I’d record my next stint at adding colour to ‘Willingness’. I’m doing this digitally, and I had figured out the colour palette I’d like to use for it. I made some adjustment to the dusky purples I had in the palette and added some brighter versions, but they’re a tad too saturated and bright, so I’ll adjust those colours and re-colour the areas in which I’ve used them.

I love how the peaches and yellows almost glow against the soft blue-grey background.

I spent nearly an hour on just a few bits and pieces, and while I was working I was chatting away. I then realised I’d started having a bit of a rant about a couple of poor shopping experiences I’d had with businesses abroad, and how products sent to me weren’t what I’d ordered or were not as they were described. Not just that, but the huge difficulty in getting a refund of any kind from them. With the latest one, I just feel like throwing the towel in. I’m out of pocket with product that is not fit for purpose, but they’re whinging about how they’ll lose profit if they refund me, even if I return it all to them, at my own cost, so either way I’ll be out of pocket, not them.

Sometimes, I really think it’s just not worth the hassle and stress.

Anyway, that made me turn the video into a timelapse with music. Nearly an hour of art condensed into about seventeen minutes. You can view it here.

Have an open heart – part 2 – adding color

A time lapse video of me adding colour to yesterday’s drawing. Please click on ‘view in YouTube’ so it can count the views! If you like the video, give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing to my channel.

I’m not paid, sponsored nor gifted any product in order to promote or review any product. I show them just in case you’re interested in what I use, that’s all.

“Have an open heart” – Part 1

This morning I created this entangled artwork.

I chose one of the backgrounds I’d made earlier on in the week with Distress Inks and a white Posca pen. A micro Uniball Eye pen was used to draw the design. I added some metallic highlights with Sakura Gelly Roll pens. To add colour, I used Kuretake’s Zig Clean Colour Real Brush pens and a damp paintbrush.

Here’s a link to the the vlog showing the first part in creating this design – Open Heart.

Part 2 will be shared tomorrow.

As always, I’m not paid, sponsored nor gifted any materials I mention in order to promote them. They are all bought by myself and I share them so you can, perhaps, see materials you’ve not used before.

Thanks to all who’ve looked at my videos, liked and/or subscribed to my channel. I really do appreciate it.

Morning drawing and Distress Ink Backgrounds

This morning, I created some backgrounds to draw on. All the paper as Fabriano Medioevalis (3.3″ x 5.5″).

With three of the papers, I used white Posca pen to draw a pattern before colouring the paper with Distress Inks. For the other four, I just used distress inks.

Finally, I chose one of the papers to draw an entangled garden design on. I used a Uniball Eye pen (micro) and a Signo DX 0.38 pen.

It was all a bit of an experiment, especially the Posca pen. I was, however, quite happy with the results, and I now have a little collection of coloured papers to draw on when a large, blank sheet of white paper overwhelms me. And of course, they’ll be useful for the morning vlogs too!

I’ve yet to decide what I’d like to do with today’s drawing. It needs some shadow, highlight and/or colour to bring it to life. I’m going to sit with that for a while.

Of course, I’ve made a vlog of this mornings arty experiments and, here it is:

Now, I need to turn my attention to gathering sketches for my next colouring book for the Creative Haven series.

Monday Mandala – WIP

Yesterday, I used one of my rather mechanical entangled drawings last week to generate some tiles and surfaces in Repper. I figured out my colour palette and how I wanted to add colour yesterday, and this morning I continued to work on the design for over an hour.

Rather than having radial symmetry, this design has two axes of symmetry – horizontal and vertical.

I did record this process, and I found myself talking about some things that are too personal to share. These were some things I needed to voice, to hear with my ears rather than my inner voice. The process was valuable to me, but not something I want to be available to all and sundry.

Instead, I deleted the audio, and replaced it with a brief voice over introduction and some music to accompany the sped up video recording. I condensed over an hour of work into about fifteen minutes.

I also learned that voice over is entirely possible to do, but that I need to find a different way to do this. The function I used in Movavi only gave me a few seconds of voice over time. I’ll work it out for sure.

Morning drawing – failure and recovery?

Yesterday, I worked to add colour to my drawing using Distress Inks as watercolours. I was soon really disheartened and disappointed with the colours.

This morning, I decided to finish adding colour and then to try adding details with a white Posca pen and various fineliners and gel pens to see if I could achieve something I felt was OK. Also, I used it as an opportunity to learn.

I’m still not at all sure of the partly finished artwork, but it is what it is.

Saturday Morning Art

This morning, I decided to use Distress Inks to colour a 20cm x 20cm piece of smooth heavyweight cartridge paper and then to draw upon it. I also recorded all of this process as a youtube video (see below).

The paper is a bit more coloured than in this photo – the camera washed the colours out a bit. I will scan it in before I do anything else with this drawing for sure.

It’s always so nice to draw on a coloured background. White is such a stark colour, but a necessary one for so much of my work.

I just wanted to draw for the joy of drawing this morning. I had no fixed idea of what I was going to do or motifs and patterns I wanted to use.

Now, I have a drawing with a background colour that I’d like to add more colour to. That gives me the opportunity to use Distress Inks a bit like watercolours. And as blues form the background, I can use a monochrome palette of some of the blues I used – Tumbled Glass, Broken China, Peacock Feathers and a touch of Evergreen Bough (I know, it’s a green, but it is a blue-green!).

Here’s the youtube video for today

WIP Wednesday

An abstract drawing that I started yesterday. I think the drawing is complete, maybe. But I wanted to start to add colour to work out what palette I want to use.

This is it so far, after a couple of hours mucking about with colours, layer settings and so on. I’m quite happy with the dusky pink and mossy green, but not so sure about the dusty blue.

This isn’t my only work in progress. I’ve just finished uploading my daily morning drawing vlog on YouTube:

I started to draw another abstract drawing in this vlog as I talk about inner critics, overly talkative me, and other stuff.

Both drawings are being done with a micro sized Uniball Eye pen on Canson marker paper. The paper is so smooth and a pleasure to draw on with pens that dry quite quickly, like the Eye pen.

For now, once I’ve done my social media posts, I need a break. The sun is shining and my feet are feeling eager for a little walk. So that’s what I’ll be doing in about an hour!