Zentangle Inspired art

Entangled Drawing | Adding Colour Part 5

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Link to the Adding Colour Time Lapse Video

This morning, I spent nearly two hours adding colour to this drawing. It’s getting close to being completed. Well, the adding colour part. There’s embellishing to be done too!

I’ve used Inktense pencils through out, along with a damp brush to activate and blend the colours.

As well as colouring new areas of the design, colour was added to intensify various areas that were appearing too insipid. I still have some of this to do to bring out a sense of volume in various elements.

I’m fairly pleased with this, though in hindsight adding the shadows with a grey Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen first may not have been the best idea. Still, it’s a learning experience, again.

It’s Template Thursyay!

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This week’s coloring template / coloring page for the members of Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group is a typically entangled one. But one that’s a bit different too!

Instead of having an outer frame, I’ve included a frame, but behind the drawing. I wanted the elements to grow out of the frame in places, just for a change. And I’ve just noticed where I’ve not coloured a little piece of that frame! Oops! Still, I think that by colouring the frame in, it helps any colourist to work out some of the more intricate and fiddly places where it lies.

I’ve chosen a vintagey, halloweeny colour palette. As we’re nearing the end of August, autumn won’t be far away here in the valleys of South Wales, and the rest of the northern climes. I’m quite eager for nature’s change of clothing. Indeed, I’ve spotted some small changes in colour here and there, a quiet heralding of autumn.

Yesterday, I completed colouring the cover for the book I’m starting on soon for Creative Haven. It was proclaimed as being ‘the cutest thing ever!’ by my editor.

Entangled Art WIP

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Link to today’s vlog on YouTube

I made a bit of a serendipitous discovery yesterday. I have no idea if anyone else has come across this, but I haven’t before.

Anyway, I was waiting for the sun to get less strong in the afternoon so I could venture out for a walk. So, I thought I’d add some Copic shading to some of my entangled drawings. All was fine and good with the first one (which you can see in the vlog).

Then, I started to do the same to this drawing. I’d used a black biro to add shading to the drawing and didn’t expect anything to happen. But, the biro reacted with the alcohol marker. Some of the colours in the ink were dissolved and moved a little way by the marker – purple when moist and blue when dry.

I had a ‘duh!’ moment when the scientist in me awoke. Of course alcohol would dissolve the coloured dyes in the biro.

It was an also quite magical moment too. It added to the shadows in an interesting, subtle way. This is something that needs to be investigated further with different coloured ball point pens!

So, I actually feel a tad excited by this discovery and wanted to share it.

Entangled Drawing | Adding Colour Part 4

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Link to today’s vlog on YouTube

It seems to be dry outside, weatherwise. Cloudy with the odd bit of sunshine. It’s a nice day to go out for a walk. But first I’ll need to get some work done.

The day started with adding more colour to this entangled drawing. I continue to use Inktense pencils. As well as adding colour to new areas of the design, I also started to intensify the colour on the collection of red ‘seeds’ in the centre. It’s subtle, but the colours there no longer look washed out.

As I type, the vlog I recorded while adding colour is uploading and I’m going to get all my social media posts done. Then, I’ll get a fresh mug of tea, put a load in the washing machine and then start to ink in the cover of the new book I’m working on.

Then, if the weather holds, I’ll go out for a walk.

It all sounds like a plan, a good plan for the day.

Entangled Drawing | Adding Colour Part 3

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This morning, I spent nearly an hour adding some more colour to this entangled drawing. I estimate that a bit more than a half has been coloured.

Today’s video on YouTube is a time lapse of this process.

I’m using a fairly limited colour palette of inktense pencils.

Saturday Sketchbook

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The newest drawing in my sketchbook

Link to Sketchbook Flip Through Vlog on YouTube

Sketchbook Saturday is upon us once again. I’ve created a vlog for YouTube where I flip through my current sketchbook.

The drawing at the top is now finished. I used a Tombow Fudenosuke ‘hard’ pen to draw the design on paper that has been coloured with Distress Inks. The sketch book is 21cm x 21cm (approx 8″ x 8″).

Drawing on coloured paper is something that is pleasurable to do. The colours add mood to the drawing and are an inspiration for any colour scheme I may use, should I choose to add colour.

The grungy, distressed nature of the page is also interesting; already depth and dimension are added to the artwork.

I’ve enjoyed drawing on coloured paper so much, that I actually have coloured quite a number of pages in my sketchbook and you can see them all in the vlog. What I can’t remember is exactly which colours were used for each page.

Some of the pages I like so much that I really do need to scan them in so I can use them as backgrounds for digital art, social media posts and so on going forward.

The colour choices I’m making are often veering away from the bright, saturated colours that were so characteristic of my earlier work. Such colours are still used for my colouring templates / pages and that’s not likely to change much going forward. However, for my more personal art, less saturated, vintage, even grungy, are what I am drawn to so much at the moment. Also, I seem to favour analogous colour schemes, sometimes with a pop of complementary colours.

Entangled Art | Adding Colour Part 2

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Link to today’s Vlog on YouTube

As I enjoyed my first mug of tea of the day, I continued to add colour to this entangled drawing.

The success of blending colours yesterday inspired me to do more of this. Little by little, I’m starting to get some sparkles of confidence in adding colour.

Inktense pencils do make this easy in a way. It’s a lot easier to control the application of colour.

Control – it’s that word again in respect to the addition of colour. Watercolour vexes me as I want to control a medium that isn’t easy to control it seems. Perhaps the exploration of watercolour and Ecoline watercolour inks are cul de sacs for me. They’re interesting to explore but lead nowhere except back to where I started, almost. I return with extra knowledge and experiences that can then be applied to other media.

Indeed, the way that I apply colour digitally has partly inspired me in this artwork. But remembering my dabbling with abstract art back in my A level days gave me a few insights into my relationship with colour.

As a scientist, all my observations – drawn or written – had to be accurate, representative of what I could see. Colours had to be correct, as I could see, so others could check what I had seen and confirm those observations are correct.

As an artist, I can put that requirement to one side; but it’s not easy to do so, especially when I’m drawing from observations.

I have little problem adding colour to my cute, whimsical, entangled coloring templates. They’re not meant to represent anything ‘real’. They’re abstract in their own way. Though, when the motifs are based on observations, then I get into trouble with colour.

Remembering the abstract oil paintings I did back in the days of A level exams, I used colour to convey the mood, feeling that went with the time, place, experiences I had when taking photographs to use to work from. The final paintings were in colours that represented these personal, emotional, and sometimes intellectual responses.

Going forward, I need to remember this in my work and to transfer it to artwork. The actual colour of something is not as important as I think it is, and to remove that pressure from myself. If I want a record of the ‘real’ colours, I can take a photograph. But to record my experience, I need to give myself permission to express my feelings, emotions and my response to it in whatever colours suit me at the time. I need to allow my intuition and imagination a greater role in my work with colour

Hopefully I’ll get there, and I probably am little by little. The value of the vlogs is that I have to start to give words to the thoughts that come as I create, and this blog allows me to expand on them.

To give words to the ephemeral, abstract, metaphoric thoughts that wander around my head is to manifest them. The words result in conscious awareness of the thoughts. The awareness is then something that can be learned from, acted upon and put into practice.

I’m learning to externalise what has usually been an internal and fleeting process of thought and analysis, and it’s an intriguing and interesting experience for sure.

Entangled Pen Drawing 07 Aug 21

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Link to today’s vlog on YouTube

It’s been a right weird morning. I started to work on yesterday’s drawing, but found myself at a bit of an impasse with it. So, rather than continue and risk messing it up entirely, I decided to start another.

For this one, I coloured the paper with Peeled Paint, Evergreen Bough and Chipped Sapphire Distress Inks before starting to draw.

I find working on coloured paper a real pleasure, much of the time. It sets a mood, a feel for the artwork to develop and grow upon. It can inspire me. I like that.

The one thing I didn’t do was scan the coloured paper in. My printer/scanner is having a serious amount of hissyfitting with the WiFi at the moment, disconnecting itself for no reason at all it seems. Weird, as I’d scanned in several drawings prior to this. Ho hum.

Abstract Entangled Art | 03/08/’21

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This is now finished! Between drawing, adding colour and embellishments, it’s taken somewhere between six and seven hours, I think.

Materials used:
* SeaWhite all media paper, 8″ x 8″ (195mm x 195mm)
* Uniball Eye Pen – micro
* Uniball Signo DX 0.38 Pen
* Derwent Graphitint pencils
* Brushes and water
* Derwent Drawing Pencils
* Cold Grey IV Pitt Artist Pen
* White and yellow Sakura Soufflé pens
* Clear Sakura Glaze pen

I actually managed to keep some white space in the design! I may have slightly overdone the dottiness. I did mess up by trying to use the Derwent Drawing pencils to add some darker tones to the green ‘leaves’.

Overall, I think this is good enough to move on to the next project, which is likely to be Thursday’s coloring template.

It’s been nice to lose myself in some art for the sake of art. Especially as my emotional weather is still damp, dull and grey and making me doubt myself. It’s been an emotional rainy spell that’s been brewing for a while, and that’s why I’ve returned to the familiarity and comfort of my entangled art.

I always circle back to entangled art, regardless of my experiments with other media and styles and getting frustrated with colour!

My tricksy emotional weather is only exacerbating my frustrations with colour. I know I need to get the coloured plates done for the Whimsical Cats colouring book, but as I am at the moment I will only get myself into a right royal kerfuffle. So, it’s time to just enjoy drawing, maybe using some colour – time for monochrome colour schemes I think.

Abstract Entangled Art WIP | 02/08/21

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Today has been a day of working with colour on various drawings in my sketchbook. This one is the one I’m most happy with; it’s been a bit of a frustrating day, colourwise.

This drawing was finished earlier today, and before adding any shading I wanted to add colour. This time, Derwent Graphitint pencils were my medium of choice, along with a brush and water.

I really like the softer, earthier, more vintage-y tones of these pencils. I was getting frustrated with the brighter colours of the Ecoline watercolour inks and Derwent Colorsoft Pencils.

So caught up in the process of adding colour (along with joys and frustrations), I didn’t realise how much of the day had gone! It’s now about tea-time here in the UK, and normally I do my social media postings mid-morning.

I am tired today. Tired because I was up way too late last night. My mood is weird – I’m content yet at the same time feeling rather sad and teary for no reason that I know. My EMDR therapist told me that in the West, we are convinced we can only feel one emotion at a time, but in the East it’s accepted that you can feel more than one at a time. I certainly experience that quite often.

The sad and teary may be a manifestation of the tiredness, but it’s nice to know the touchstone of contentment is present in the core of my being. Contentment is always present, no matter what other emotional weather is being experienced. It’s a storm anchor that helps me keep balanced during the less settled periods of emotional weather. For like all weather, emotions do pass in time. For me, I’ll feel much better when I’ve had a good night’s sleep I’m sure.