I finished this today. Sakura Pigma PN pen in blue on A4 dot grid paper.
Note to self – use a dark coloured pen, not blue, on dot grid paper otherwise it’s going to be a nightmare to remove all the little dots on the drawing!
zia
Intricately Entangled Abstracts
Two drawings I did over the Christmas period using my new Sakura Micron PN pens. These are different to the usual Micron pens as they have a solid, plastic nib, which is a lot more durable in use.
I’m rather heavy handed with pens, and as much as I love Sakura Microns, Uniball’s Unipins and Faber-Castell’s Pitt pens, their nibs don’t last as long with me as their ink supply does. I end up chucking the pens way before the ink has run out.
Yes, I could use my Rotring Isographs, but the ink takes a while to dry and I tend to smudge my work.
Previously, I’ve found the Sakura Pigma Sensei in 0.4mm to works well for me, and the nibs are similar to the PN.
The big drawback at the moment to both the Sakura Pigma Sensei and the PN is I can’t order them here in the UK, I have to source these pens either from the USA or from Japan/Hong Kong, so it takes a long while for them to get to me, often with a high shipping fee.
The Sakura Micron PNs are definitely on my shopping list when I need more of them! I’ll stick to the other brands for the finer line work that appears in my pen and ink drawings from time to time.
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Autumnly Entangled 7 to 11
Lots of drawing done over the past three or so days and I haven’t had a chance to upload these.
The set of four are approx. 4″ square and the paper has been coloured with distress inks.
The bigger one is drawn on ombre paper for ‘scrapbookers’. The central image is 6″ square. It was a bit of a ‘mare to draw; the paper isn’t absorbent and the ink takes ages to dry, which means smudging was a bit of a problem, but I’ve managed to mostly disguise it with patterns. I need to dry different pens on this paper, as I do like the colours. If I can’t find a way to draw on it, then I’ll be using it to mount other artwork on and in mixed media and card making endeavours.
Yes, it did seem a good idea at the time! It could be back to colouring all my own paper again ….
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Entangled Icosohedron
Having more fun! This time a 20-sided icosohedron. And I’ve just noticed I lost the plot slightly in creating the montage above – the same image repeated, d’oh go me! First time I’ve ever done a photo montage though, so maybe I can be forgiven!
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Autumnly Entangled 5 and 6
Making stamps and more Autumnly Entangled
Stamp Carving
I woke up the other morning, Thursday I think it was, and had the overwhelming desire to try my hand at carving stamps from rubber blocks again.
I enjoyed doing lino cuts when I was doing my A level in art over a decade ago, well apart from the way my finger and wrist joints would hurt after doing this. So, I thought I’d have a go with soft rubber, and above you can see the first of my efforts.
The weird flower was the first, and I’m not happy with it, though I think it would be fine as a background stamp in mixed media work, maybe.
The other circular stamps followed fairly quickly after that one, but the stylised thistle was one I did this morning. The white rubber discs are made by Essdee, and I used lino and stamp carving tools by the same company.
The leaf, heart and geometric patterns I carved this morning from a different kind of pink rubber: Speedy Carve from Speedball.
Both kinds of carving material were easy to work with, perhaps a little too soft for my liking, but only time will tell. The only other tools I used were a pencil to draw the designs on the stamp carving material and a craft knife to cut the Speedy Carve. Oh, and some sepia Archival Ink from Ranger, and an acrylic stamp block for the circular discs to adhere to while I stamped with them.
Autumnly Entangled
Two more, drawn on paper coloured with Distress Oxide inks, with highlights of white gel pen and metallic gel pens added. Also, the bottom one has had colour added using Zig Clean Colour Real Brush Pens from Kuretake and also some Prismacolour pencils.
I still have two more 10cm x 14cm sheets of coloured paper to draw on… so at least two more to come!
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Autumnly Entangled 2
This morning, I spent time with pens and paper coloured with Distress Oxides, and this entangled creation appeared. I may need to add some shading to it … but that can wait as I think I have a big vector drawing to do and that will take all of my concentration.
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Autumnly Entangled 1
I’ve had a busy couple of days with this and that and the other.
Yesterday and today it’s been learning about vector files, images, graphics and how to get my artwork done as that kind of file and to a maker so she can use them to laser etch her products – more about this when I have photos of the projects!
Lots of head scratching, googling, and finally settling on downloading a program that works in vector graphics. So, a lot of learning to do with that, but it’s easy, intuitive and makes a lot more sense than Adobe Illustrator; I chose Serif’s Affinity Designer. I don’t know if it is as sophisticated as Illustrator, but I can’t see me wanting to get to that kind of level – I love Autodesk Sketchbook Pro way too much for that!
Certainly a different skill set is needed, but I’ll get there as I usually do.
After all the time on the ‘puter, I had the need to return to traditional media, and the photo above is what I’ve spent my evening doing.
First, the paper (approx. 14cm x 21cm), along with a few other sheets, was coloured with distress oxide inks. Then I drew on it using a mixture of pens.
It was really nice to do, the colours of all the sheets are rather autumnal, and I’m looking forward to drawing on the others over the coming days.
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Playing with colour
I’ve been quiet around ‘tinternet for a couple of weeks – problems with my mood, instead of starting many new things I’ve been spending time organising a reference collection of my favourite patterns and designs of things like fungi and buildings and creatures and so on and its very much a work in progress! The process of going through the familiar and organising them is comforting to me …
I have done some new drawings for the Eerie project for Dover – not many left to do for the book, then the hard work is deciding which two I would like to colour in the most, always a problem.
Plans are afoot for a change in my online presence too … more as that happens!
The above images show one artwork I started last night and finished this morning. Most probably about 8 or 10 hours of work. Distress Oxides, Cosmic Shimmer watercolours and a Sakura Glaze pen were used. When light strikes the artwork at just the right angle, the metallics and iridescents bring the artwork to life; it’s like it lights up all by itself. A joyful feeling for sure as I look at it.
It was nice to work with colour and the more traditional media rather than digital art, though, yet again, I noticed how drawing with the Surface Pen on my Microsoft Surface Book are having an effect on my work on paper.
One thing I did enjoy was adding the sparkle and shimmer to the artwork, something I’ve not found out how to do digitally (or even if you can!).
So, I now have satisfied a need in me to work with colour and pen and I can turn my attention back to the illustrations for the Eerie book, and on to other things after that is done.
For today, I head off soon for counselling/EMDR, and to have my acrylic nails removed once again as they really do get in the way of me typing, art-ing, using my phone…and no doubt I’ll do some drawing while I have a late lunch between nail removing and counselling.
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Today’s Entangled doodle
This is today’s little piece of art; it’s 14cm x 10cm, drawn on natural coloured mixed media paper from Claire Fontaine. I used a mixture of Sakura Micron and Uniball UniPin pens, along with a white Sakura Gelly Roll pen, a brown Kuretake Zig Clean Colour Brush Pen with a damp paint brush, and some dots of metallic copper paint.
Art is the Adventure 