Flashy and Splashy

It's a Reggae Sunsplash Mandala Monday, featuring a base of ALL the brightest shades of Karin Markers laid down side to side in my Canson sketchbook, then blended with a waterbrush, then splashed and sprinkled with more water to add that fun tie-dye, color-lift effect. If this thing doesn't wake up your morning, you should probably just go back to bed, lol!

It's a Candy Mandala Monday?

Ok, technically there is NO actual candy in this post, but I did use my beloved set of Bright Zig Dot Markers, which always remind me of those candy dots, which came stuck to a narrow sheet of cash-register-like paper, that we had as children in the 1970's. For the record, I don't think I particularly enjoyed eating those candies... (they were basically just sugar and food coloring and didn't have much in the way of flavor) ...but they were so fun and pretty I always enjoyed having them anyway! I hope your week is off to a sweeeeeeeeeeeeet start!

Mandala Monday Round-Up

Once again I noticed belatedly that I haven't remembered to do a blogpost for the last few Mandala Mondays, so today there's a bumper crop to savor! 

This week's mandala is inspired by and composed of papers from Prima Marketing's new "Farm Sweet Farm" collection, which has just arrived at Paper Anthology and is, imo, one of the prettiest paper collections of 2022! I started this mandala with a stacked hexie center (you'll definitely be seeing that again!) and added circle punches, upside down hearts, butterflies and tear-shaped elements. 

(PS: this style of mandala is the easiest everrrrrrr and also a great way to use paper scraps!)

A subtle lineart mandala, drawn with colorful Emott pens and surrounded by a Pinkfresh Studio Folkart Frame diecut that happened to be sitting on my worktable when I was getting ready to draw.

I bought this cool Strathmore "Grey Toned" sketchbook during a BOGO event at the big box store and haven't really worked in it much, so this seemed like a good time to break out the Posca paint pens and add pink, silver and white, with a little bit of superfine Pitt Pen black outlining.

Tombow Dual Brush Pens, used both directly on the paper and also picked up with a waterbrush for a looser and more interesting background. In the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

♥♥♥

I hope your Monday is off to a good start and that you'll 

find time to do something fun and creative before it's over!

Drifting Downwards

Somewhat stretching the boundaries of a mandala, in this case lots of mandala-style circles are cascading from the top and sides of the sketchbook page. 

PS: The Helix Circle Tool is my favorite (& most used!) tool for drawing mandalas, because it lets me draw perfect circles in a range of sizes AND it has the 360 degrees on the outer ring, which is handy for evenly spacing the "petals" on a more traditional mandala. 

Pitt Artist Pens from Faber-Castell in my Canson Mixed Media Sketchbook.

 

Step-by-Step Mandala

Enough people have asked me about the mechanics of drawing (somewhat) symmetrical mandalas that I thought I'd try taking still pics of all the steps to give you an idea of the process. So here we go. I did each successive ring in a different color, to (hopefully) make it easier to see the way I work. I'm happy to answer any specific questions, just email or ask in the comments!

step one: set up a "round grid"

if you're aiming at symmetry, it will help to have some way of measuring your space, both side to side (working around the circle) and also working from the center, outwards. this is the easiest way i've found. (ordinarily, i would draw this lightly and erase it at the end, but i wanted to make it nice and dark so you could really see it!) mark the center of your paper both horizontally and vertically. the intersection of these is the center of your page, and of your mandala. once you have the center, you can make several rings using a compass or circle-scribing tool. you can also divide the four quarters of the circle further. i've gone with eighths on this one, but obviously you could make as many or as few as you'd like. 

step two: make your first ring

ok, yeah, i realize it looks like i made TWO sets of petals with my hot pink pitt pen, because my shapes overlap. i added six tear-drop shaped petals, each centered on one of the "spokes" and stretching from the smallest circle at the center, to the next ring, about an inch further out. the bases of the petals meet the next spoke over, and there's a very slight curve to the shape. i personally don't use a template for drawing my petals, but you could if you'd like. i also don't pencil them in first, but lots of folks do. for that matter, you can avoid curves and use a ruler to connect up nice straight lines. (the result of straight vs. curved lines will be more like a starburst, but still very cool!)

step 3: second ring

for this set of blue half circles, each one fits between two pink petals, stopping just a hair below the next "ring" of the grid. this time, i used one of the circle templates in this helix circle maker that i found pretty cheaply in a stationery store. you definitely do not need a special tool to draw mandalas, but this one is quite helpful. it can even help you to divide a circle into lots of different sectors, by dividing the 360 degrees into smaller equal segments. 

step 4: a ring of green petals

this set of marks starts at the next outward loop, dead center between two spokes. you can measure that distance and make a little dot, or just sort of wing it. the lines, which end at the base of the blue circles from the last round, are not quiiiiite straight, they flare just a bit at the bottom, to accomodate the blue circles. as with all of the rings in any mandala, they could, theoretically start anywhere and end anywhere. the thing that makes them symmetical is that they are consistent.

step 5: another set of overlapping petals
the next time i draw a step-by-step mandala, there will be NO shapes that overlap, i promise! and i apologize if the overlappiness (yes, that's a word!) is confusing in this case. on the other hand, if you want to create quite a complicated-looking mandala pretty quickly, overlapping lines work really well. this ring of shapes, drawn with a teal pitt pen, is an echo of our first ring of pink petals, and it's one of the classic mandala shapes. this set is again centered on the spokes. each gently curving line starts at the end of a spoke and winds up right next to the base of a green petal. but, as you can see, each completed teal tear drop brackets TWO green petals.

step 6: squaring off

ordinarily, when i am this far into a mandala, i'd be erasing the pencil marks of the original round grid. but this time i made them extra dark, for visibility. also... i thought they looked kind of cool, so i left them. i added a ring of small petals and a smaller circle at the very center. i also drew a square that's perfectly centered between the largest ring and the second largest. partially because i left the grid lines which are ruler-straight. also, most mandalas in the buddhist tradition incorporate a square or two. again, there are no particular rules you have to follow. if you think a square might look cool, try adding one. if you dislike the square, by all means, leave it out!

step 7: getting fancy

ok, yes... this is really more like steps 7-12, because i added quite a few more details, in the form of dots, doodles and more circles. but since i consider them cosmetic rather than structural, i've lumped them all together. obviously the mandala could have been considered "done" after step six. but i added the doodles, because, for one thing, they are FUN! for another, they're the perfect way to correct any wonky lines! they boil down to three basic styles of detail, that i use in a lot of my mandalas: echoes to lines that were already there, hashmarks or chevrons to "fill in" some of the open spaces, and dots. by varying the size shape and color of each, you can get many different looks.

and that's about it! i hope this has given you some sort of an idea of the basic steps, and maybe even inspired you to dry drawing your own mandalas! ♥

the last round-up*

...of the everything circles challenge! as predicted, i didn't get to play every day of april, but i enjoyed the days i did. and even on the "off days" i loved seeing the other posts on instagram, and had fun thinking up what circle-centric concoction i wanted to try next.

day 20

a bit of zen doodle action in black (pitt artist pens), white (sketchbook paper) and pink (tombow dualbrush pens).

day 22

mandala monday, brought to you by the shape "circles" and the colorburst shades indigo, marsala and turquoise!

day 27

collage circles which utilize the negative space of my new favorite sizzix die (cutout blossoms) as well as some leafy stencils and distress inks.

day 29

an uber-bright rainbow mandala monday, consisting entirely of punched circles... which turn out to be very relaxing to manufacture and assemble. just sayin...

♥♥♥

hard to believe that april is over already...

hope you had an awesome month!

♥♥♥

*geddit?! hahahahahaha! (ok, sorry...) 

everything circles (update)

i'm still having fun participating in birgit koopsen's "everything circles" challenge on instagram, as time permits. it's never too late for you to join in. you definitely don't have to post every day! for that matter, you don't have to *share* your creations at all, if you prefer not to. but it's a very fun, supportive group on instagram, and you might meet some new friends. i guarantee you will be inspired seeing what others are making! here's my allotment from this past week:

april 6th

i said last week that i could imagine "everything circles" turning into "everything collage" for me. yep. that could totally happen! :)

april 7th

surprise! more collage!!! yes, it's kinda weird... and thus i really like it, lol!

april 8th

what can i say? it was mandala monday, and i was in a colorburst sorta mood! i tried to add more circle and half-circle elements, in honor of the challenge theme.

april 9th

messy, scribbley circles made with a set of stabilo super-fine point pens that i don't use nearly enough. i used ALL the colors... obviously... because why would i NOT?! :) 

♥♥♥

after a couple of days that have had more real life commitments than art time, i'm hoping to jump back in this weekend! but truly, it's not an all-or-nothing scenario, and even on the days i don't make anything circle-centric, i'm checking out the posts and noting down the things i'd like to try next!

everything circles!

the very awesome birgit koopsen is hosting a fun challenge on instagram this month, it's called "everything circles" and the brief ...you've guessed already, right? ...is to incorporate circles into any kind of project, using any kind of media, each night. you'll have possibly noticed that i love having some sort of theme or challenge or prompt list simmering away in the background. that's because at 10:30 pm, i generally still have enough energy to work on something, but i hardly ever have enough to think up what that ought to be. so having a plan or theme already in place shortcuts me right to working on an actual sketchbook page, when-and-if some freestyle art time materializes. here's what i've made so far:

april 1st 

...happened to fall on mandala monday, so this was a no-brainer, lol. super-vivid colorbursts, pitt artist pens and a few posca paint pens.

april 2nd

when we drive to maryland and back to see jeff's dad, i have just over two hours each way as a passenger in the car. and no, i can never just sit. (if you want to torture a hyperactive person, try to make them sit still and do nothing!!!) so i take my laptop and fiddle away with digital brushes and things. usually i make a new header for my blog, but this seemed like a good time to make something circle centric. at one point this composition had A LOT more circles, but i liked it less. the nice thing about digital design is, you can go back three steps! digital brushes by katie pertiet at designer digitals; digital paper by somerset studio.

april 3rd

one of my favorite things about sporadically minding the store at paper anthology is, unlike other jobs in retail, when it isn't busy, not only are you allowed to get out the colorbursts and fill a page with watercolor circles... such behavior is actively encouraged! for this i used only peony, gamboge and cerulean colorburst to see how many different shades i could make from a limited palette. (the answer turned out to be, "LOTS"!)

april 4th

i think for me personally, this challenge could easily morph into all collage. because i have a lot of collage ideas. (A LOT!) this is the first one, a collage of interesting circles.

april 5th

another digital composition in which the end result actually has less circles than i expected. but i'm cool with being "inspired by" the circles and letting things kind of emerge organically. paper and steampunk diagram brushes by girlfriday from digichick, music brushes by anna aspnes, grungy doily brushes and mixed media butterfly by katie pertiet, designer digitals 

♥♥♥

stay tuned, lol...

meanwhile, happy weekend, i hope you have fun and 

that you get to do something creative!

♥♥♥

happy lettering (part 2)

here are a few more sketchbook pages from the happy lettering challenge, which i found on instagram, and have enjoyed participating in (admittedly quite sporadically) throughout the month of march.

happiness

tombow dualbrush pens with a sort of neatened up version of the "scribbly ballpoint outline" i used on kite; plus some sunshine doodles to offset the fact that my lettering starts out MUCH bigger than it ends up, lol!

hope

back to the divinely juicy ecoline pens, with an offset tombow shadow in N60 (my favorite grey for shadows!)

flowers

this might be my favorite entry for the entire month, and i think i'm the only person who even likes it, which is fine. this time, i handcut the letters from origami paper... stuck them down in my sketchbook... then outlined and shadowed them as if they were done in pen. i can imagine A LOT of ways to use this technique, so no doubt you'll be seeing it again in future!

glimmer

turquoise and a touch of prussian blue colorburst, with plenty of sheer pearl liquid sparkle mixed in. it's hard to tell from the photos, but irl this is VERRRRRY glimmery indeed!

lime

i wish i had used a slightly smaller brush for lettering the "lime" (in lime green obvs!) over the chartreuse colorburst lime doodle, but otherwise i quite like this one.

garden

more flower doodles, not to mention a fern that is taking over the world, lol! with an offset .1mm pitt artist pen outline in lieu of shadow.

♥

if you're interested in lettering, instagram is FULL 

of great examples, helpful vids and fun challenges, as well!

happy lettering (part 1)

towards the beginning of the month i found the happy lettering challenge on instagram, and i've been playing along with their march prompts as time permits. this weekend seemed like a good time to round them up.

rainbow

all my standard lettering go-to's right here: a rainbow of tombow dualbrush pens, outlined with the skinniest (.1mm) pitt artist pen, and a shadow with my favorite grey, tombow's N60.

gold

i also like lettering with colorburst, or in this case, liquid metal... in yellow gold, with a coordinating marker outline and some stickles on top. 

lucky

very similar to rainbow, but with the blend across each letter (you need to leave quite a bit of room between!) a thicker outline and some posca paint pen dots.

spring

well obviously, i couldn't resist a few flower doodles! in order to cheat and not have to letter BEHIND the flowers, i wrote spring in a very light shade of chartreuse tombow, so that my flowers would cover it without getting too tinted; then did the black outline at the very very end.

kite

i had been wanting to try ecoline's brush pens and they do not disappoint... super juicy and a big tip that's exactly the right firmness! loads of funky/messy doodles on this one after i messed up the outline but didn't feel like starting over...

♥

stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion... tomorrow!

art journaling inside a travel book?

yep. i debated before my california trip whether to bring my usual little moleskine travel sketchbook OR make a travel scrapbook type of thing OR both? in the end i decided on the travel book format. but then i realized that if i added some higher quality watercolor or sketchbook paper to the travel book, it could function as both. so that's what i did. i didn't draw or doodle every day, but it was nice to have the paper and supplies available when i was in the mood. the "california" page is actually a bit of a cheat, since i did that the night before i left, which meant i could raid my pipsticks sticker stash and add some little palm trees and things.

as it turns out, most of my travel art took the form of lettering this time... sometimes with doodles. but of course there was a mandala monday while i was in california, so it had to be observed. 

a few people have asked me about what pens i like, and what order i use them. 90% of the time i do lettering with the brush tip of my tombow dualbrush pens OR by scribbling the tombows (or tapping some colorburst) onto a piece of acetate and then picking up the color with a waterbrush, which gives a fun watercolor effect. i did the scribbling with tombows method on this "aloha" page. although technically, i painted the large hibiscus first, and then the pink "aloha". yes, the letters are staggered that way because it turned out my flower was a bit large, lol. when those were dry, i added the other flowers, the grey shadow on the letters, and all the leaves. when the entire page was bone dry, i added all of the black lines ...with a pitt artist pen, in the XS (.1mm) nib. this is my typical order for doing lettering or doodles with watercolor. at the very very end i might add a few highlights with a white posca paint pen, which i did here.

the method on "palm springs" was basically the same as "aloha" though instead of doing all the letters in one color i did a bit of rainbow blending. i left off the grey shadow, for a change of pace, and added a sub-head using the writing tip of the tombows. again, the words overlap because i didn't plan my spacing very well beforehand. but one of the best things you can possibly do in art (in my opinion) is MAKE LOTS OF MISTAKES! because this gives you the opportunity to figure out how to correct them. so i overlapped the two words a bit, and added the palm trees to weight that side of the page. hearts are always fun, imo, but in this case there miiiiiight've been a smudge or two i wanted to cover up... :)

i've never drawn cartoon germs before, and frankly i'm kind of hoping not to need them again anytime soon. but, as it turns out, what i thought was cat allergies playing up the day before we left for palm springs, was actually me getting a nose-and-throat bug. i spent thursday night and all of friday in the condo we had rented, being super-duper glad we had two bedrooms and bathrooms, in hopes i would not share my germs with my friend barb. which, luckily, i did not.

no lettering on this one... just some funky tombow watercolor flowers, with doodles on top. painted in the sunny courtyard of barb's house in carlsbad. which is a really nice place to do pretty much ANYTHING, actually!

i hope your day will include a little bit of creativity, and a whole lot of sunshine! ♥

a smattering of patterning

i haven't been able to participate every single day of pattern january on instagram, but i've still been jumping in here and there as time permits. and i continue to find anika starmer's prompts --not to mention the amazing variety of ways the other participants are interpreting them-- incredibly inspiring. here are a few more of mine:

day 10: beach

i confess i loved making this more than i love the finished product, but then, PROCESS is the main point of a daily sketchbook challenge, imo! it's a great time to practice, to brainstorm, to think of something you wouldn't normally have any reason to do. just stepping out of my normal, practical area of expertise can give me a whole new perspective. 

day 11: furniture

ok, yes, this one's a bit tangential: i painted some uber-bright madras plaid, of a sort you might see on patio furniture... you know... in the summer, when it's WARM OUT.

(ps: painting plaid... or stripes... or curvy lines... is a great way to build up your brush control, which is one of the most crucial skills for painting. outlining the results with a pen adds line control, which is equally important. and before you say, "i don't have a steady enough hand to paint straight lines" i should mention that NOBODY starts out with a steady enough hand to paint or free-draw straight lines; hence the need to practice!

day 12: fruit or veggie

i chose fruit, as you may have noticed. and i painted this last sunday, when i didn't have an idea for mandala monday the next day. because that's how scientific i am on these occasions, lol.

day 13: woodland

inspired by my fellow IG pattern enthusiast by aarup who posted her digital version of a gorgeous birch grove. i used an easy washi tape mask and two favorite shades of blue colorburst: cerulean and ultramarine. then outlined and added details with pen.

day 16: pen.man.ship

i somehow managed to post this on jan 23rd, which turned out to be national handwriting day. an attempt to seamlessly transition various rainbow shades using tombow dualbrush pens in about 14 colors! i'm somewhat proud that after practicing (and practicing... and practicing...) i now feel happy enough with my letterforms to not necessarily outline and touch them up.

day 17: weather

funky patterned clouds in a funky patterned sky. with tombow and posca pen details added last, when the watercolor was bone dry. inspired by the "no lines" watercolor method of stamping, i drew my basic cloud pattern using the lightest shade of blue tombow dualbrush i own, then painted the sky in cornflower and cerulean colorburst.

day 20: scallop

just a fabulously fun rainbow-fest here!

(ok seriously, this was really really fun to paint. but again, it's a brush control exercise in disguise. the point being to add successive rows of scallops, without waiting for the last to dry, by leaving a 1/16" gap of dry paper in between. using ten different, super-bright shades of colorburst, and turning it into an interesting-to-look-at pattern, is just a sweetener. like taking a fun, rowdy zumba class instead of slogging away on the treadmill by yourself!)

♥♥♥

hope you're having an awesome weekend and that

 you'll find time to do something fun and creative just for YOU!

♥♥♥