My head wanted to draw birds today. It felt like I should be drawing something directly for Eva (my sister, whose birthday it is today). But that’s not what wanted to come out. And birds came out instead. But the birds were singing Happy Birthday to Eva, so that’s OK.
I had a lovely walk along the canal yesterday, and spent a not so small fortune in the art shop. And had food and a 0.5% beer at Stroud Brewery. A little wander round the canal trust bookshop. And then got the bus home because I was tired, hayfevery and it was getting cold and looked like rain. I still got over 12,000 steps, so I’m OK with that.
I spent the evening painting. And watched the Peaky Blinders film, the last episode of A Thousand Blows and an episode of High Potential. I may show you the paintings tomorrow, once they have gone to their new owner.
I will show you this, though, which you may already have seen on Notes.
This is a coloured-up version of this drawing from Wednesday’s Morning Ink.
This is me flexing my colouring up inky drawings muscles as a warm-up to the proper workout I am planning of doing some full drawings that are directly intended to go from ink to colour, rather than just playing around with Morning Ink drawings.
Oh, I can show you a time-lapse which makes it look like it was crazy quick, but I spent almost two hours on it, according to the version history.
There’s a lot of playing with layer effects, which is something I really enjoy doing. It often provides happy accidents, that I didn’t expect. Similar to the joyful surprises you can get with physical media. Some colour layers are behind the line and some in front.
If you have some ink drawings, maybe have a go at pulling them into Fresco or Procreate – or whatever tool you prefer – and play around with ways to add colour. Perhaps you’ll enjoy it as much as I have been, and find some fun surprises.
I slept in today and so I’m going to be quite late getting to my desk. That’s fine, though. It’s a quiet week.
Thanks for dropping by. See you tomorrow.
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Layer effects are amazing. I see my 13yo do stuff in Procreate and it blows my mind! He and I explore creative stuff every day, and we have entirely different processes as we explore. We pool our resources together and see how to link stuff up for yet more exploration purposes. So much fun!