Tangle Patterns
Tiling a tangled pattern

Posted on 25th June 2015 by Neil

Ever had one of those moments where you’re half way through a project and wondering why on earth you started at the scale/level of detail/size of page that you did? This one is a case in point. I have wanted to have a personalised pattern on the background of my blog page for some time now, and decided to draw one in pen and ink. I wanted it to tile perfectly so that it would scroll with the page, and I did it the old fashioned way

Take a sheet of paper, and start your pattern, drawing to the edge of the sheet, but not over it. Then slice it into quarters. Eeek.

Rotate each quarter so that the inside corner now points to the outside, and stick back together on the underside. I used 160gsm card to help with the lining up, but as you can see, my cutting wasn’t all that accurate… it still worked out though.

Fill in the rest of the page, again not allowing any new drawing to go over the edges. This piece is 21cm square in real life, and drawn with a Lamy Safari fountain pen with extra fine nib using Noodler’s Bulletproof Black Ink. It took around 6 hours to do.

I then scanned in the image at high resolution, tidied up the image in Photoshop a little (mainly removing evidence of the cut edges) and it was all done. The final ’tile’ looks like this:

And just to prove it tiles nicely, here’s a sample roughly 5 wide and 2 tall…

And for my next trick, I’ll be adding some colour digitally 🙂
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Arts in Worship
Arts in Workship: more sermon sketchnotes

Posted on 24th June 2015 by Neil

Here are some more sketchnotes that I have done during sermons at Whetstone Baptist Church. It’s a great way to take notice of what’s being said, as well as potentially emphasising different points that develop as the visual language of the sketchnote does its own thing. Working in real time is an interesting challenge, and with nothing more than the title at the start, the rest of the page is unplanned. And if you’ve noted the themes are all similar, that’s because these services were in the lead up to a fundraising weekend when we were all challenged to give sacrificially toward the construction of a new church building designed to meet the needs of a growing congregation and a changing community. We are now so close to our goal of just over £3 million – it’s so exciting. If you’d like to help out, a donation button can be found along with details of our building plans on the church website here.

[completed in Moleskine pocket sketchbook with Lamy Safari fine nib pen with Noodler’s Bulletproof black ink] Continue reading →

Art Journal
Art Journal Page: My Left Hand & Me

Posted on 23rd June 2015 by Neil

I’ve no idea why this idea popped into my head before I was fully awake this morning. Aside from, perhaps, art journaling being on my mind as I’m leading a workshop on Saturday… A quick dog walk and fitting some artificial turf helped my alertness level meet my creative muse and out came the paint and Sharpies. The background was pre-done and is a combination of distress paints. Over this I traced my hand, then painted over the rest of the page with Dylusions white paint on a make up sponge. The thin layer allows the background to show through, as well as sealing the page for the Sharpies. One of the unique selling points of the Dylusions paints is that it doesn’t clog nibs – and that is very true – the Sharpies drew perfectly with no annoying bleed or blocked nibs (a sharp contrast to, say, drawing on gesso). Further embellishment with my Signo broad white pigment gel pen and it is done.

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: Industrial Grunge

Posted on 18th June 2015 by Neil

The background for this art journal page was a little bit of a happy accident. I’d covered the page with swipes of dark acrylic paints with a hint of picked raspberry, and feeling it was too dark, I then used what was left on a blending tool I’d been used to apply Dylusions Squeezed Orange Paint to lighten it, and a superb rusty effect came into being. I embellished it with some Vintage Photo Distress Embossing Powder for the grid work, stamped a couple of times with the blueprint in archival inks and then added the text using a combination of archival inks on stamps, freehand drawing and painting, and my trusty pigment pens. As normal, took me as long to find the sentiment, but I love this quote – really does explain the rationale behind my art journaling!

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3D Projects
A little upcycling: converting a cutlery canteen

Posted on 16th June 2015 by Neil

I’m determined to have a clear out some of the things I’ve kept as ‘they’ll come in handy’ to make room for things I actually use. To that end, I’ve upcycled a shabby (empty) old cutlery canteen that was previously being kept in my grandfather’s old shed, and then languished in my outhouse/garage and shed for even more years. I stripped out the innards, sanded everything back and revarnished with a dark oak polyurethane varnish. I relined it with ‘antique red’ felt, and it now complements the lounge decor as a handy hidey-hole for the remotes and glasses I find necessary to have the TV in focus.

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: Tears of a Clown

Posted on 12th June 2015 by Neil

I’m leading an art journaling workshop at the end of June, and thought I’d get a few more foregrounds on my many backgrounds in my various art journals. This spread already had the colour (distress inks over gesso with stencilled water bleaching) and the droplets (a Designs by Ryn rubber stamp). I searched in vain for a quote on water drops, but there was something about this phrase that sparked off the image of Pierrot, and the rest of the page came together.

The distress inks, being water reactive and dye based, reacted with the white pigment ink, white pigment pen and white acrylic paint I used, even after I tried to stabilise it with hairspray. I got round it using layers, and drying with a heat tool immediately after applying it. I added colour with Bombay India Inks, and coloured pencils. The harlequin tape is from Tim Holtz Idea-ology tissue tape range.

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About me
500,000 views and still growing

Posted on 11th June 2015 by Neil

Dear loyal blog followers,

Thank you so much for taking my view count to just a smidge over 500,000 views in just five years. I know from your comments, purchases and much needed ad revenue that you still find my corner of the internet interesting enough to visit regularly. To each one of you, thank you 🙂

Can’t wait to get to the million mark!

Neil

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3D Projects
Missing an end of term deadline…

Posted on 4th June 2015 by Neil

I’m normally one to meet deadlines with time to spare… for instance, all my Craftwork Card samples are always delivered in time for the shows on Create & Craft.

This project was started in my final term at college, some two years ago now. It was part of my geometric constructions for lanterns (featured here), and I made a wireframe cage based on the same shape. The idea was to then grow salt crystals over the wire frame and photograph it as part of my final major project. As anyone who has tried growing crystals knows, it takes time – and in this case, the piece didn’t finish ‘growing’ until 6 months later, well after I’d finished my extended diploma. Since then, it’s languished in its protective bucket on a shelf in my studio waiting to be photographed. Prompted by a need for more space, I got the camera out late last night and took the photos. I think it was worth the wait…

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Art Journal
Art Journal Page: All Art Requires Courage

Posted on 1st June 2015 by Neil

Tonight sees another of my art journaling sessions at The Studio, and we’ll be playing with the Dylusions Paints – blendable acrylics which are ideal for making backgrounds, and work well when used on rubber stamps as well. The text on this layout is stamped with Carnation Red Archival Ink and outlined with ultra fine tip Sharpie. The swirls are stamped with the Squeezed Orange before being dried and outlined and embellished with Signo white gel pen.

Card Craft
Bunny Friends with Chameleons

Posted on 27th May 2015 by Neil

I’m not normally one to be grabbed by a ‘cutesy’ image, but this new rubber stamp from Penny Black / Margaret Sherry (dated 2009, so re-released?) definitely caught my eye. It’s one of those stamps that comes with a coloured image on the wooden block, which really helps those that need guidance on colouring in. I’ve used my Chameleon Pens to colour these in, which really came into their own for the shading on the pots. It took a couple of goes to find the right combination to get a good terracotta colour, which is why the pots are different colours between the two cards. The lettering is cut on my Silhouette Cameo – I found I need to set the cutter to ‘deep cut’ on the on-board screen, which meant the little serifs didn’t end up tearing.