A new poem, Being.

Here is the poem "Being."  I made the video using a text to speech program, and a picture from Pexels.  Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTJDshi1rCM

Poem video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OzudTd1rz8

This is my second attempt at making a video of my poetry.  Technology is amazing, and I have used a text to speech program, a recent pic, and a specialized site, and here is the result!  Enjoy :)  The poem is Soul's Midnight

Fairy Leaf Boat from Enchanted Forest

Hi!  I worked on this next colouring project for over 20 hours.  I experimented with blending and with lighting.  It was quite a challenge.  I used mostly watercolour pencils, gel pens, and artistic pens.  It's the best work I have done to date.  It's also from the Enchanted Forest colouring book.  I added to the original picture by putting a few stars in the background, and by creating a second larger circle to add a background.  It was a lot of work, there was a lot of detail in the picture, such as the sea foam.

Two Page Spread from Enchanted Forest

Hi :)  My friend Briony and I decided to colour in one of the two-page pictures together from the book Enchanted Forest.  Briony did the foreground on the right and I did the foreground on the left as well as the background.  I decided to have a go at something a bit harder and I tried to capture the lighting of a sunrise.  I used gel pens, watercolour pencils as well as artistic pens.  The sky was a lot of work but it was also very challenging and very interesting to do something a bit more creative and artistic.

Introducing Enchanted Forest by Johanna Basford - this is my version of her deer and bird drawing.

Hi!  This is my latest, and I have opened my new adult colouring-in book by Johanna Basford, her book Enchanted Forest.  This book appealed to me more than the others.  This picture is one of the easier ones, there are some that are so detailed and complex I have found someone to work with me for those ones.  I can see that my crayon work needs developing and refining.  This is watercolour pencils, gel pens and crayon.  Pencils are versatile and its possible to get some really good textures though I am discovering this as I explore art.  There were some surprising developments in the crayon work and some failures.  It's hard to get an even colour.  Textures can suggest shapes, like the two hinted trees on either side of the deer.  My attempt at a bush failed, that's lower left-hand corner.  I don't think there's enough contrast around the birds.  It's all learning, though, and nothing is lost.  I will have more ideas to take with me to the next picture.

School of Fish

Hi!  This is my new picture:

The challenge was to show that the fish were the same species but still have enough variation in their patterns to create visual interest.  I used gel pens and watercolour pencils.

I felt a bit frustrated after my attempt at the fish, and I still wasn't prepared to do something complex, so I went for something with a simple design.  I think I might prefer simple designs, I like quick results, I'm not as patient as I need to be to work on something with a lot of detail.

I imposed the circle on the drawing.  I seem to rather like the circle shape, maybe I need to do some mandalas, or even explore drawing my own mandala.  Something to think about for the future.  Some of my gel pens are running out now, I use them a lot.  Xmas and the New Year have been and gone, and the coin shops sold out of all the gel pens and rainbow pens and all the felts.  So I will have to wait now until the shops restock and just keep checking back every now and then.  I have decided I really like colouring-in.  It certainly occupies my mind, and distracts me from the everyday problems all people face.

After doing something so difficult, I decided I wanted a break and wanted to tackle something a lot easier.  I found a fish design and this was the result.

Ironically, it proved to be a troublesome picture.  The paper reacted to the felts.  The felts were eating away the paper as I coloured in the picture.  I changed the original picture by adding a triangular shape to give more contrasting areas.  I tried a lot of different ideas, and I don't think I got the picture to work as well as the others.  Its a flawed picture, but it offered learning opportunities.  I wish I had chosen different colours.  Also the blue in the fish doesn't work.  I was aiming for a fish that could camouflage itself behind seaweed.  It looks more like a mechanical, steampunk fish.  Oh well!

After my initial attempts, I decided it was time to try something challenging.  I went for a complex picture with a lot of fiddly bits in it.

It proved to be frustrating.  It was much more work than I anticipated.  It took me a long time to finish it.  I was able to use some of the ideas I had explored earlier, darker borders around shapes, colour contrasting in similar shapes, such as the leaf cluster just by the bottom of the well.  I had good feedback though.  The blue circle gave it a kind of unity, similar to the mandala.  I think the picture is too busy to be improved on in any way.

At this point, I decided I liked doing the colouring-in.  I found it relaxing.  I decided to tackle something a bit more challenging, and I decided to have a go at a mandala.

It is quite a time consuming process.  You do quite a bit of work before you get the result.  I took a basic shape and turned it into eyes to add interest to the mandala.  Its based on earth, air, fire and water, and the eyes represent the spirit.