I’ve been busy over the last few weeks…well, in the evenings when the little one has been in bed at least!
For some reason I’ve become a little obsessed with putting daisies on dresses! It stems (excuse the pun!) from a memory that struck me a short while ago, of making daisy chains with my paternal grandfather. It’s one of my earliest memories.
I also decided that I needed something less harsh than the black fineliners I was using for the outline of the designs. I had hoped to find myself a grey Copic fineliner but they seemed to be out of stock wherever I looked so I bought a few alternatives and it was the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner which has beaten the competition for shade and flow. The effect is much softer and much more suitable for bridal.
As for colour, I’ve been building up a nice selection of Tombow pens since I first started this whole design thing. These double ended pens (brush tip and liner) have a lovely satisfying flow and depth of colour as well as a vast palette of shades to choose from. However, until recently I hadn’t used the clear blender pens and palette that are also available.
The palette is, effectively, a small piece of completely non-porous paper. All you do is apply your chosen colour to the palette and then “pick it up” with the blending pen. When applied to your artwork, it naturally creates a graduated effect, making shading smooth and easy. It’s very simple to do in a straight line but not so easy to apply to the curves of a fashion figure or folds of a dress. Well, not easy for me anyway! I’m still working on getting that spot on!
I generally only use 3 or 4 of the multitude of colours that I have but have chosen a nice peacock blue to demonstrate the technique. There are a number of videos on YouTube showing other uses for the blending pens too.
And of course the glitter is there too!
The combination of all these factors has resulted in renewed enthusiasm and a boost to production, such as it is! These few designs are some of the slightly better ones to emerge from this flurry of activity. They are by no means perfect, not even close, but I’m still finding my way.
All designs copyright Sarah Searle 2016.
Minis, Munch and Me 