Querkles Coloring Adventures!

So another great activity book by Thomas Pavitte has been released over the summer and since I really enjoyed his 1000 dots activity books which I got last summer, I was pretty excited about this one!

It's a coloring book and it's based on 'paint by numbers' but more intricate. And it's called Querkles. I got the masterpieces book from the bookdepository.com and could not wait to get started.

I decided that it would be a great way to use up some of my fountain pen ink samples to color the pages with. I still have a lot from my past inkdrop subscription from the goulet pen company and from swaps with pen pals.

The first page is King Tut and thought a nice selection of browns would do the trick. I selected the colors from darkest (layer one) to lightest (layer 5).

The set up and see all the overlapping circles!

Layer one is done with Noodler's burma road brown

Layer two is done with Toucan Umber

Layer 3 is done with Pelikan Brown

Layer 4 is done with Noodler's Polar brown

The face becomes a lot more visible here which was a fun thing to discover.

The final layer is done with Noodler's Golden brown.

I was pretty impressed by this 'puzzle' and uncovering the whole picture by coloring it is awesome.

Though something bothered me (because I am OCD and nit picky maybe ;) and that is that not all circles were numbered and therefore not everything needed to be colored in. But I felt like experimenting further and distilled the Noodler's golden brown to a golden yellow color and colored in the remainder of the circles.

Which resulted in this:

You can see a bit of blending with the other inks but I think that gives it a more interesting effect. 

A close up

I am very pleased with the end result :) 

You can see the whole coloring process here.

My findings are that the paper in this book, like with the 1000 dots activity book, is very fountain pen ink friendly! There is no bleed through or ghosting and doesn't warp as much when using wet inks! 

So definitely a great experience to color with fountain pen inks in this book and am already excited to pick the colors for the next one in line.

If you like coloring and want something different than the coloring books that are already out there, definitely pick up a querkles coloring book :)

Thanks for stopping by!

namaste

Zenspirational doodles inspired by Joanne Fink

A while back I received this wonderful care package from my friend Mel and her son Jakob. And at a weekend away a little while ago, I got to try my hand this wonderful activity book "Zenspirations Dangle Designs; expanded workbook edition".

I wanted to make a dangle border/top design as you see on the workbook cover.

As pictures say more than words, I will show you my zenspiration creation process step by step:

My top 5 tools for #zentangle activities are 1) mechanic pencil 0.5 point 2) steadtler micron liners 3) pilot kaküno fountainpen M nib with namiki black cartdridge 4) sakura pigment liners 5) sakura black gelly rol. I made a few rough sketches with pencil and then just started doodling away with the fineliners. 

You can make some basic shapes and tangle/doodle in the downward pillars/sock dangles. I used a really fine 0.05 micron steadtler fine liner for the really detailed doodles.

I got inspiration from the book to do the 'tops' and 'ends' but thinking up some fun patterns/designs yourself is all part of the wonderful creative process.

Got the line work done! And the fun thing is I had no idea it would turn out like this when I started. It all happened gradually without having to think too much about it. Though I like the black and white version, I did want to see what it would look like with some color. Before I used the water colors, I erased all the pencil lining with a soft eraser so the graphite would not mix with the colors. 

I used my caran d'ache prismalo aquarelle pencils and a pentel water brush to color it in. I decided to leave the insides of the doodles and columns white and keep a simple color contrast on top while having a nice color gradient on the bottom. Red in between the columns and yellow on the bottom. Used the water brush to make them blend and it became orange where the two colors meet. 

The finished piece. I ended up using the contrasting colors in the smaller dangle 'endings' to make it 'complete'. I'm quite pleased with the end result. I love how the colors make the dangles pop out more. 

NB I did find out though that the black cartridge in my Pilot kaküno fountain pen was not entirely water proof. But when dried and mixed with the colors, it looks like shading so the piece wasn't completely ruined. So a fair warning; if you do end up using watercolors, make sure you work with completely water proof liners/ink if you don't want the bleed/blend through happening.  

Inspired and enthused? See Joanne Fink's blog for more inspiration! Also the book is being translated to a few different languages! As she would love to hear from people all over the world, who tried the book or their hand at zenspirations, so be sure to leave a comment on her The Global Connection blogpost :) 

Thanks for stopping by.

namaste.