SHOSHI’S LITTLE BLACK BOOK, AND SOME GOLD MANDALAS

Little Black Book lost and found

What I used to call my Rhodia drawing book has now been renamed. Shoshi’s Little Black Book. Foz, a member of the art forum I am on, called it that and it’s stuck! It doesn’t contain naughty stuff though, just Shoshi’s black ink pen drawings. I began it a couple of years ago and after doing quite a few drawings, put it aside for a while and did other things. This seems to be the way I work best, and it also explains why I’ve got soooo much stuff in my studio!!

Having been doing ink pen drawing recently on the online art course, I felt the urge to do some more drawings in the Little Black Book. Could I find it? NO! I’ve moved a lot of stuff around recently, since starting the course, and have got a lot of art stuff downstairs. I searched high and low, without success. Very frustrating and a lot of wasted time and energy. Then I rootled around in my ink drawing box and found it! The logical place for it to be. Duh. It was lurking underneath another book.

Gold mandalas

Time for some more 3-D mandalas. I found a stunning image on Pinterest which I took for my inspiration. Using a combination of my Helix Angle and Circle Maker and a compass, I drew two lots of concentric circles as guides for the larger and smaller partial mandalas, and marked out the angles to divide them equally. Pen drawing followed, using my Staedtler fineliners.

Adding the gold

I recently bought a set of fine-tipped Posca acrylic markers from Amazon and hadn’t had a chance to try them out. Included in the set are gold and silver markers and I used the gold one. You have to pump the marker up and down to get the paint to flow, and then I found that all that was required was the absolute minimum pressure on the paper to get the ink to flow in a very controlled fine line. Stunning! The paint is highly metallic and I am extremely pleased with the result. This is going to be my go-to tool for gold highlighting, script and other fine work from now on, I can see that.

As always, the gold did not photograph well. I tipped the book up slightly and photographed it again and this time got some nice reflections.

The addition of some Derwent Coloursoft coloured pencil in Petrel Grey created the shading to produce the 3-D look, and when I realised it wasn’t quite strong enough, I added some soft graphite pencil as well.

Here’s a final close-up of the larger mandala.

These were great fun to do. It’s the first time I’ve added anything apart from black to the Little Black Book. I think the gold goes very well with the black, and particularly in this book with its cream pages which produce a warm look. I shall definitely be adding more gold as I progress through the book.