I keep the darker shades to the left and bottom of the designs so that there’s a consistency across the whole image. These gradations add ‘dimension’ to the charms and dangles. These pens make it easy to create gradations of colour, such as on the hand lettering. Then I used Chameleon Duo Tones and Color Tops markers to colour it in. What I did this morning was to print the black and white line art design on an A4 sheet of paper. The waviness in the ends of the dangles echoes the waviness of the fairy lights above the hand lettered word ‘Christmas’. I also kept the length of the dangles uneven. I wanted to include as many Christmas-themed charms to create the dangles as I could and still keep the design balanced. My tools for this were a Microsoft Surface Book, a Microsoft Surface Pen and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. For the book, the final step was to colour the design and then write the instructions to go with the images. The next step for me was to scan it in to the computer and then re-draw it step-by-step, saving each step as I went.

When I created this design, I first drew it in pencil on dot grid paper. In the book I show how this design was drawn, step by step. Today, I wanted to share a Christmas Dangle with you from my book ‘A Dangle A Day’.

Design from ‘A Dangle A Day’, authored and illustrated by Angela Porter

Autodesk sketchbook surface pro 7