Swirly Swirls

Two weeks ago the BF and I went away for the weekend, and of course I had to bring some of my pens to play with. Finding myself without a tangle index and not exactly wanting to play with the ones I normally do, I just created some swirly spirals, and explored overlap and contour hatching.

Although I started the line-art that weekend, it took me another two weeks to finish it, plus add shading -- got caught in the holiday busy schedule and putting finishing touches on my latest video on Smooth blends. Here is the line-art before shading:

I'm really happy with the way it turned out, I started with the intent of creating a sort of mooka3D unravelled, with tons of overlap. The final piece reminds me a lot of Irina Vinnik's swirls combined with H.R. Giger -- I'm a huge fan of both artists, they were probably in the back of my mind. I also added just a tiny bit of Sea Wave tangle (Ginny Lu).  

Playing with overlap is not exactly easy, because you need to work with a "stop and go" approach. Start a swirl, stop, work on another one. Then stop that one, continue the first, or add a third one.

Shading was fun -- all I did was explore those overlapping shapes and shade the corners. It was REALLY intuitive. In this picture you can compare before and after shading copics and black colored pencil: 

Here is the final picture again: 

And a close-up for you to inspect: 

 

If you want to learn how to shade smooth blends using copic markers and colored pencils, visit my shop or check out my latest lesson: 

 

Smooth BW Blends Video Lesson

Learn how to create smooth and dramatic blends using a variety of different media.