Artist’s doodle work is just mesmerising
A WELSH woman who moved to South Africa is now making a living off her mesmerising doodle prints, and sells her designs on mugs, iPhone cases and even shower curtains.
Delyth Angharad’s new line art business, which aims to capitalise upon the trend of adult colouring books, is thriving, and she says her designs are usually met with amaze- ment from her customers, friends and family.
She started Del’s Doodles after having arrived in South Africa seven years ago.
Globetrotter Delyth, 35, had also lived in Inverness and Italy before moving to the Western Cape, near Cape Town, where she lives with games devel- oper boyfriend Jaco.
Upon arrival in the country, Delyth began working remotely for a UK-based friend who runs a game server hosting company.
But last year she got into line art drawing in response to the rising trend of adult colouring books.
She said: “I started building followers and getting clients approaching me for work, and now it’s all I do.” Delyth takes inspiration from nature, other artists who produce “awesome” work, and uses designs from other cultures like Byzantine and Arabic art.
She said: “I’m always greatly inspired by the artists I follow on Instagram, and seeing what other artists produce pushes me to improve my own work and gives me ideas of styles to incorporate.
“I’m a fan of fantasy settings so I like drawing little fairytale works with mushroom houses, and I’m also a fan of geometry and fractal art, which I implement a lot in my mandalas, building shapes with a compass and protractor.”
Delyth said she is also a photographer, as well as making “Let’s Plays” of video games on Youtube.
She said: “Both of these helped me to get familiar with video editing software and trying different things – I think timelapse just lends itself very well to drawing videos; people want to see my technique but they don’t want to sit through 30 minutes of lines being drawn very slowly so I compress a drawing into bite-sized clips of 30 to 60 seconds long.”
She said people usually react with “amazement” when seeing her prints, and added: “That’s how I’ve always reacted to seeing the art of people I admire – but when you’re looking at something someone else has done you don’t see the work that went into it, you just see the finished piece, so it’s kind of like it arrived there by magic.
“I’ve inspired a lot of people to start drawing themselves – mandalas especially, and I’ve provided tutorials for people to get started with that – I’m really happy that I can inspire people to draw themselves.
“The other common reaction I get is ‘I need that on my skin!’”
She now sells her designs in South Africa on items from throw pillows and tote bags to T-shirts and shower curtains.
And for Delyth, drawing isn’t just her job.
She said: “I love drawing. I do it voluntarily several hours a day just to entertain myself so it’s great being able to make a living from that.”
And that has led her to releasing several free colouring pages a week for her fans, some of whom suffer from conditions like Bibromyaglia, depression, anxiety, or are on a limited income.
She said: “I like providing free content because I know how much of a drag it is to not be able to afford fun things like colouring books.”
Delyth’s success has led to her having a book coming out in April next year to be published by US firm Barnes & Noble. Please post me free & without obligation full details of the Alta2 Pro hearing aid. Tick if pensioner.