Strings of fire

Etsuko Ichikawa uses molten glass to create black and gray lines on white paper. Stand-alone Zentangle strings! You can read and see more about her here.

Recent Zentangle tiles #2

It's our second Monday of the Diva's family-time break from posing challenges and here, as promised, are some Zentangle tiles I've done recently.

Tangles: Fohbraid, Knase, Posh, Tri-dots, Tripoli, Unyun

Tangles: Bilt, Caviar, Chebucto, Diamond Panes,
Knightsbridge, Msst, Ragz, Tipple

Tangles: Knase, Paradox, Phuds, Rosé with Black Pearlz, Striping, Zedbra

Tangles: Auras, Black Pearlz, Fohbraid, Hibred,
Munchin, Not-a-knot, Pearlz, Unyun

My new favorite tangle(s)

Have you seen Sandra Strait's Fohbraid?!? It resembles the chain stitch in crochet. It's a lot of fun and very versatile. Cindy Angiel's Sprix, in the first tile, and Joyce Block's Not-a-Knot, in the third tile, are close seconds to my current favorite tangle. Bouclé, also from Sandra Strait: also cool. And Nelumba by Patty Meijer too. All wonderful! What talented and creative people there are out there!

Tangles: Fohbraid, Munchin, Posh, Sprix

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Bouclé, Fohbraid, Nelumba, Striping, Tipple, Tripoli

This tangle looks so much like the chain stitch I wanted to see if I could make it look a little more like that. I found that if I curved the base of the initial triangles, and pulled the outside lines up farther so they fell into line with the curved lines, it accomplished my goal somewhat. I also added a few lines at the center of Cross View to make the strips overlap.

Tangles: Fohbraid, Hibred, Munchin, Not-a-Knot, Pearlz, Unyun

Inchies?

My family loves board games. Sometimes, when we get a new game, there are cardboard pieces to press out of a sheet. I often find the leftover board with holes in it of more interest than the game pieces!

Years ago I did a painting using one of those boards, a square one with 100 circles in it. I glued the cardboard piece onto the work surface and painted away. I filled the little pressed-out areas with tiny "treasures" (coins, metal charms, tiny images, etc.). I had my framer use the same frame in two colors so that the top of the frame would look like part of the lid of the box.

"Treasure Box" ©  2003 Margaret Bremner
24" square; acrylic paint, collage

Recently my husband bought the game Acquire. Here's one of the leftover press-out cardboards.

As it happens, the press-out spaces are an inch square, and the spaces between are 1/4 inch. Three squares plus two spaces equals 3.5 inches. Fits perfectly on a Zentangle tile. (Seriously, is anyone surprised?) So I traced the little squares onto a couple of tiles and got out a pen. Some of those tangles I tried during Art Every Day Month need a little more practice!

I hadn't heard the term "inchie" until several months ago. These aren't separate one inch pieces, but maybe they qualify?

Recent Zentangle tiles

For the next few weeks there will be no new Zentangle challenge from the Diva on Mondays. She's taking a much-deserved family-time break until January 9. That will be a different sort of challenge for many of us!

I've decided that on those Mondays I'll post a few of my interesting, and relatively recent, Zentangle tiles. Herewith the first installment: two tiles with some spaces left empty and a monotangle.

Tangles: Assunta, Black Pearls, Dutch Hourglass, Lilypads,
Lotus Pods, Ogen, Prestwood, Yale, and something
Jane Monk does that I really like!
(I'm considering filling that white 'wing' on the left to make
an egg shape stand out more.)

Tangles: Assunta, Black Pearls, Crescent Moon,
Finery, Meer, Shattuck, Tripoli

The tangle here is based on something I saw from Bettie Lake, with
intertwined black and white ribbons and a few little circles/beads/bubbles.
I really like it, but I don't know if it has a name.
The string is Sue Clark's brilliant Tri-Shapes string (circle/square/triangle) idea.
Hard to tell when the tangle doesn't fill the entire space right to the edges!

Snowflakes, or not

The Zentangle Inspired Art group on Yahoo occasionally issues challenges. A recent one to do snowflakes struck my fancy. The idea is to "draw a circle with arms/spokes coming out. Sort of an asterik with a circle in the center. Use the spokes as your string. Draw your tangles coming off of the string." My first two efforts were very disappointing. In fact, I tore one in half and didn't finish the other! Here are the three that I actually completed.

It has six points, but... umm... not a snowflake.

Tangles: Beadlines, Finery, Krli-qs, Meer

Six points again, but this one was more star-like right from the beginning. I decided it could be a Star of David and I'll wish all my Jewish friends a very happy Chanukah (December 20-28) next week. I like it. But... not a snowflake.

Tangles: Beadlines, Caviar, Hibred, Ixorus, Knase,
Knightsbridge aura, Perds, Seljuk, Tripoli

Third try (if I don't count the first two) lucky! Although the snowflake doesn't show up very well. Apparently this concept needs more tangling effort. Yay!

Tangle: Sampson

IONIC - a new tangle

Image from www.souvenirsfromgreece.com

Ionic (or Ionic Border, as it seems to work well that way) is a simple design I came up with quite a while ago. The elements bear a resemblance to the Ionic style capitals of Greek columns, thus the name. I used it in the second tile I posted yesderday for Sue Jacob's challenge Alphabet Soup.


Both sides of this linear pattern are open, which can make it a little tricky to link or blend to a pattern beside it. You get to exercise your creativity! It also can be embellished somewhat, or left simple.





Here are the drawing directions.

Here are three tiles using Ionic. It's interesting how, next to some other tangles, the base line sort of disappears and the tangle looks like a series of curlicues.

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Curtain, Ionic Border,
Pinwheels and a variation, Shattuck

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Crescent Moon, Ennies, Ionic Border and
a mystery tangle I saw in one of the Diva's slide shows.

On this last tile I did a blind string, which gave me a very thin strip at one side. I considered ignoring it, then thought "Nope, deal with it." Kinda cool.

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Chebucto, Crescent Moon, Jonqal/Striping,
Knightsbridge, Magma, Seljuk, Tipple

Alphabet Soup

Sue Jacobs, CZT at Sue's Tangle Trips, has proposed a challenge she's calling Alphabet Soup. I welcomed the opportunity to continue the exploration of new or less familiar tangles that I began during Art Every Day Month. I got quite into it and did the entire alphabet on four tiles in one swell foop!

First, A to N.
Tangles in the first tile: Allium, Bitten, Chard, Dancet, Ennies, Featherfall, Golven and Hurakán.
Tangles in the second tile: Ionic, Jalousie, Kuginuki, Lilypads, Moving Day and Networking.

Then O to Z.
Tangles in the third tile: OoF, Parch, Quiltz, Raddox, Sanibelle and Tagh.
Tangles in the fourth tile: Umble, Vega, Wired, Y-not and Zuan Shi. (I skipped X! I like Xyp but it's the only one I know.)

Tomorrow I'll post drawing instructions for Ionic.

I must be crazy!

Earlier this week I wrote about doing some Zentangle "ensembles" - sets of nine tiles that flow together. The other day I noticed, on my desk, the label from one of the ensemble sets and thought, "There's a tiny, interesting thing to tangle." I got out a 005 pen and went to play. It was fun, but I don't think I'll do it again. A normal zentangle tile is quite small enough! Here's the result.

The paper size here is 3.5" square - a Zentangle 'tile',
so the drawing is about 2.5" square.

Icosahedron?

You may recognize that word from the Zentangle kit. The kit comes with an icosahedron die and a legend for when you just can't think which tangle to do next.

An icosahedron is a 3-D shape with 20 sides. At the right is a diagram of the most simple version, with flat faces. They can also be truncated (which flattens the points into pentagons) or stellated (which pulls the faces out into points and makes it star-like). The measurements are related to sacred geometry and the Platonic solids. Fascinating! I love these 3D geometric shapes.


I also love second hand stores. At one I bought a book - Cut and Assemble 3-D Star Shapes - made of heavy cardstock. It contains the parts required to cut out and construct three different shapes.

The blue background of the
book cover doesn't help much.

Lovely and fascinating, but no doubt more lovely and more fascinating if tangled first! I started drawing in the book (parental *gasp*).

The book calls all three shapes icosahedra, but the particular one I'm starting with has 12 yellow faces (and 30 blue faces). Looks like a dodecahedron (12 sides) to me.






I scribbled in the book (parental *gasp* #2) : pencil strings over the stars. I'm using black ink on the yellow parts, but the blue is fairly dark so I'm using white there. Here's part of a page I've tangled so far.

I'll post a photo when this piece is tangled, constructed and hanging from the ceiling.

Ensembles

Zentangle makes a couple of "Ensemble" sets. These are nine, pre-strung tiles that fit together to make a larger piece of zentangle artwork. One set is mainly straight-ish lines, the other more curvy. Here they are:

The fun in this is to take any tile, do your ink tangles and pencil shading, and put it away. Then take out another tile from the set. Do the same with this one, and on and on, without looking at what you've done before. When you're finished the nine tiles and put them together, you'll find that the string flowing through everything holds it all together beautifully, even though you haven't looked and planned, and the tangle patterns don't match from tile to tile.

The group that recently completed the seventh CZT training decided to to an Ensemble swap, and invited the rest of the CZTs to join in if they wanted. I wanted! I'll send in one of each ensemble, and receive one of each in return, but... the ensembles I receive will be drawn by nine different people! And it will still all fit together beautifully!

Here are the two ensembles I'll be sending off soon. First, the one with straight lines. This one I did in the past week or so and used some of the tangles I've been trying out during November's Art Every Day Month.

Tangles: Amaze, Bales, Caviar, Chebucto, Diamond Panes, Florez, Flux, Flying Geese, Fracas, Gneiss,
Hibred, Hollibaugh, Ixorus, Jonqal, Lotus Pods, Marasu, Marbles, OoF, Opus, Parabola, Paradox,
Parch, Posh, Prestwood, Rain, Rosé, Seljuk, Striping, Tidings, Tipple, Tripoli, Zedbra

Here is the one with curvy lines. Some of the tiles I did about a year ago as a sample for classes. I wanted an unfinished one so students could see both parts of the process. When I look at them closely I can tell what was done earlier and what was done recently. I'm improving!

Tangles: Black Pearlz, Cadent, Casella attempt, Caviar, Crescent Moon, Cubine, Daggerly, Finery, Florz,
Hibred, Hopscotch, Knightsbridge, Lacing, Msst, Munchin, N'zeppel, Paradox, Pina, Posh, Rain,
Rosé, Scoodle, Shattuck, Spinners, Striping, Tink, Tipple, Up and Across, Xyp, Yincut

If you're interested in trying these wonderful sets, you can purchase them from Zentangle here, or support a local CZT and see if they have any available. :-)
And if you're wondering about the CZT thing, read this.

First anniversary "draw" tiles

I thought you might be interested in seeing the lovely Zentangle tiles people sent for the draw I had to celebrate my first anniversary of blogging. With these, plus a few others, I now have about three dozen tiles by a variety of people that I can show off and say, "Yes, you too could create a tiny masterpiece!"

I should say that this is most of what I received. Two or three people sent an extra tile (thanks!), two had color, and one was larger than a tile. All, however, were lovely! Thanks again everyone!

ATTENTION JANICE HINES!!!
I don't have a mailing address for you. E-mail me and I'll send your ZIA on its way.

Biggify

Go large!

Not paper size or pen size, but tangle size.
The Diva's weekly challenge #50 is to make our tangles really large, but to work on the size of paper we normally do. For me, for these challenges, that's a Zentangle tile. Nine square centimeters. Only. Wth BIG patterns.

Actually, I often like starting with big tangles, although it feels awkward. Oddly, it sometimes seems to give more room for more tangles because you can put a tangle inside another one. For this challenge, though, I decided to try to keep it simple. The idea, after all, is to do things BIG. If I put one tangle inside another some things would end up small. Nonetheless, I couldn't resist adding some smaller detail to the Crescent's Moons in my first tile.

Tangles: Crescent Moon, Knightsbridge,
one giant Munchin, Tipple, Zedbra

On the tiles I was doing for Art Every Day Month, I used the classic dots/border/string format. So on my second try for this challenge I did a blind, left-handed string - just for a change!

Tangles: Diamond Panes, Gneiss,
Hollibaugh believe it or not, Posh, Seljuk