Friday, March 28, 2014

Spiral out

The Diva's challenge this week is to use a spiral as the string. One of the challenges of a spiral string is that it's one long space, no divisions.

CZT Amy Broady's tangle Paisley Boa is currently one of my favorites, fast becoming a 'go to' tangle. I drew Paisley Boa all along my spiral, which made a nice series of divisions. Then I filled each droplet shape with various things. The spiral was getting lost so I added white along the lines defining it to bring it back into focus.

This is done on a tan tile with brown, sepia and white inks, white charcoal pencil, and brown colored pencils. It was fun.  Wish I had time to do more but I've had a little too much on my plate recently! Maybe later.
Tangles: Paisley Boa plus: Crescent Moon variation,
Cruffle, Ennies, Flux, Paizel, Phuds, Tipple

Monday, March 24, 2014

Missing U

Or: "I need to learn to read the instructions first"

Tangle U 2014! Late April! I'm going! I'm going to teach about Sacred Geometry and Hollibaugh on Steroids! I'm going to have great fun and learn lots! It starts a month from today!

Tangle U is an event for CZTs where we can meet others, learn a bunch of nifty things and try out ideas. There is going to be a tile swap called Missing U among those of us who are able to go and those who can't attend this year. "Missing U" - very cool idea. I got to work.
Then I got out the information to find out where to send them. Oh.
The theme is not "Missing U". The theme is OCEAN!!! Margaret, you nincompoop.
Well, more fun in store! Oceans. Blue and green. Blue and purple. Wavy tangles. Sparkles.
I charged ahead!
Tangles used in some or all of the above:
Black Pearlz, C-scape, Diva Dance, Dust Bunny, Lamar,
Msst, Opus, Paisley Boa, Paushalöv, Printemps,
Snaylz, Tipple, Wud (and a variation)

Back to the information. Oh.
I only need one. Or maybe two. Oh well, an extra one for the organizer! Full speed ahead!

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Recent tile-size ZIAs

Oh yes... more little houses!
Tangles: Crezn't, Dex, Dust Bunny, Florz, Flukes,
Knightsbridge, Palrevo, Printemps, Zewm
Not much zentangle here, except for Printemps.

I had done a border on this one, and knew it would be a tree, but it sat around half-finished for quite a while waiting for inspiration. It was worth the wait. I decided to do the tree in colored pencil - which I love - and the blue night sky and the little birds. I'm calling it "I Sing Your Praises".
Tangles: Chebucto, Crescent Moon, Crossview,
Cruze, Diva Dance, Elven, Posh, Wud

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Elders' ATCs

Janet, one of my students who does zentangle-y projects with several residents at a seniors home here in Saskatoon, asked if I'd be interested in trading zentangle ATCs with her group. Of course I said, "Sure!" Here's what they sent me:
These were done by Nina (with a bit of color) and Dorothy, both 90 years old young.
Jay and Betty, both age 89, created these two.
The two at the top were done by Thelma and Edith,
younger participants who didn't give their ages. ;)
The bottom one is from Nina, the daughter of one of the group.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Duotangle challenge

A duotangle, a term coined by fellow CZT Laura Harms, is her challenge this week. The tangles are Crescent Moon, a longtime favorite of mine, and Diva Dance, designed for Laura by Rick and Maria. Both tangles involve a lot of lines so the challenge for me was to try to make them distinct. As always, shading helps!

Monotangles and duotangles are a great opportunity to experiment with variations of tangles. First, I tried leaving broad white spaces in Diva Dance. I also tried putting a few little circles in the black spaces, which I really like. Oh no, is that Pearlz?! Shoot. And I used Black Pearlz, too. Sorry, no duotangle here!
Then I tried Diva Dance with white lines of varying widths, which makes a nice change. I also tried a triple bump shape in Crescent Moon. I kept getting more ideas but decided that I should quit. :)

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Mardi Gras

(I'm glad we use the French name for this holiday. "Fat Tuesday" doesn't sound nearly so exotic.)

One of my enthusiastic students, Janet, regularly visits a seniors home and does a variety of zentangly projects with several of the residents. They had a Mardi Gras party and she helped her group make some masks. Here are her samples.

Here are the masks made by the residents, complete with Mardi Gras colors green and purple embellishments.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Charlie

Erin Olson developed the tangle Charlie and that's our challenge from the Diva this week: use Charlie. This is a strong black and white pattern - along the lines of Bunzo, Aquafleur, Knightsbridge, and Strircles - and I generally like them. I forced a few circles into my first tile, but I had a hard time leaving the pointy angles behind for other sections. I used Rain on both tiles. I also tried a few variations of Charlie, one of them quite unintended!
Tangles: Black Pearlz, Charlie, Rain, Tipple
The quite unintended section is above, at the bottom, middle/right. I started before I checked the instructions. That's usually good for something interesting! For some reason I recalled the 'diamonds' being black on one side and white on the other. Nope. The Black Pearl went over a tiny black squiggle telling me to "fill this area black". Nope. In any case, I like it.
Tangles: Charlie (and variation), Rain
On the tile above I did Charlie as designed on the right. In the lower left I added Auras beside all the zigzags before filling in the black. Some of the divider lines are a little curvy.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Reworked, reassembled, rejected, repurposed

I've been making ATCs from cut-up old artwork that was going nowhere and the results were pretty darn terrific in most cases! You can see some of them here and here. All the smaller pieces were quite lovely. The only 'problem' was that I no longer had the bigger artwork.

There was another piece that was stalled so I decided to cut it into squares, finish each small square individually, and reassemble it. Here it is cut into 16 squares. You can see some of the gray acrylic wash that I began with, when I expected the finished work would be black and white (and gray).

I added color to all the small squares. It was different from doing ATCs because on some there were large parts that needed to be left white. Here are all the little pieces with color. So far so good.

Then I reassembled the pieces. At this point I discovered a few places I had forgotten. I tangled those, added white ink in a few places, darkened some areas, and added shading in colored pencil.

It wasn't thrilling me. Maybe I had already done too much black and gray before I cut it in pieces. Maybe I should have stuck with black and white. Maybe the gray wash was too much right from the beginning. Maybe I had, in the back of my mind, the idea that it would get put together again. In any case, I wasn't pleased.

Sooo, to the rescue: Artist Trading Cards! I found some sections I did like and cut them to ATC size. I had eight and mounted them on backing paper because they were rather floppy. Then I tangled the white parts and fine-tuned things. These I'm quite pleased with.
So what gives? Why do these work as ATCs and not as a reassembled larger piece?