Life is Full of Surprises

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do."    Henry Ford

When I saw the focus tangle for this week on the Facebook group Square One, I thought to myself,  "I won't be doing this week's tile!" You see, I am not a fan of the pattern Fengle, which is this week's focus. My problem with Fengle is that it just doesn't seem to go with anything, meaning I never know what other patterns to use with it. But after a few days of watching the pictures that everyone in the group was posting, I got inspired to give it a try.

I decided to keep it simple (that's my new mantra) and tangle the Fengle itself, but not add anything in the background to distract from it. Here it is...

I actually had fun with that tile and chose to do another one, this time including multiple Fengles. This one deserved a background, but hearing that little voice in my head saying, "Keep it simple, keep it simple," I just added some lines, not a real tangle at all.

Now call me crazy (that's what I'm thinking anyway)...I did another one! This one is drawn on a hand-colored tile I made. Colored first, then tangled, then shaded with colored pencils.

At this point I was unstoppable! I had two Fengle tiles in the traditional black on white, and a colored tile, so why not do just one more on a black tile? But I didn't do the normal white on black, instead I did black on black. That's right, a black glaze pen drawn on black results in a very elegant look. The photo didn't come out great, and it really looks better in person. Zenstone shading around the outside gave it a kind of glowing look, and white charcoal pencil was used to add some highlights. The funny looking thing at the bottom of the picture is a clip that held the tile up for taking the photo.

Wow! Last week when I saw the focus on Fengle who would have thought that a few short days later I would have 4 tiles? Certainly not me. Life is full of surprises...but I think it will probably be a long time before you find me using Fengle again.