Maryhill

"The shortest distance between two points is a straight line."    Archimedes

I love the tangle pattern Maryhill. It's all lines, so what's not to love about it? The pattern comes from CZT Betsy Wilson, and if you're not familiar with it you can see her step-outs for it here. I decided to focus on Maryhill this week, and created several tiles/drawings with it, varying each one a little (or a lot).

Just to show you a very straightforward version, here is a Bijou tile I made a while ago. I think it's amazing what movement you get with a pattern made up of just lots of lines.

Next is another one I did in my Tangle It! Journal. This time I added a center filled with Printemps. I really like the way this turned out.

Since Maryhill is most often completed in the round, I wanted to create one on a Zendala tile. Choosing a tan Renaissance tile, I used brown and red Micron pens, brown and red pastel pencils for shading, and a white pastel pencil for highlights. I like the way the pop of red worked with the brown.

Rather than making them all round, I decided to complete this one in a square. I used white pen on black, even though I'm not usually such a big fan of that. Not that I don't like the look of white on black, because I do, but working with white pens can be a little challenging. I have never been a fan of the white Sakura gelly roll pens, because they always seem to soak into the tiles and not look bright white. So I generally prefer the Uniball Signo UM 153 white pen for its brighter white look, but it's harder to get really thin lines. I used my Bee Paper Aquabee sketchbook with black paper. The paper is thinner than the tiles, but works better with the white gel pens. I decided to try my Sakura gelly roll pen again since it can draw finer lines than the Signo, and lo and behold, the pen worked really well on this paper, to my surprise! 

Notice I drew a mini Maryhill in the center, with a larger version surrounding it. I used the Sakura pen for the lines and filling in the white spaces in the border, but when it came to filling the larger white areas, I used a Sharpie water based paint marker. And added a hint of bright pink with a moonlight gelly roll pen.

Next is another Maryhill in the round, on one of my hand-colored tiles. I used a black Micron to draw, graphite for shading, and white pastel pencil for highlights. 

Oh...almost forgot. Did you notice something looks a bit different on the above tile? I alternated the direction of each section of the Maryhill, which gives it a totally unique look.

Then, for something VERY different, I started the next tile with a bunch of triangles, and then filled each triangle with a "segment" of Maryhill. I didn't really pay much attention to which direction each segment was facing. 

To give it a bolder look, I added some extra black in each section of the tile.

That's it folks! Experimenting with this great tangle, Maryhill, was an awful lot of fun. Even after so many tiles/drawings, I didn't tire of the repetitive lines of this pattern.

Valentangle

"It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters."   
 Evander Holyfield

I've completed another Diva challenge. That makes three weeks in a row for me! I haven't done that in a really long time. But I have to admit, I'd already started this one when it popped up as the challenge this week... which is to do a piece with a Valentine's Day flair. 

This is the front of a card I designed for my husband. I used Tombow brush markers and white gel pen to make the heart. Bunzo, Printemps, Indyrella, and some striping completed the card.

I have to admit that I really love the way this turned out. Hope he likes it as much as I do! (Don't worry - he won't see this before Sunday)

 

Here, There and Everywhere

"Well, as you can plainly see, the possibilities are endless like meandering paths in a great big beautiful garden."    William S. Burroughs

The Diva's challenge this week is to use the newly released tangle pattern called Molygon. I had a lot of fun with this pattern and just kept wanting to try something different, so I'm sharing a number of my experiments here.

On this first one I just let my Molygon wander around, and instead of filling the segments with anything, I only shaded. Using graphite on the top section, I followed the design down with a few different colored pastel pencils for the shading. The blue part was really a little more towards the color teal, but this is the best I could get when scanning it.

Next I used a piece of Stonehenge paper that has a slightly grey tone. I added some striping to Molygon and then some Flux. Shading and white highlights finished it off.

I've seen some tanglers who tangle tiny, but that's not me. I can't work tiny -- it bothers my eyes. So I knew there wouldn't be any fill inside the following one. I just shaded and added some darker outlining to some of them to give it a little more contrast.

I drew my next Molygon larger so I'd have space to add fill.

Then I wanted to try adding some color, so using my Tombow brush markers, here is what I did. Again, the colors didn't translate as well as I would have liked, and what looks pink here is really more coral colored. Something about the colors in this one makes me happy... minus the stray marker line.

Then I said to myself, "Just one more!" In all of the above drawings my Molygon segments have a bit of space between them. I wanted to try one where they were spaced closer together. And I wanted it to be really different, so I did this one with white pen on black, and added some Printemps and Zinger. The segments are closer, but I had to concentrate on each one... for some reason my hand just wanted to leave more space. This one may be my favorite one of all. 

Molygon was such a fun tangle to play with. It's really easy to draw, and you can let it meander here and there and all over the place. Leave it empty and just shade, add tangles within, add tangles among the segments.... whatever you do, it looks great!