"Flowers are like friends; they bring color to your world." Unknown
I decided it was time again to combine my two favorite things to do, Zentangle and photography. I've blogged about this before, once in 2016, which you can see here, and once in 2015, which you can see here. I again chose a photo of flowers to tangle since that's one of my favorite subjects for photography.
Here is the photo before any tangling.
I printed the photo on mixed media paper so that I could tangle using my Microns. In the past I've printed them on glossy photo paper which meant that I had to tangle using a Microperm pen because of the slick surface. Not my favorite surface to tangle on.
First I tangled the petals of the two flowers using Angel Fish on one and Maryhill on the other. For the bottom layer of petals I tangled Dyon.
Then I used a gray pen to add some Printemps to the Dyon.
I wanted to add color and shading using some other medium besides pastel pencils which is my usual go to method. Watercolor pencils is what I decided on. I could have used a water brush to blend, but I never feel like I have the control I'd like with a water brush. So I tried a Copic colorless blender pen. I didn't really think it was going to work since Copics are alcohol based, but to my surprise it worked great. With the pointed tip of the blender pen I could control it easily and get into tight spaces.
After adding color, a few shades of pinks and purples on the upper petals, I decided to use some green on the bottom petals to transform them into leaves instead of petals. Some graphite shading was also added to those leaves. And some white gelly roll pen accents in the centers of the flowers.
As one last finishing touch, I added some white pastel pencil (couldn't resist!) highlights on the leaves... can you see the difference?
It was a fun little project. Using photos to tangle is an easy way to have instant color and a ready made string.
"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." George A. Moore
The Diva's challenge this week is to create a tile that reflects your home in some way. We recently purchased a summer home in the mountains of NC and this is my first summer here. So I chose to use this home as my inspiration.
First I drew a string to represent the mountains. I used bristol vellum paper, a green micron, and 3 different shades of green pastel pencils for shading. As a finishing touch I added some Msst (with gray pen) to show all the rain we've had here, which is why everything is SO green. I wish I had remembered to take a picture before I shaded. Besides the Msst, the tangles used are N'zeppel, Sea Wave, Leeter, Fallen Leaves, and Shattuck.
Hope you are all enjoying your summer (or winter, depending where you are.) I'm loving the cool mountain air!
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." Nelson Mandela
A while back a good friend of mine gave me this (African?) drum as a gift. Here's a side view.
And here it is from the top. As soon as I saw it, it screamed out to me to be tangled. But I'm always nervous about tangling on these kinds of things where, if I mess up, I've ruined it. Unlike a piece of paper that I can toss in the garbage and start over if I want.
So it remained untangled... until recently when I brought it up to my new summer place in the mountains. It fits in so nicely with my more rustic decor up here. But it was still screaming out to be tangled. So I gathered up all my courage and decided to go ahead... so hard!
Because it's round, a Zendala just seemed like the natural thing to do. I didn't want anything too intricate... that would only give me more opportunity to mess up and regret my decision... so I chose a fairly simple design. I wasn't sure if it would work to transfer it onto the drum skin with graphite, but I gave it a try. It worked but was very light and hard to see, so the first thing I did was darken it a bit by going over all the lines with pencil.
Notice that the drum is sitting in a box that fit very tightly around it. That was to hold the drum still since the bottom is narrow and not totally flat. The box worked really well to keep it steady.
The next uncertainty was how the pen would perform on the slightly textured/rough surface of the drum. I used an Identipen, and to my surprise it drew very nicely, even on the roughest of the spots.
Some line work and some Paradox. So far so good! I really wanted to stop there, before it went wrong, but I knew I couldn't. I continued with some patterns that I felt confident about, first adding a border of Gewurtz.
Then I wanted to add something in those last sections, but it needed to be kind of light and airy, so I decided on Florz.
I didn't add any shading on this, partly because I had no idea what would work for shading, but also because I like the stark contrast and boldness of it just the way it is.
Here it is in what I thought was going to be it's resting place, but after some rearranging of my decor, it is now sitting on a different wooden shelf.
I really love the way this turned out and am so glad I gathered the courage to finally do this project.
